Latest / You're Not Too Much / Finding Your Voice and Power: Cindy Gallop on Authenticity and Resilience

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Finding Your Voice and Power: Cindy Gallop on Authenticity and Resilience · You're Not Too Much

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If somebody thinks something of me that is not true, I
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don't care. I ignore it. Someone who thinks something of me
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that is not true is completely irrelevant to me. You have an idea
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that is contrary to the way I want this to go, and you're
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being vocal about it because you found a problem that I don't want to address,
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and so that makes you difficult. Not me.
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Rigid and stubborn. There is one single micro
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action you can begin taking. It's really easy,
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doesn't require any particular talent, skills, whatever. It is the one micro
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action that will change your life and your work for
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the better immediately. And it's very simply
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this. All right, here we go. I'm gonna pretend
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I'm pushing record, because that feels right. Okay, I'm pressing record.
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Boop. Hi, everybody. I'm Lauren Howard.
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Welcome to Different Not Broken, which is our
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PODC on exactly that. That there are a lot of people in this world walking
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around feeling broken, and the reality is you're just different, and that's fine.
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Hey, guys. I'm very excited about today and
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a number of things that are about to happen. As you are listening along, it
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hasn't been no secret, especially if you've been listening for a while, that the last
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year has been borderline impossible. Not just for me. I feel like
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maybe that's been everybody in the whole entire world, and
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especially lots of people within the U.S. but my world
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specifically has been exceptionally difficult.
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I am very fortunate that there are a handful of other
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people who are always on the other end of the phone, so that
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when whatever shit hits whatever fan, I
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have a reliable network of people who have
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unfailingly been there. And I consider myself so
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fortunate. Despite the fact that the last year has been nearly impossible, despite the
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fact that there have been days that I'm like, what the am I doing? I
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have never done it alone. Even on the days where it felt completely
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isolating, I have never done it alone. If I look back on the last year,
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as much as it's been horrifically difficult, that is
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something that I can count as maybe the greatest blessing in my life.
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And the reason I say that now, specifically, is because I happen
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to be fortunate enough to have one of those people who is always on the
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other end of the phone here with me today. If you have
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not followed Cindy Gallup on LinkedIn, please go do it
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for a number of reasons. One, we're all being throttled, and so extra followers helps.
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And you should very intentionally go find her content because it's excellent, but also
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because everything she says is correct. Everything she says
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is right. Everything about women in business, about
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funding female founders, about standing up to the
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patriarchy, about, I don't know, probably soup. I would imagine
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your perspectives on soup are also correct. We probably agree.
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Also she like posts like really like swanky photos from the
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Virgin Atlantic Lounge with drinks. I just really want to drink. Airplanes aren't my
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thing so I probably I might figure out have to figure out how to make
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one at home. So very, very, very fortunate to have the
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wonderful and magical Cindy Gallop with us today.
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We are going to get into both some very tough topics
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and just some funny topics. So, Cindy, thank you so much
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for being here. I am delighted to have you. I would love for
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you to give a brief background of myself to everybody
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who's listening along and then we'll get into some trouble as we always
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do. My background is 40 years working in
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brand building, marketing and advertising, which is actually very good experience.
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What I do now because I've effectively spent 40 years working in
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the business of getting people to do things that they originally had no intention of
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doing, which is advertising. And these days I'm the
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founder and CEO of Make Love Not Corn. We are pro sex,
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pro porn, pro. Knowing the difference, we've just launched
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MakeLoveNotPorn Academy, which is an extension of our
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brand, which is a global sex education
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aggregator hub to make it easy for parents, teachers,
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children, young people, adults to find the open, healthy sex
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education resources that they need at a time when those are being blocked,
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censored and deplatformed. And alongside that,
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I work as a personal coach, a consultant, and a public
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speaker. I was very new to LinkedIn and I was like, who is this woman
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and can she be my best friend? And what I will say is,
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you have a giant LinkedIn following. And I say this as somebody who has a
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big LinkedIn following. You dwarf me. Which is not a complaint. You should.
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But you are maybe the most approachable,
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authentic person on LinkedIn.
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I don't think I've ever commented on something and not gotten a
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response. You answer your emails, you'll tell people to shut up when they need to,
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which I very much appreciate. It wasn't like, it
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wasn't like some big thing where I
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literally just reached out to you on LinkedIn one day and I was like, I
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think I need to learn from you. And you were like, cool, awesome,
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let's do it. That was the whole of it. When I say
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this is not an exaggeration. When I say I would not have made it through
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the last year of my life without you. That is not an exaggeration. You
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have been a force within my brain
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when you're there and when you're not, because you're really good at leaving
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little Easter eggs that dive into the brain, wrinkles that will pop up and
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I'll be like, that's Cindy talking to me right now. I do hear voices, and
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occasionally it's you. You saw me on some of my worst days in the last
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year. This sounds very self aggrandizing and it's not meant that
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way. But usually when I talk to people about business, it's people who want to
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pick my brain about business. It's people who are struggling in their
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own right, which is fine. I love having those conversations and I will have them
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forever. But no matter the age of the person, they're usually coming to
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me looking for advice, which again, I love and I will do
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forever. But that gets very, very isolating
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because I'm great at business, but there are still days where I'm like,
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shit, I have no idea what I'm doing. Who do I ask? Who do I
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talk to? So having somebody who I can realistically
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say, I bet this person has been through this before. I bet this person has
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a perspective on it that I can trust. That has been transformational
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in my career. Because the shit that I'm coming to in
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my career, you figured out and that that matters a ton.
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Anyway, so I give that prologue because I like to hear my
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own voice, but also because I think I might need my ass kicked.
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We had planned to talk about some stuff which we will maybe get to at
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the end, but if I feel like I need my ass kicked, I'm gonna guess
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that most of the people who are listening need their ass kicked or
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need to hear what I can only anticipate is going to be the brilliance that
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you respond with. We done a lot of the hard things. We survived the
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impossible. We have survived really tough family
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stuff. We sold the business. We are
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figuring out what's next. We built up our consulting side a lot,
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which has been amazing. But I have not found the part where
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I feel like myself publicly again, which is a strange place to
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be after five years where I have made literally a whole podcast on being myself
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publicly. And it is making me think maybe this voice
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isn't needed. Maybe the reason that I don't feel drawn to it
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right now is because there are other people who need to be saying the things
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that I say, and maybe it's not me. And I know that Every time I've
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said that, you have all but threatened to end me in loving
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ways, in the lovingest ways. I feel like my brain
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or my soul maybe has not caught up to the reality of where we actually
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are right now as we progress through and improve.
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And I can't figure out where that is. And we
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have conversations every week about, like, do we need to keep doing
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this? Do we need to keep doing things publicly? What are we
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saying that matters? And so I would love the good old stindy
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ass kicking. I know you're not going to tell me how to fix it
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necessarily, but you will tell me what the path is
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to getting to the other side and figuring out the right thing. And
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that's, I think, what I need right now. So what I would say,
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Lauren, is, first of all, I was very pleased to hear,
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as we kicked off this podcast, that you have a
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vacation coming up, because I think that is a very good thing.
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And you know that I've spoken to you about that before. And so I'm
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delighted to hear that you have, as I understand it,
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rented a lovely house with a pool somewhere lovely. And you are going to
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go and lie by that pool and do nothing. And so, first
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and foremost, I would say go and do that because you need to
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do that. And honestly, first of all, I just think
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you're gonna find taking that break really
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helpful in resetting and
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getting back in the game, as it were. And secondly, Lauren, I will just say
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to you, we are at a time in history where
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we need everybody to speak their truth
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who is willing to. And I say that because there are a ton of people
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out there who will not, who really need the rest of us to do so.
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And, you know, I say that about the times we're going through now. We especially
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need role models for women who are willing to speak
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truth to power, to say what they really think, to
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stand up for what they believe in, to live the lives that they want
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to live, to encourage other women, especially,
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to do the same. So there is no scenario
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in which your voice should not be heard. Does the
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confidence in that? Does that come with
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time, with experience? Is that just innate that
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you popped up one day and knew that these are the
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voices we needed to hear. And being louder than other people
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is important when you want to be heard. In my case, I think it's a
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combination of two things. The first is the realization
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that honesty does come with time and getting older, which is, I don't give a
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damn what anybody else thinks, which is the only way to
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Live your life as you undoubtedly have heard me say before. Fear of
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what other people will think is the single most
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paralyzing dynamic in business and in life.
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You will never own the future if you care what other people think. And then
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the second thing is, and I've been saying this to people for a very
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long time now, for anyone who's never done this exercise, take a
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long, hard look inside yourself and identify what you stand
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for, what you believe in, what you value, what
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you're all about. In the first instance, doing
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that makes life so much simpler because life
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still throws you all the shit. It always will. But you know exactly how to
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respond to that shit in any given situation in a way that is true to
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you, and that honesty is the secret of happiness. Living your
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life and working your work in a way that is true to you. But that's
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also what gives you confidence. Because when you know that
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you are living and working your value, that's the only thing
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that matters. You don't need to care what anyone else thinks. You can have the
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complete confidence to do what you know is the right thing for you to
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do. I'm the one who says to people all the time, what other people think
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about you is not your business. And I believe that. I do. But I
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do find that the current climate feels so toxic. I'm thinking
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about it a lot more than I ever did before. And that is not like
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me at all. So where do you get to the point
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where if what you know about you and
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what someone believes about you are not the same thing, that that doesn't
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affect you? Is that just a matter of showing them different? And if they don't
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want to believe it, it's fine. There's like a gap there that I can't figure
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out how to bridge right now. And this is very unlike me. I have never
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been like this before in my life. Honestly, Lauren, if
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somebody thinks something of me that is not true, I don't
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care. I ignore it. Someone who thinks something of me that is
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not true is completely irrelevant to me. You know, there is no universe
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in which I need to take account of that, because it's just. It's ridiculous.
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Is there a trick for building that armor? I've never been this person,
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and I find myself in the last year being this person a whole lot more
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than I thought possible. I've been saying this to people for a long time.
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Stay away from people and places and things that make you feel bad about
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yourself. Okay. I may occasionally come across something
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online where somebody is saying Something ridiculous about me. The moment I realize that's what
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it is, I absolutely close the page.
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I do not read any further because I don't need to
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see that. I remember years ago, there was somebody, a
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white man, and I say that deliberately because that's where this came from.
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I think this is somebody in my industry, advertising, who
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basically kept writing blog posts about me and how awful I
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was in all sorts of ways. But he was fixated. I did this much
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more back in the day when I was running an ad agency and
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needing to monitor my coverage. And also I did this back in the
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day, by the way, when Google was a lot more effective than it is
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currently. But every so often, I would Google myself to check
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what coverage had come out, et cetera. Whenever I Googled myself,
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one of the things that would come up was this gentleman had written yet another
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nasty blog post about me. And I would see the first line, which made it
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very clear. And I never, ever clicked
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through to any of those posts. I have no idea how they
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continued beyond the first line, because I did not need to read them.
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So that's what I mean when I say, stay away from people and places and
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things that make you feel bad about yourself. The moment you see something in the
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corner of your eye, ignore it. Shut it down. So
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have you had experiences in your career where maybe you have
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done the wrong thing or wished you had handled something differently
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and that impacted maybe somebody's perspective of you?
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How do you address from that perspective? Yes, I absolutely have. And
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first of all, you know, I would just say to that, Lauren, something
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that I've had occasion to say to all
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my employees in different companies over the years. It's more important
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to be respected and not necessarily liked than
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liked and not necessarily respected. And I say that because
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you're asking about decisions I've made in a business
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context which were not always popular, but were the right
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decisions for the business. Okay. And
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the reason I make that point is because too many
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people in business want desperately to be liked.
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And that can come actually at the expense of
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respect. And again, when I was explaining this point to people who worked with me,
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I would say the reason it's better to be respected, not necessarily liked,
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is because you can absolutely be that boss that everyone loves
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going for a drink with on Friday evening. Real love at the holiday
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party. But when times are tough and the
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trips are down, your people want to know that they have a leader
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who will get them through those tough times no matter
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what. And that's not the person who desperately Wants to be liked down the park.
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So we all do things that may not land well with
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some people, but we're doing what we do because it's the right thing to do.
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Yeah, let's say we have somebody who maybe does not
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have the track record that you and I do of having a
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big mouth on the Internet. And they want to find their footing, they want
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to find their way in, but they're not sure where to start.
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And it's really scary. The first time I ever posted on LinkedIn, I was so
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scared about making an idiot of myself that I had five
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people read it before I post. Now I just post the fuck word all the
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time. I don't care. Nobody reads my stuff before I post it unless it's like
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a partnership thing that I have to get approval on. But other than that, nobody
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reads my stuff. But at the time I was so scared.
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Silencing myself doesn't do anything for anybody. But also
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being loud and not encouraging other people to do it also does
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not get us the diversity of voices that we need. Maybe the world needs my
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voice, but it doesn't need only my voice. So how do you get
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somebody from teetering on the edge of
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maybe I would like to say something unpopular, which by the way, I've never actually
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heard an unpopular opinion that was unpopular, unless it's just
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a bad, misogynistic, shitty white man thing, which happens. But I've
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almost never heard an unpopular opinion that was actually unpopular. I just hear opinions that
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nobody else wants to say. And so how do you
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encourage somebody to get from that? I'm not ready yet to
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actually diving in. So my
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startup before Make Love Not Porn was called if
16:33
We Ran the World and I had to back burner
16:37
if We Round the World when Make Loved One Porn blew up because even I,
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superhuman as I am, cannot run two startups simultaneously. You know, I had to
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pick and Make Love Not Porn is literally the startup the world asked for.
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So I back Bernard if We Ran the World, although I would love to reactivate
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it one of these days because it's still badly needed,
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if We Ran the World was a co action platform
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that enabled brands and their consumers to come together
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around shared values in order to walk
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the talk together, to co act and
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collaboratively and collectively co act on those values in a way that
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would make good things happen for the brand, for the business, for the
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consumers and for society in general. And the atomic unit of
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if We Round the World was the micro action. I
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designed my business as I do with Make Love not porn around my own beliefs
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and philosophies. And I believe that change happens from the
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bottom up, not the top down. Every single one
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of us, every day, taking micro actions.
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Small, simple, easy to do actions, so easy to do well when you do them.
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Taking micro actions to change what we want to see change
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cumulatively adds up at scale to enormous impact. And I'm telling you this because
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when I talked about if we ran the world, and I still to this day
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talk about for the concept of micro actions, what I
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would say to people was, there is one
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single micro action that you can begin taking
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today. It's really easy, doesn't require any
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particular talent, skills, whatever. It is the one micro action
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that will change your life and your work for the better
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immediately. And it's very simply this.
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Say what you think. No, really say what you
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really think, because nobody does. I explain to
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people that when you begin saying what you think,
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that is a fantastic filter. So, for example,
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at work, in a meeting about whatever,
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say what you really think because that is why that
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business hired you. They hired you because they wanted your unique
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perspective, insights, thoughts, contributions.
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And if you give them that and they do not respond,
18:57
welcoming them, then you know you need to get the fuck out. You
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do not want to work anywhere where you cannot bring your
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unique perspectives and insights and contributions to the table and
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have that be welcomed and well received equally. Say
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what you think on social, be yourself on social. That's what I
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always advise. Because you will attract to you the people who
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completely concur and you'll repel the ones who
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don't. And you want to repel the ones who don't because who the hell wants
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to have anything to do with them? I say this to people all the time.
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The greatest joy of finding your authentic self or figuring out who
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your authentic self is in a public setting is letting people self select
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out. Exactly. Again, that's something I've always been good with. I think as
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visibility grew, people got louder about it, which
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didn't used to bother me before the last year. And that is, that
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is where I think I expected that was going to be a quiet
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action, that people were just going to be like unfollow or block,
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like please hit the block button. I love it when you hit the block button.
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I don't want you to see me either block. And sometimes it just
20:01
wasn't quiet. And that was a shock to the system. And I
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don't know why, because it's not like I didn't know that those things happened. Now
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it happened in ways that were very scary and that maybe that was the
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difference, that it stopped being necessarily things that were happening on a screen and in
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some cases became things that were happening on my front porch by people who were
20:19
not invited. But every reaction is information.
20:23
You will find out quickly if that is a person you want in your
20:26
ecosystem or not. And being able to assess
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this isn't right. I'm gonna bounce out. Even if that's not a
20:34
fast timeline, making the decision that you are not going
20:38
to continue to invest in where you are, even if it's going to take you
20:41
a year to find the next thing, just knowing that is power.
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And I think probably where I'm struggling is the fact that
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intellectually I know all of this. I still say it to people all the time.
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I almost never tell people things I don't practice myself.
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And I feel like I'm not practicing some of those things right now.
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That leads me to another question that popped into my head while you were explaining
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that. How many times in your career have you been called difficult?
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I'm sure I've been called difficult a lot behind my
21:11
back. Once people get to know me after being terrified by
21:14
me, they will tell me that they were scared of me when they first met
21:17
me. I don't know why. It's probably the resting bitch face, which is fine.
21:20
That's just the way my face is. Anybody who says it's resting bitch face, it's
21:24
actually resting thinking face. You are punishing people for having things going on behind their
21:27
eyes. But that's neither here nor there. But that gets hurled at women
21:32
all the time. Obviously, that's not new information, but I ran
21:36
a mental health practice in person for 10 years, and people would come in
21:39
and they would hassle the doctor for things. They would
21:43
hassle the therapists for things. They would hassle the front desk for things. Things that
21:46
everybody unequivocally said no about. We're not doing that. We don't do that. We don't
21:50
do that paperwork. We can't prescribe that medication. No.
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And finally, somebody would be like, hey, can you come deal with this person? And
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I would just very politely walk up from the back of my office and say,
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hey, is there something I can help you with? And 100% of the time they
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would go, no, I'm fine, thank you, and leave. There were doctors in our office
22:07
that had 40 years worth of credentials and all sorts of
22:11
plaques and things on their walls that are very impressive. And I'm just
22:14
the office manager in the back. And for whatever reason,
22:18
people find that to be intimidating. But
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that's fine. People don't say it when they want to problem solve. They say it
22:26
when they want to write you off as somebody who you can't work with. And
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that is never the case. In fact, I find the quote unquote
22:32
difficult women who end up in my career trajectory to be the ones who are
22:36
the most dynamic, the ones who are the most collaborative.
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Are there women that I haven't gelled with in the workplace? Absolutely.
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I can think of a couple who. We just had very different
22:47
philosophies on how you treat your co workers. But
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by and large, the ones who get the reputation that I'm sure you
22:55
and I carry around with some people are the ones who want to
22:58
work the most with us or have the best ideas or need to
23:02
be heard. And usually the difficult thing means you
23:06
have an idea that is contrary to the way I want this to
23:10
go and you're being vocal about it because you found a problem that I
23:13
don't want to address. And so that makes you
23:17
difficult, not me. Rigid and stubborn. I think
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the fact that nobody has ever said it to you probably speaks to just your
23:24
presence in any room. You run a company that people either love
23:28
or hate. There probably are not a lot of people
23:32
who are indifferent towards your mission. What is it like to be the
23:35
figurehead of that and to navigate all of the challenges
23:39
that come with people who make decisions about what you do? Not
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even because they don't understand, because they aren't even trying to understand. They
23:46
don't care to understand. Make Love, Not Porn has been
23:50
universally well received by people at
23:54
large for 17 years. Okay. My only
23:58
challenges have been financial,
24:01
tech, and business ones. And they have not been
24:05
about what people think of what I'm doing. They've been about the
24:09
no adult content, knee jerk compliance reaction
24:13
to give you an idea. Some years ago, a friend of mine, a female
24:16
journalist, wrote to me and she said, cindy, I'm writing
24:20
a book on how women aren't welcome on the Internet. And she said,
24:24
so what I'm doing is I'm reaching out to prominent feminists like you.
24:28
I'm asking them to share with me the hate mail they receive
24:32
and to talk to me about how they deal with it. And I said to
24:35
her, I think that sounds like a terrific idea. I'm really sorry I can't help
24:39
because I do not get hate mail. And I really don't. In
24:42
17 years of make Love Not Porn, I have never
24:46
had anybody send Hate mail about it.
24:50
And I think that's because when you
24:54
understand what we're doing at Make Love Not Porn and why we're doing
24:58
it, nobody can argue with it. People occasionally ask
25:01
me, Cindy, how do you have the boldness to give talks to
25:05
very corporate audiences and talk about Make Love Not Porn within the talk,
25:09
which I readily do, because Make Love Not Porn is designed
25:13
around my own business principles and philosophies. And so it's a business case study of
25:17
my own business thinking. But my response to that is
25:20
because it doesn't matter how corporate the environment is
25:24
a large the audience is. I know perfectly well that when I talk about
25:28
Make Love Not Porn, everybody in that audience knows exactly what I'm talking about.
25:32
And that's why I have no issue with bringing it up. It's an interesting business
25:36
in that context. Now that I think about it, in the context of
25:39
the conversations we have had. It's always been funding. It's always been,
25:43
you know, funding banking, highly regulated
25:47
industries who are scared about compliance risk. In hindsight,
25:51
yeah, I don't think you've ever said that any human takes
25:55
specific issue with it. Like maybe we won't run it through
25:59
the Bible Belt entirely. Or maybe we will, I don't know. Many
26:02
years ago I was booked to come and give a talk to the students
26:06
at the University of Missouri about Make Love Not Horn specifically. So I gave a
26:10
talk, I was talking about our revenue share business model and I light
26:13
heartedly said to the audience, it's a great way to pay off your student
26:17
loans. Now sitting in the audience was a local reporter
26:20
who instantly wrote a piece about, you know, woman recommends students
26:24
prostitute themselves. And that shot out across a syndicated
26:28
network of local papers. And so I was contacted by a local
26:31
Christian radio station, was shocked and horrified and asked
26:35
me to come on and explain myself. And I absolutely accepted any invitation like
26:39
that. I went on this radio station and I explained what Make Love
26:43
Porn was actually about what I was doing. And by the end of the
26:47
show they were going, this is wonderful, everybody. Check out Make Love Not
26:50
Porn. I probably haven't said this on the show before. I
26:54
am definitely Jewish, but I grew up in an evangelical Christian
26:57
cult. Very like basically a cult that has
27:01
to this day has their own radio station. And
27:05
I'm imagining you going into these studios and it is
27:09
the greatest image that I can possibly conjure in my head.
27:13
But also I would love to see the reactions of the
27:17
Pearl clutchers that I grew up with. I have a friend
27:20
who has a somewhat problematic mother in law. And we
27:24
were at a thing together and her mother in law was there and she says
27:27
to me, okay, that's my mother in law. Stay away from her.
27:31
She's super intrusive. She doesn't like anybody. She will grill
27:34
you and make you uncomfortable. Just stay away from her. And
27:38
I looked at her and I said, introduce me. I
27:42
was like, let's go. I want to go. So I would
27:46
walk into that very happily because it's an opportunity to educate, but it's also
27:49
an opportunity to show. I mean, you have nothing to be ashamed of. You have
27:52
nothing to be shy about. You are building what you're building. And it's for
27:56
them, too. It's not to their exclusion. It's for them too.
28:00
I love that we both lean that way because there are situations that you're
28:04
supposed to run from that are going to be confrontational. And I'm like, let's go.
28:07
I'm ready. Let's do it. So as we round out,
28:11
first off, would love for everybody to know where they can find
28:15
you, how they can engage with you, what ways you make yourself available.
28:19
But also if there is someone listening that just needs
28:23
to hear why the world needs that needs their voice, needs, needs their
28:27
skill, needs, whatever. As a departure, what do you say to them? The
28:30
world needs your voice. Whatever you want to say, the world needs
28:34
to hear it because there are so many people
28:37
silencing themselves for all the wrong reasons. So the
28:41
world needs to hear your voice. Whatever you want to put out there, trust me,
28:44
the world wants it in terms of finding me. And this may also be
28:48
helpful. So, first of all, I have a substack. It's called Dear
28:51
Cindy. I started that because people write to me and ask me
28:55
things. And so I thought, let's formalize this and you can write
28:59
and ask me anything. And each week I answer one question from
29:02
the ones that have been sent to me. You can absolutely follow me on LinkedIn.
29:06
I am Indy Gallop on Instagram. If you're curious about my work,
29:10
do check us out@makeloveknotborn.com do support
29:14
my work by signing up and subscribing. Subscriptions start at $10 a month.
29:18
And also do check us out at MakeLoveNotPorn
29:21
Academy, which is the sex education extension
29:25
we've just taken live in very early stage beta. We're still
29:29
loading educators and content on the platform, but we welcome real world testing
29:33
and we also welcome people who believe in our mission
29:36
of bringing lifelong sex education to the world.
29:40
And so we'd love you to become a paid member of the academy.
29:44
It's free for everyone to access, but you can pay just $100 a year
29:47
to help fund our operations. You can absolutely find me on Facebook
29:51
as well. And I have a website, cindygallup.com where you can find out more
29:55
about my personal coaching services and speaking. You will get
29:58
more out of an hour with Cindy than you will get out of an
30:02
mba. That's not me being grandiose at all.
30:06
You will get more with an hour with Cindy about you, about your
30:10
needs, about the ways that we torture ourselves, that she will cut
30:14
right through Cindy. Thank you so much. I adored having you here. You
30:18
are welcome back anytime. Everybody. Please go check out all of the different ways
30:21
Cindy advised that you can find her. I love the substack. I
30:25
personally tend to gravitate toward LinkedIn just because that's where I am
30:29
most of the time. But all of the content is great and there are very
30:32
good alcohol drinks there occasionally that you can partake in by
30:36
proxy.
30:41
And now we'll go to Allison, who has this week's small
30:45
talk. I have a small talk question from Jenna in
30:49
New York. My family has always leaned on me,
30:52
youngest of four kids. But somehow I became the one people call the
30:56
one who shows up, the one who knows what to do when things go sideways.
31:01
And for a long time, that role felt like a gift. It made me
31:04
feel capable, needed, and worthy.
31:08
Last spring, my dad was in the hospital for three weeks, and I organized everything.
31:12
The visits, the insurance calls, the meals for my mom. And
31:16
about halfway through, I realized nobody asked me
31:19
how I was doing. Not once. I'm not sure if I
31:23
train people to not ask or if people just assume the strong one
31:27
doesn't need checking on, but either way, I'm sitting here
31:30
wondering how you start letting people take care of you when that's never
31:34
been the dynamic. Why are you asking questions about my life?
31:38
Jenna from New York? Rude. Why? Why you do this?
31:42
I'm proud of you for taking on the responsibility and doing all the
31:45
things right by your dad, but also very sorry that
31:49
you had to shoulder that all by yourself. I'm also one of
31:53
four children, and I am also the only
31:56
girl. And I am going to hazard a guess that you
32:00
might also be the only girl. In your case, you're the youngest,
32:04
so you would have to be the only girl. I'm not the youngest.
32:08
Even though I'm the only daughter. I'm also the eldest daughter, so there's like
32:11
a whole thing there. I once like asked the Internet if being the eldest daughter
32:15
meant the eldest of all children and also a
32:19
daughter, or if it meant any place in the birth order but the first
32:22
girl. And it was clarified to me that it meant the second
32:26
thing, which I guess being the only one also makes me the eldest. So.
32:30
Okay. And that is very typical
32:34
of the eldest star. I don't know
32:37
why it works out that way. I only have my lived experience on this, and
32:41
I can tell you that that's been a thing my whole life
32:44
where the siblings will reach out to me and ask me
32:48
what we are doing for one of our parents for whatever
32:52
day it is, they do not come to me with a plan for whatever
32:56
day it is. Not often, at least. My mom was recently in the
33:00
hospital and they all texted me. Not a single one of them reached out to
33:02
her. And they did text me, but it was to find out
33:06
what I was doing, how I was handling her. And like,
33:10
my mom wanted to talk to them. She didn't want that. And I didn't really.
33:14
Honestly, I didn't think about it. I just am so used to that dynamic. I
33:16
didn't even think about it until I was sitting in the hospital with her on
33:19
like day six or seven. And of course, I'm running back and forth multiple times
33:23
a day and bringing her whatever she needs. And there's. There's a little
33:27
bit of. I don't want to call it an advantage, but there's like a home
33:30
field advantage there. She lives very close to me and one of my other siblings.
33:33
I am the one who is better with planning and
33:37
logistics and decision making and nuance. And my other sibling is very good for
33:41
show up at this place at this time. And so when I need that, he's
33:44
great. When I need flexibility and
33:48
somebody to make decisions and somebody with critical thinking, that's not the role that he
33:51
fulfills in this dynamic. Right. And so we were probably like five
33:55
or six days in, and I'm sitting in my mom's room because I think we
33:59
were waiting for one of the doctors to come in, and she says, you
34:03
know, have you heard from your brothers? And I said, oh, yeah, because they had
34:06
texted me a couple of times to check in on her. And
34:10
she said, well, none of them have called me at all. And I was like,
34:14
really? That's weird, because, like, they know what's happening. I keep them
34:17
informed. She was like, no, nobody's called me. And then I
34:21
realized that I was the information conduit. They were coming to me if the
34:25
information was coming to them. For me, they were satisfied with it, and they weren't.
34:28
They weren't putting any more emotional or physical labor into it at
34:32
all. And that's because I was doing all of that labor. And I have historically
34:36
done all of that labor. Now, that's. That. That's the emotional
34:40
labor part. There have been many other types of labor that
34:44
my siblings have participated in at other parts of our journey, in taking
34:48
care of both of our parents. And so I don't want to make it seem
34:50
like I'm the only one ever, because that's not the case.
34:53
But I'm the only one a lot of times,
34:58
and I'm so used to it that sometimes I don't even
35:02
realize until it all gets to be too much. It's all
35:05
piled on top of me, and I'm going to. Why is this so difficult?
35:09
And I realize I feel like I'm the only when I'm not the only, you
35:12
know, running back and forth multiple times a day, being the one who has to
35:15
take her to the emergency room, being the one who has to know where the
35:18
med list is, where her surgery list is, where she keeps her computer,
35:22
where she keeps all of her. The things that she needs to pack a bag,
35:25
who her doctors are, how often they communicate with each other.
35:30
It's a lot. And when you are the one who has always handled it,
35:34
people don't realize how much it is. And if you're anything like I am,
35:38
nobody knows how much you're shouldering until it's so much that you bray,
35:42
and then you're angry at everybody and firing back at everybody because you feel so
35:46
isolated and alone. And the reality is that
35:50
as grownups, they should know that this is not all on
35:54
you. If you are not complaining, people don't jump in.
35:58
People in general are not going to fix a problem that
36:01
has not been verbalized to them as a problem. And so
36:05
should all of the boys in your life know that
36:09
you're doing too much and you're overwhelmed and that you need help. But if you're
36:12
not saying it to them, they are not going to pick up on what you're
36:16
thinking. They're not mind readers, and you have to tell them. And I think
36:19
that's probably what's missing. And
36:23
in a lot of cases is received a whole lot better than
36:27
you anticipate that it will be for a couple of reasons. One, it's devastating to
36:31
go to somebody and say, this is too much and I can't do it. And
36:33
as somebody who's had to do that a lot in the last six months. More
36:37
than I ever have in my life. The ways that it has made me feel
36:41
like an epic piece of shit and very small and very ineffective and
36:45
like a failure in all ways. So, so, so many ways. But that was something
36:49
I did to myself. It was never something that was on the other side of
36:51
that equation. There was never anybody else making me feel that way. That was always
36:55
what I put on myself because I wasn't reaching this
36:58
insurmountable level of management.
37:02
That was just never gonna happen. And historically, there are kind
37:05
of two responses. Well, I guess there's technically three responses. There's
37:09
the response of somebody saying, okay, that thing you just said, I can handle
37:13
that. Don't do that anymore. I will take that off your plate.
37:17
That's the best of all the responses, right? There's the
37:20
intermediate response of what can I
37:24
help with? Which is better than a bad response.
37:28
But they're still putting the onus on you, the emotional energy
37:31
on you to sort through this thing,
37:35
and that's still work. And when you're overwhelmed and you feel like you're out
37:39
of resources, putting that work back on you to figure
37:42
out what of these 700 things they can help you with
37:46
can feel just as overwhelming as the 700 things.
37:50
And so it's not the worst response. But
37:53
I wish that we could somehow train people in their
37:57
good intentions to help, which they should be rewarded for
38:01
that. A blanket offer to help is sometimes not at all
38:05
helpful. But if you come up with three things, you
38:09
know, you call a sibling and say, I've been at the hospital with dad for
38:12
three weeks. I'm burned out. I can't do it anymore. And they say,
38:16
okay, well, I can either come for the weekend or I can
38:19
come in one week. We have a family member. Let me call them
38:23
and see if they can come and relieve you for a bit, and then I'll
38:26
be there next week. Like, options, Concrete, tangible
38:29
options, great. But, oh, I'm. Listen, I didn't know you
38:33
were struggling. That's good. I really want to help. Also good.
38:37
What can I do for somebody that's drowning?
38:40
That's not always the right answer, but it's a better answer than the
38:44
last option, which is, well, if you didn't want to handle it all, maybe
38:48
you shouldn't act like you have all your stuff together. Blah, blah. Okay? If anybody
38:51
reacts to you that way, and the only way I bring it up is because
38:53
I've seen that before, thankfully not directed toward me, but I'VE seen that before. Tell
38:56
that person to fuck off. Get bent. You don't want their help, they
39:00
will make things worse and find another solution. There's another solution out there. But
39:04
somebody who will make your stress and your
39:07
overwhelm about them and become defensive
39:11
about it is not somebody who's helping you. Okay. But it starts
39:15
with a very simple conversation. I'm really overwhelmed by what's
39:18
happening and I. I can't be the one who's responsible for
39:22
everything. What can you take off my plate? I know
39:25
historically I've done this. It is not working for me right now. What can you
39:29
take off my plate? And the response to that will be positive more times
39:33
than not. Especially if this is a close family and they love you and they
39:36
just don't realize that if you haven't complained before, they don't have any
39:40
reason to believe that this time is any different. But it's different. And
39:43
that's okay. Things change. People change. The amount
39:47
of stress and burden that you can handle changes. And
39:51
this is one of those times to ask for help. And odds are
39:55
the people around you are so impressed with your ability to handle so much
39:58
that it has never occurred to them that you might need help too.
40:04
And that's because you do a really, really good job of being a
40:07
badass all the time. And it's one of the reasons why I always tell people
40:10
to check on your strong friends because they are not going to tell
40:14
you when the sky is falling in. And the number of times that I have
40:18
found that somebody who I thought had all of their shit together was
40:21
as big a disaster as I am and needed help and
40:25
was just too scared to tell anybody is more times than I could
40:29
easily recollect. It happens all the time. You are the
40:32
strong friend in this case. You're the strong family member. You're the one they don't
40:36
worry about. They don't need to worry about you, but they do need to help
40:39
you. But they will not know to start that until you make it
40:42
clear. And you have to give them the opportunity to give you the
40:46
answer that you don't want. You have to get over your own ego
40:50
that says you can do it all because you always do it all. And you
40:53
have to be willing for. Willing to experience some sort of rejection. But I
40:57
would bet dollars to donuts that it's not going to happen.
41:01
Also, I know I now want donuts.
41:04
Thanks for being here, guys. Have a good day. Love you. Mina
41:10
And I thought now that we're on the other. Nope I
41:14
don't want to say that. Nope. Not going to tempt the wrath of whatever.