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Too many women in midlife think they’re too old, too busy, or too inexperienced to go after their dreams. Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts wants you to know none of that is true! She lays out how to push that nonsense aside and follow your desires in her latest book, Fired Up. She and Reshma get into how to figure out what you’re passionate about, why midlife is the perfect time to pursue what fires you up, and how to reconcile the idea that focusing on these things will take away from being a mother. Plus, how Shannon reframes failures in order to keep moving forward.

Follow Shannon @shannonrwatts on Instagram.

You can follow our host Reshma Saujani @reshmasaujani on Instagram.

Let us know how you’re doing in midlife! You can submit your story to be included in this show at speakpipe.com/midlife

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Reshma Saujani, Shannon Watts

Reshma Saujani  01:01

Welcome to My So-Called Midlife – a podcast where we figure out how to stop just getting through it and start actually living it. I’m Reshma Saujani. I get asked all the time, “Reshma, how do I make a difference? What’s the first step? Here’s what I tell him, “You don’t need to start a nonprofit, you don’t need to run for office. You just need to start where you are with what breaks your heart”. As someone who spent the past 15 years building movements for women and girls, from Girls Who Code to Moms First. Look, I’ve learned that activism doesn’t begin with a plan. It begins with a moment, a moment that moves you. That’s exactly what happened to Shannon Watts. She wasn’t born an activist. She was a stay at home mom who was scared of public speaking, but after the tragedy at Sandy Hook, she took a deep breath, opened Facebook and just started typing. That post became Moms Demand Action, the largest grassroots movement fighting to end gun violence in America. Shannon’s story, it’s just a reminder that midlife isn’t the end of your impact. It’s the beginning. Her new book Fired Up: How to Turn Your Spark Into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age. It’s just a powerful roadmap for anyone feeling stuck or overwhelmed or just invisible. It’s for all of us asking, is it too late to matter? Spoiler alert,it’s not.Because midlife, it isn’t a crisis – it’s a call, and Shannon is here to show us how to answer it. Shannon, as you know, we talk a lot about midlife on the show. Some people are like, “Yeah, I’m turning 60. I feel great”. Some people are like, “Can we just rewind the clock or move it backwards?”. Like, where do you live?

 

Shannon Watts  03:10

I had a hard time turning 40. I loved turning 50.

 

Reshma Saujani  03:17

Tell me, because I’m turning 50 this year. I don’t feel that way yet. Why? What?

 

Shannon Watts  03:22

Well, I got started early in life. I had three kids by the time I was 29 years old, and I really felt like I missed out on all the fun so many people in my generation had in that decade. I feel like I’m getting to do that now, but with more money and more time on my hands. I mean, I’m an empty nester, right?

 

Reshma Saujani  03:44

How old are your kids?

 

Shannon Watts  03:46

My biological kids are 24, 28 and 29. My step kids are 31 and 36.

 

Reshma Saujani  03:52

Wow, you lucky bitch. Mine are 10 and 5.

 

Shannon Watts  03:57

But, you had fun in your 20s?

 

Reshma Saujani  04:00

Yeah, I did.

 

Shannon Watts  04:01

Okay.

 

Reshma Saujani  04:01

I actually had fun up until I was 38.

 

Shannon Watts  04:05

So you cheated?

 

Reshma Saujani  04:07

I know. To be honest, I don’t know which way I would do if I had got the chance again, because I think there’s upsides and downsides to both.

 

Shannon Watts  04:16

Absolutely. I would not recommend doing both. I would not recommend having kids in your 20s and your 40s.

 

Reshma Saujani  04:23

Some people do that. I’m like, “You’re crazy”.

 

Shannon Watts  04:27

It’s so crazy.

 

Reshma Saujani  04:28

No, it is. It does really make a big difference on lots of things and how you decided. No one really tells you which way. So look, we’ve known each other for a really long time, and I’ve loved you. I love your story. I’m such a big admirer of you and your work, but a lot of people may not still know like, why you’re such a badass. Can you just humor me and take us all on your journey with activism? How did you get involved in fighting for gun safety?

 

Shannon Watts  05:02

First, let me say back at you. I feel the same way. When I met you, I was like, “Oh, here’s my fellow, indomitable woman”. I love this. I feel a kinship with you. But, I want to be clear that some of that for me was acquired. It’s not innate. You know, I’m not a unicorn. I can tell you the story of Moms Demand Action, but I think it’s important to give you some context. Before starting Moms Demand Action, I’m an introvert. I was terrified of public speaking, and I also have severe, somewhat debilitating ADHD. So I came to this with all of those obstacles. But for me, this is what this book I’ve written is all about like, “How do you find the formula for you to come alive?” As I said, I had three kids by the time I was 29. I was living on autopilot. I was in a marriage that was not right for me. I was in a career that was not right for me.

 

Reshma Saujani  06:05

What were you doing?

 

Shannon Watts  06:06

I wanted to be an investigative journalist. It’s why I went to college. But, because I married so young and had kids so young, I had to pay the bills so I became a public relations executive, which is sort of the dark side of investigative journalism. Look, I enjoyed it and I learned things, it was important. But, I reallyhad struggled for a long time to figure out who was I and what did I want? This horrific, tragic shooting in this country helped me figure that out, because I felt so strongly that there was a moral clarity to getting off the sidelines. I can remember that day in 2012 at the time, I was taking a five year break for my career to blend my new family of five kids. I was at the tail end of that actually getting ready to go back to work.

 

Reshma Saujani  07:01

As a PR executive?

 

Shannon Watts  07:04

Probably. I was burnishing my resume. I’m sure like you, that day is etched in my mind. I was folding laundry. It was a very cold day in Indiana. I looked at the TV, and there was this breaking news that there was an active shooter in Connecticut. I sat down on the side of my bed, stopped what I was doing, spent the rest of the day just sobbing and disbelieving what was playing out in the school. During the night, that sadness became abject rage. I just woke up the next day and I couldn’t do nothing. I had to do something. So Facebook was very popular in 2012 with middle aged moms and women and I didn’t have a focus group so I started a page, I called it One Million Moms for Gun Control.

 

Reshma Saujani  07:53

You literally just woke up the next morning. Did something come to in your sleep? Because I feel like sometimes these ideas cut like, “What do you think happened in those 24 hours where you’re sleepingthat you came up with this idea?”.

 

Shannon Watts  08:09

I was so angry and I didn’t know what to do with myself. In Indiana, a red state have a community of fellow moms and women who felt the same way I did necessarily. I hadn’t created that women who shared my values, but I did feel like my Facebook friends did. I just want to be clear. I had 75 Facebook friends. I was not a social media phenom, but those 75 people, many of whom I did not know but just met through Facebook, including women I went to high school with. They felt like I did and they started sharing that with other women who felt.

 

Reshma Saujani  08:50

The page?

 

Shannon Watts  08:50

This page I created called One Million Moms for Gun Control. I want to be clear, I did not know that One Million Moms was an anti-gay group who was trying to get Ellen DeGeneres not to be their JCPenney spokeswoman, I don’t know if you remember that whole saga.

 

Reshma Saujani  08:51

It’s sparking a memory, but wow.

 

Shannon Watts  08:51

Then I got a call from representative Carolyn McCarthy. I couldn’t believe I was on the phone with a congresswoman. If you remember her story, her son and husband were shot in Long Island in New York. She became a congresswoman because of that. I picked up the phone, and she said to me in her New York accent, very gruff like, “We have been waiting for mothers and women to organize around this,but we sure as hell aren’t going to do it with you if you call your organization gun control”. Because that was a phrase that was like verboten inside the beltway. We very quickly changed course. I think within six weeks, it had changed our name to Moms Demand Action. But, it was one of these moments that happened so much now, but hadn’t in 2012 which is when something goes viral. It’s like lightning in a bottle.

 

Reshma Saujani  09:55

I totally appreciate that, because that’s exactly I feel like happened with Girls Who Code. So that’s why. Literally in six weeks, your whole life changes. You’re a suburban middle aged mom, blending your family, doing some laundry, figuring out what your next job is, and now you’re like, thrust into organized. You had never before mobilized, organized, publicly spoke – nothing. Are you scared?

 

Shannon Watts  10:19

I am terrified. I’m 100% sure in every fiber of my being that this is the right idea and the right time. In fact, the night I started the page, my husband and I went to bed and the response had been so overwhelming, both positive from women who wanted to help and negative from people who wanted to kill me. We went to bed that night. My husband looked at me and said, “This is going to be a very big deal”, and he didn’t say that in a good way. It was like “Our lives are about to be upended”. At the same time, I never imagined I would be a public figure. My cellphone was available, my email was available, my home address was available. That was good for the women who were calling and saying, How do I do this? Where I live? It was very bad for the threats of death and sexual assault that I was getting to meand to my kids.

 

Reshma Saujani  11:05

Immediately, right?

 

Shannon Watts  11:08

I never imagined. I realized I sound naive, but I just didn’t think that this issue was as polarizing as it was.I’m glad for that naivete in retrospect, but it was very overwhelming. Not just having to manage andcreate an organization and bring new people into it – all perfect strangers from across the country, but also with a threat of violence constantly hanging over my head. There was a pickup truck that kept idling outside my house, clearly found my address and was trying to intimidate me. I called the police in Indiana, and the local officer came over. I told him the whole thing and what was happening, just couldn’t keep a closer eye on my house. He said, “Well, this is what you get when you mess with the Second Amendment, ma’am”.

 

Reshma Saujani  11:54

Made sure that made you feel real safe.

 

Shannon Watts  11:56

Well, it was clear that I was going to either have to back down or double down.

 

Reshma Saujani  12:01

And you decided to double down?

 

Shannon Watts  12:04

Yeah. I just don’t like being intimidated or silenced. I kind of knew, and I knew that other volunteers felt the same way that if we lost our children, we had nothing left to lose. We had watched all these shooting tragedies, from Columbine to Virginia Tech to the Gabby Gifford shooting. We’d watch them happen over and over again with absolutely no action from Congress.

 

Reshma Saujani  12:25

Right.

 

Shannon Watts  17:49

So they wouldn’t act this time.

 

Reshma Saujani  18:37

Let me ask you something. People are probably listening to this. I really do believe anyone can build anything, A Girls Who Code, A Moms Demand Action, right? If you have enough passion, curiosity, anger,whatever it is, it could propel you. Do you believe that? Or do you feel like, if someone’s listening right now, and they may feel this way about climate, or AI or about the divisiveness in  our country. Would yousay to them , “Start a page. Start a group”. What does it take?

 

Shannon Watts  19:10

That is a great question. Look, I think I was uniquely suited to start Moms Demand Action because I had spent over a decade creating brands, shaping narratives, telling stories, media training people. There was something that I brought to the table that was unique. That was the only skill set I had, to be clear.As you said, I didn’t know anything about gun violence. I knew very little about the legislative process. I didn’t know anything about organizing. I was very grateful that those other women brought those skills to the table. Perfect strangers from across the country who said, “I’m an organizer. I’m a website developer. I’m a lawyer”, whatever it was. They came together and said, “I want to help, because this issue is so important to me”. That was a very unique situation, because there had just been this shooting tragedy. I talk about this in my book, like, “What is the formula for you? What are your abilities? What are your values? What are your desires?”. Some people come into Moms Demand Action, and maybe they’re an accountant and their kid has gone through a lockdown drill. They think, “How can I get involved?” I can do data entry. Then they get a baby step in and they realize, “Oh, I can do data entry, I can do it really well, and I bring value to this organization. Now, I have this huge supportive community. Maybe I could be the chapter leader”, then they become the chapter leader, and they think, “You know, when I meet with lawmakers, I’m as smart and caring as concerned as they are, maybe I could be a lawmaker”, and they run for office. Suddenly, they are sitting on the other side of the desk. That is the journey of how this happens. If you are someone who’s listening and you’re thinking, “I’m really passionate about X subject. What do I do?”. It may be starting an organization, and that organization may be in your neighborhood. It may be in your state. It may be nationwide, or maybe that’s not how you want to engage. Maybe you’re the data entry lead, but that doesn’t make it less valuable. I don’t think the point is, if you don’t start an organization, it’s not worth doing. The point is what Alice Walker says which is, “Activism is the rent I pay to live on the planet, and I can’t afford to sort of sit on the sidelines”. What is your thinking about this?

 

Reshma Saujani  21:16

I love what you just said, because it’s so tangible. I think what happens is people get so overwhelmed with starting the thing or joining the thing, like, “I’m sure you hear this all the time right now. I’m so upset with what’s happening in the world. What do I do?”. And people get so overwhelmed because they think the thing that they have to do is just too big for them to do it, so then they don’t do anything. I love what you’re saying, which is maybe the thing that you do is do the thing you’re already doing your life. You’re an accountant, you’re a lawyer, you’re a teacher, right? Do that for an existing organization or an existing issue that you care about. When you say that, I’m sure everyone’s listening right now saying, “Oh, I can do that. That’s really manageable”. I absolutely love that. I also think the other thing is, what I loved about what you’ve built too. You’re taking like, “I’m thinking about my own kids in my school”, which I love. It’s almost like you’re asking people to get engaged in their own house, in their own community. You kind of know how to do that, right? Again, it doesn’t feel as daunting, but it’s what’s more important now than ever before. Like, I tell people with childcare, it’s like start at your company or DNI. Like, I am so mad that they are dismantling pipeline programs. I’m so mad we’re not passing affordable childcare, but I don’t even need you to go to Washington. I need you to go to your office or go to your company and be like, “Don’t do that or build or create this”. I actually think we need to be directing people to be a lot more micro and a lot more local.

 

Shannon Watts  22:58

You said two things that I think are really important. First is that people are often overwhelmed, particularly women. We’re so loaded down with obligations and shoulds that we can’t kind of pursue our desires, let alone the things that we’re passionate about, maybe activism. But there’s another piece to it and I’ve seen this over and over again in myself and other women, which is a fear of failure. If we can’t cross all the tease and all the eyes, we don’t want to do it, because God forbid we might fail, and we have to get over that.

 

Reshma Saujani  23:33

Right?

 

Shannon Watts  23:34

Men lose all the time. From good guys like Beto O’Rourke to bad guys like Elon Musk, they fail upward. They fail and they get all these different offers to continue to be at the forefront. God love them. But women fail, they become this living, breathing example of what it means to fail, and they’re expected to sort of disappear and go off into the ether. That’s one thing, is that failure is feedback to win the next time. We have to stop looking at it as limiting. The other thing that I think is important is you talked about local activity, right? When I started Moms Demand Action, we thought, “Okay, we’re going to pass Federal Legislation. Then we are all going to go back to our normal lives. This will take two months”If yougo back to 2013, a few months after the Sandy Hook school shooting there was Bipartisanship Legislation put forward, the Manchin-Toomey bill. It would have closed the background check loophole in honor of this tragedy and I was sitting in the Senate gallery when it failed by a handful of votes, including some democratic senators. I realized, I shouldn’t have been shocked, but I was because I didn’t know anything about what I was doing. It was very clear after that happened, that we were not going to go back to our normal lives. We were going to have to pivot and start doing this work in city councils and state houses and school boards, because that is where you build a momentum to eventually get the right Congress and the right president to follow suit. The other thing I want to say is sometimes we are sow in our own bubble. When I look back at Moms Demand Action, I got involved in gun violence prevention because of a school shooting. School shootings and mass shootings are about 1% of the gun violence in this country, and they’re horrific. But, I was ignoring the constant gun violence it was happening 30 miles from my home every single day. So community work is such important work, because you probably don’t know your community as well as you think you do, but you know it better than you know anything else, and you can make such an incredible impact.

 

Reshma Saujani  25:36

I love this quote you have, women in midlife are the backbone of most grassroots movements, we show up, we organize, we persist. I love that you say that, because I think people’s perception is like, activism is a young person’s game.

 

Shannon Watts  25:51

We could do a whole podcast about this. I think it is so important for young people to be involved in activism. I think they push the rest of society in the right direction. It is so important to always have that constant pressure about you could do better. You could do it more quickly. Why aren’t you constantly trying to make things better? I get that pressure, and it’s important, but there is an intolerance, often among young people for incrementalism. It’s like a dirty word, but incrementalism is what leads to revolutions. Women understand that intuitively. If you have children, it is all about incrementalism, right?

 

Reshma Saujani  26:31

So is.

 

Shannon Watts  26:32

When I think about our volunteer population, there’s a reason if you go back to prohibition, that men wanted women to get involved in activism for the first time in America, because temperance was seen as a Christian value and they could never put that toothpaste back in the tube. Women were like, “Oh, activism, this is important to us”. We want to be able to fight for our rights and for others rights. Everything from the civil rights movement all the way up to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, it’s always women – often black women and women of color who are on the front line of activism. That was no different with Moms Demand Action. Young women would come into the organization often because their kids in preschool were doing lockdown drills, and they engage in something called naptivism. Our volunteer came up with this, this idea of making calls and sending emails during nap time.

 

Reshma Saujani  27:18

During nap time, that’s great.

 

Shannon Watts  27:24

I would say all the way up to retirees. Our most dependable, most productive volunteers were women who had free time because they were retired and they were older.

 

Reshma Saujani  27:34

Can I ask you a question? I feel like I had an aha moment this year where I was like, “I am probably going to die with less rights that I was born with”. As you know, we have sacrificed a lot – our health, our kids, our family. I got no life. This work is such a blessing, but it comes with a lot, because you don’t get to turn it off. We eat, live, sleep, breathe, making the world better, changing the lives of women. So whenyou combine that sacrifice with the fact that you are like, “Oh, we’re probably not going to win”, but that’s our job. You fight to fight, right? Like we are standing on the shoulders of our ancestors who also did the same thing. How have you reconciled that? Because some people could look at this be like, “Oh, no, I’m out”. It’s too much sacrifice for knowing that I might not actually get there. Why I ask you that is because I see these older women, and they have this almost beatific serenity and understanding that we’re probably not gonna win, but they’re still working their asses off.

 

Shannon Watts  28:51

I think again, it comes back to embracing incrementalism. This idea that even small wins and sometimesthat means not that you passed a good building, but you stopped a bad bill. Things that people don’t see, that it’s worth the fight. I also think that I saw it this way, and a lot of the women in moms main action see it this way, which is, you are building a foundation. If I look at Virginia, if you had told me in 2012 that Virginia would eventually be a blue state with gun safety laws, I would have said, “You’re out ofyour mind”. We were having to follow the Democratic Senator Mark Warner to house parties and corner him because he was an A rated NRA Legislator. He was voting for things like concealed carry reciprocity,right? I just never imagined that politics was so cyclical. But when you’re involved in it, when you’re in theweeds, you realize it is that eventually the tides will change, and you want to be ready to act on it when it does. So what we did in in Virginia is not only did we finally get the senators there, Kane and Warner to have Fs from the NRA. We also helped flip all three branches of the legislature there in 2019 because we outspent the NRA to be a gun sense majority. We passed over a dozen good gun laws. We had that foundation put in place. We had this huge chapter that was ready to make a difference. We elected GunSense champions. As soon as we flip those chambers, we went and passed laws. What happened? A Republican was elected four years later, he hasn’t been able to undo a single one of those laws, right? Soyou could say, if you were fighting on the ground right now, you can’t win or you won’t win, or it’s going backward. But if you’re in the weeds, you see that this is all an increment of a plan.

 

Reshma Saujani  32:23

That’s right. This is all the way that it goes.

 

Reshma Saujani  32:27

I want to have your book, because why’d you pick this idea? And what does it mean to be fired up? Three, tell me about the metaphor of the fire.

 

Shannon Watts  33:29

I took a bunch of books to a friend who’s an author’s house and I said, “This is what I’m thinking about writing. What do you think?” And she looked at me and she said, “I think these books are very boring. You are a fiery person with a very fiery personality”. It was like an aha moment that fire was the metaphor. It worked perfectly for the book, because what I’m talking about are women who are fire starters. What is that? That is a woman who decides she’s not just going to fulfill her obligation, she’s also going to follow her desires. I talked about how age 41 everything came together for me, and that was the formula. What are my values? What are my abilities? What are my desires? And when those marry, there’s like an alchemy. It feels like magic. Working with moms in action and other volunteers felt like touching the divine, and the book felt the same way to me. It’s this formula that you can put in your life and practice over and over again understanding you’re going to fail, but continuing to try to do that so that you are a fire starter. The most common deathbed regret is that you don’t live a life that’s authentic to you. When women are living in the system, we start to believe our obligations are our desires. We want to be happy, we want to have a purpose, we want to be busy. These are things the system tells us – our fulfillment, but they’re really not because they’re not for us, they’re for other people. The idea is, what would my life be like? If I just went through the world wondering, what do I want? What do others need for me? What do others want? What do I want?

 

Reshma Saujani  35:06

What do you want?

 

Shannon Watts  35:08

What I want is toburn. I want to live a life that is full of fulfillment. Yes, I know I have obligations and there are other things that I have committed to, but I don’t want to do that at the expense of leaving a legacy.

 

Reshma Saujani  35:22

You just said you’re a Buddhist, I’m very spiritual. Does that mean living a life? Because there are some people who choose to live in a forest. Literally, I wish I could do that. Just focus on getting that deep connection with God. Focus on silencing the ego. That’s one way of being fulfilled. Another way of being fulfilled, which I think the both of us sit in, is doing purposeful work. How do you figure out what that is for you? Read your book and then give you this path, right?

 

Shannon Watts  36:01

What I think is really exciting is. As women, you’re almost in your 50s, I’m in my 50s. We hear a lot right now in the zeitgeist about what amazing things women are doing. Your podcast, all these other podcasts and conversations about the amazing things women are doing post menopause. But I wanted to talk about the how, how do these women become fire starters? That doesn’t have to be starting an organization. That might be finally going to therapy or having a tough conversation or asking for promotion. It doesn’t have to be this huge thing. But, I meet so many women who had brilliant ideas or desires that they wanted to fulfill, they just felt afraid of the blowback that would come. So this is very much a handbook. What can you expect when you decide to pursue your desires? How do you push through that messy middle? How do you find your people? That’s a huge part of this creating a community, and then how do you keep doing it over and over again until the end of your life? I interviewed over 70 women for this book and the stories are amazing.

 

Reshma Saujani  37:12

Tell me the stories that blew you away.

 

Shannon Watts  37:16

I’ll tell you two really quickly. One is a woman named Amber Goodwin, she was rejected by 18 law schools right out of college. She went into a work and she was basically did legislative work in Congress. Donald Trump was elected in 2016 she’s like, “If this man can be elected, I can try again to get into law school”. She got in at 40 years old.

 

Shannon Watts  37:44

She graduates from law school. She becomes the first black president of her law school, and now her fulfillment comes from getting other women of color into law schools across the country. Another woman named Carol Frick had always wanted to be a writer. She ended up having to be a gym teacher to pay the bills. She loved her career, but when it was over after 30 years, she volunteered in an animal shelter. She came up the idea one day of writing a book about a couple who falls in love in an animal shelter. She goes home, she teaches herself how to write a book, how To Create dialogue. All of the things it takes to do research and to write an actual novel. Then she decides, I deserve more than to Self Publish. I want to be published. She sent her manuscript to 218 publishing companies. She finally got a deal the 219th time and became a writer in her 70s.

 

Reshma Saujani  37:44

Wow.

 

Reshma Saujani  38:39

Wow.

 

Shannon Watts  38:40

These are the stories of women who pushed through and continued to ask themselves that question of, what do I want?

 

Reshma Saujani  38:48

One of the things I found in your book that was very common was that a lot of these women had to try and try and try and try again and really get comfortable with failure. I think that’s a hard thing sometimes like, when do you know when to give up and when do you know when to keep going for it? Did this book and all the women that you interview, Did you learn anything about how people can tell the difference? Because I think telling the difference is really important.

 

Shannon Watts  39:15

I think failure is not a sign that you should quit. It’s giving you feedback to learn how to win the next time. In fact, at Moms Demand Action – when you take on the the most powerful, wealthy special interest that’s ever existed, you don’t expect to win all the time. We knew we would lose, and we didn’t want to lose volunteers because we lost. So we reframed every loss as losing forward. What did I do this time when I lost to win the next time? Maybe you grew your chapter, maybe you have more relationships with lawmakers, whatever that was, we’re going to celebrate what was really a win. I think we can use that same information in our own lives. I tell the story of a woman in the book named Becca de Felice, she was one of a very few people who are Asian American and have run for a seat in the state house in Texas. She ran two times. She was a mom swimming action volunteer decided. She was one of those women who decided she would be better on the other side of the desk and she lost both times. She said that people felt such shame on her behalf, as if you know she should disappear and go away. What she did was to take the experience from losing those two races and become the executive directorof emerge in Texas. So now, she trains other women on how to run for office and win.

 

Reshma Saujani  40:41

Yeah, and how not to let it set you back.

 

Shannon Watts  40:44

Exactly.

 

Reshma Saujani  40:45

That’s so powerful. Let me ask you a question, how does being in midlife help us with our pursuit of pursuing the fire?

 

Shannon Watts  40:53

I don’t know about you, but I know who I am, finally.

 

Reshma Saujani  40:58

I do too.

 

Shannon Watts  40:58

I know all the good and the bad, and I’m not going to give up working on the bad, for sure. But I do know what my strengths and my weaknesses are. I feel later in life like I have the right to pursue the things that light me up. I just think it’s so important that we, as women think about the legacy we’re leaving. Anything we put our energy into is a legacy. Doesn’t mean you’ve started a philanthropy or yourname ison the side of the building. It just means that you left behind a life that was authentic to you, that you burned. That is such a good example.

 

Reshma Saujani  41:36

They didn’t spend enough time with their kids?

 

Reshma Saujani  41:36

Yeah.

 

Shannon Watts  41:36

We touched on this earlier. I interviewed, as I said, all these women and do you know what most motherssaid they were worried their deathbed regret would be?

 

Shannon Watts  41:47

That focusing on what they were passionate about would take time away from their kids. I don’t know how you feel about this, because your kids are younger, but I’m on the other side of that chasm. I can promise you, none of my kids say to me, “I can’t believe you didn’t go to that play in 2006. I can’t believe you missed that soccer game in 20 in 2008”. They all say, number one, “I’m so grateful you had something else to focus on besides my homework and my life”. Number two, “You set an example for me to follow my desires and to pursue what I want”.

 

Reshma Saujani  42:20

I think that’s right. Look, I think the thing about being a mom, which I’m so grateful for is my kids make me present, right? I’m so mastered the art of doing so many things at the same time. It’s funny, I did this commencement speech on on Sunday that I was been working on for months, it was a brave speech, and I finish it standing ovation, I feel good.ut Then it’s like I’m on to the next thing, right? We don’t take these moments often, sometimes to just celebrate and be in the moment. Where I am able to do that as my children, which is why I love my family and I love being with them, because I can just be in the moment of fun family tennis or making cookies together, or just telling me about why you don’t want to go to school dance, right? I can just be fully present. And I think motherhood allows me to do that.

 

Shannon Watts  43:16

Well, just wait till they’re teens.

 

Reshma Saujani  43:18

And they don’t want to ever talk to me after that?

 

Shannon Watts  43:20

Then you’ll really have all the freedom to pursue your desires.

 

Reshma Saujani  43:25

Yeah, I’m a little ways away from that not too far, but enough. Any final advice Shannon and what you would tell to women in pursuing their dream. What I love about this book, and I love about you and your story, is this idea that it’s never too late. I can’t tell you how many women I meet where they feel like, “I’ 50 and if I didn’t do the thing, it’s just too late”.

 

Shannon Watts  43:48

I hear them like all the time.

 

Reshma Saujani  43:50

You are just getting started.

 

Shannon Watts  43:52

Yes. There are people who have become doctors in their 50s, who have pursued all these amazing things that they always wanted to do and didn’t have time to do it so it is not too late. I also hear, “Why me? I don’t have a story to tell, or no one wants to listen to me, or I don’t have the abilities or skills”. None of that is true. It is all something we hear externally and that we have internalized and become our voice. I had someone say to me, “I would like to do these things. I just had a wish. I had a handbook to help me figure out how to get through it”. That’s exactly what this is. I think the most important advice I can give other women is to say “The size and the amount of fires that you are able to build is directly proportional to the amount of blowback you are willing and able to withstand. You are going to have to get comfortable making other people uncomfortable”. That doesn’t mean you’re going to get threats of death and sexual violence like I did, but it may mean someone in the pickup line makes a snarky comment about, “Oh, I saw you weren’t at softball practice”. Instead of taking that in as guilt or shame, realizing that the blowback is predictable and none of it is personal.

 

Reshma Saujani  45:06

Yes, and that allows you to choose what you want to do for you. When you’re talking, I was thinking about my kids, because I think the first blowback I get is, “Mommy, why are you going there? Do you have to go to the Beyonce concert tonight? Don’t you want to be with me?”. The first place where you’re navigating putting yourself first is often at home, and I find that, that is the hardest for us.

 

Shannon Watts  45:28

It is. I interviewed Aliza Pressman, who’s an amazing child psychologist for my book, because I wanted to talk about this, this trap that we fall into which we are obligated to be around our kids 24 hours a day. She is so clear to say, “This is a process and your children are going to leave. You have to be ready too, because the pressure you put on your kids when they think they’re your whole world, isn’t good for anyone. It causes so much suffering so start preparing now for what’s next”.

 

Reshma Saujani  46:00

Yeah. All right, well on that. Thank you so much. Everybody get her incredible book. It was such an awesome read, and I even feel as someone who lives by handbook like it taught me some things that I’m going to implement in my life. Thank you.

 

Shannon Watts  46:14

Thank you, Reshma.

 

Reshma Saujani  46:28

Shannon’s book is called Fired Up: How to Turn Your Spark Into a Flame and come alive at any age. As I said, I loved it and I highly recommend it. One last thing, thank you for listening to My So-Called Midlife. If you haven’t yet, now’s a great time to subscribe to Lemonada Premium. You’ll get bonus content, like more from me and Shannon talking about stepping away from organizations we’ve founded. Just hit the subscribe button on Apple podcast or for all other podcast apps. Head to lemonadapremium.com to subscribe. That’s lemonada premium dot com. Thanks. We’ll be back next week.

 

Reshma Saujani  47:08

I’m your host, Reshma Saujani. Our associate producer is Isara Acevez. Our senior producer is Chrissy Pease. This series is sound designed by Ivan Kurayev. Ivan also composed our theme music and performed it with Ryan Jewell and Karen Waltuck. Our VP of new content is Rachel Neel. Special thanks to our development team, Hoja Lopez, Jamela Zarha Williams and Alex McOwen. Executive Producers include me, Reshma Saujani, Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer. Series consulting and production support from Katie Cordova. Help others find our show by leaving a rating and writing a review. And let us know how you’re doing in midlife. You can submit your story to be included in this show at speakpipe.com/midlife. Follow My So-Called Midlife, wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon music with your prime membership. Thanks so much for listening. See you next week. Bye.