Famed activist, journalist, and feminist Gloria Steinem knows how to regroup after a loss. Just like the rest of us, she’s gearing up to live through a second Trump presidency.  At 94 years old, she’s here to remind us that our community – friends, family, chosen family – is our power and our medicine. Gloria talks about how her home has become a sanctuary, and why she opens it up to women of all different backgrounds to exchange stories and ideas. Plus, Reshma reflects on a tough year, she shares her New Year’s resolution and the goal-setting tradition she does with her husband.

Follow Gloria Steinem on Instagram @gloriasteinem

You can follow our host Reshma Saujani @reshmasaujani on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/reshmasaujani/?hl=en

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Gloria Steinem, Preethi Powell, Reshma Saujani

Preethi Powell  01:25

Legacy is not just about having your kids or what you accomplished in your career. Legacy is also the impact that you’ve been able to have in your community. I’m totally going through my midlife crisis, so I’ve been like thinking about these things, and so like, for me, when I think of legacy, and if tomorrow’s not guaranteed. What are people going to say for me what’s going to be important is I was able to touch someone’s life, and I don’t have kids. So it’s not just limited to my husband and my parents and my, you know, my family members, but it’s also, frankly, a lot of the women in my life, but also there are some amazing guys in my life too. So I’m Preethi Powell. I am in my mid 40s, and I work in the advertising tech industry during the pandemic. We moved to Florida. I’m originally, I was originally in the San Francisco Bay Area for the last like 15 years of my adult life, and I feel like I’ve had a little bit of depression being so far away, I need my community. I think that mid life, it’s like you enter into your 40s and 50s, and you’re almost like this forgotten about demographic. When you are not around each other and your responsibilities increase, you do sometimes feel a bit alone or detached from your community, and that’s why it’s such a focus for me this year in 2024 but going into 2025 so I do these 15 minute meetings with my friends. Whenever you get 15 minutes, just catch up with each other, you know, share the quick updates if there’s a particular topic and if that we haven’t been able to address, then we schedule time to connect again. It does come off a little bit business like but it has been so effective. And instead of delaying conversations because you’re like, oh my god, this is going to be an hour conversation if I call my friend now, you know that the expectation is met. And so then it’s easier to both people to commit to it. So by making these small, active efforts, I have found just happiness.

 

Reshma Saujani  03:31

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.

 

Reshma Saujani  03:43

Oh my God, I love this advice so much. Thank you. Breathe and all the mid lifers who have been part of this podcast community since it started in October, I am learning so much from you. We have literally collected like hundreds of voicemails for you guys, and I listen to them all the time, to just one sometimes not feel as alone, to feel like there’s somebody else that’s thinking exactly what I’m thinking, or to just be inspired by you. I love to hear about the things you’re doing that are just bringing you joy, like your college girls trip that you take every single year, or the fact that you’re taking Stand Up Comedy in your midlife because you just want to feel a little alive, or how excited you are that your best friend is finally leaving that asshole husband of hers. This is the community that I have always wanted, that I’ve always dreamed of building it’s why I started this show. And it’s working like when I listen to breathe the I know it’s working because this community made her and made me feel like I’m not the only one. And as I’m closing out 2024 I know I’ve been. Making a lot about what my friendships are gonna look like in 2025 and I think it’s like a really good New Year’s resolution, and it’s one that I’m making. I know somebody just feel tired right now. I’m sure you can hear this cold. You can hear it my voice, right? But I am taking that great advice from Preethi. We got to check in with our people. Because, you know what? Like, I know we all need a big lift right now. We’re all busy, and sometimes it just takes a quick how are you to just turn the day around? And with that, I am so excited to introduce today’s guest. She is a true legend in building community. Gloria Steinem has been fighting the good fight for longer than we’ve been alive. She’s a famed journalist, an organizer, an activist, and I knew she could offer us mid lifers some real good advice on how to stay connected to the people we love in 2025 so she doesn’t travel that much these days. So what she does is she opens up her home to groups of women I have been several times, and we come, we sit around a cozy living room, half of us on the floor, and we just talk and we share, and we sit in this circle and we share what’s on our mind, share what we’re afraid of, share what we’re excited about, and we make new friends, and we hold each other’s dreams. And I’ve been able, like I said, to be a part of this a couple of times now, and it’s just every time, it’s so powerful and just so beautiful, it makes me realize, like, this is what humans are meant to do or meant to come together with one another and break bread and be vulnerable. Gloria is here to help us look back at 2024 and help us think about how we can find more community in 2025.

 

Reshma Saujani  09:38

Hi, Gloria, how are you feeling post election?

 

Gloria Steinem  09:43

Well, what can I say? I did not intend to spend my adulthood looking at Donald Trump.

 

Reshma Saujani  09:51

Oh my, I don’t think any of us right. Intended to spend our adulthood looking at Donald Trump.

 

Gloria Steinem  09:57

I think we in New York, understood. And better, what a jerk he is, because we’ve been exposed to him for longer, right?

 

Reshma Saujani  10:06

Yeah, thank you, Gloria, so much for your time, and I’m so grateful, and I’m so excited and thrilled to be having this conversation with you.

 

Gloria Steinem  10:13

No, it’s great to see you.

 

Reshma Saujani  10:15

Okay, so Gloria, this show is about midlife, and as you know, midlife encompasses like a long range of years, so from 35 to 65 and I’m wondering, as someone who is kind of past this time in their life, what do you feel was like the most transformative thing that you learned about midlife?

 

Gloria Steinem  10:37

First, I didn’t even know the term midlife, so, so I was just living my life from day to day, and there were differences. Ms magazine was still part of my life. The MS Foundation was and now they’re off, independently, on their own, and also I probably realized that there were a whole population of women and also men who weren’t living in the way that when I was growing up, we were told we had to live, which was to get married, have children, you know, live in a in a particular way, that especially in Manhattan or in New York City in general, you could choose the way you wanted to live.

 

11:34

Right, you know, as you know, a lot of people are discouraged, you know, with the outcome of the election and what the next four years will bring. I saw the Broadway show sucks, and it really like changed my perspective as, you know, as someone who’s also been fighting for women and girls being like you know, it may not happen in my lifetime, but the fight is still worth fighting for. And every time I’m around you, you give us so much you have so much hope. You know you’ll be around all of us. We’re crying, you know, as devastated, like, what are we going to do? And and it’s like you have so much hope.

 

Gloria Steinem  12:13

Well, I, you know, because I have always been a freelancer and not employed in the traditional way, I probably have the luxury myself of being more equal, or at least not dictated to by employment policies somewhere. So I it’s not that I’m smarter, it’s just in a in a different situation. But also remember that hope is a form of planning. If we don’t hope for something different, we’ve given up already.

 

Reshma Saujani  12:50

That’s powerful, hope is a form of planning. Is that the pep talk you would say to our listeners, like, like, we need to hope in order to kind of plan?

 

Gloria Steinem  13:00

Yeah, but that may be, yes, I would certainly say that, but it might be a little amorphous, because we also need to ask each other, where would you like to be in five years, and how can I help? Or if you’re a groups that can help, or, you know, that’s what movements are for, to help each other.

 

Reshma Saujani  13:21

And how do you find the rest, though, because I must say, as someone who has been I led my first March when I was 13, so I’ve been like in the struggle for I’m 49 now, and the fight never ends, right? Because we haven’t achieved what we want to achieve yet. And I’m I do a bad job of resting. So how do you rest?

 

Gloria Steinem  13:45

Well, you need to understand that to preserve yourself as an asset to the movement. You need to take care of your health. You need to go to movies, listen to music, see your friends, whatever it is that re energizes you.

 

14:05

I think that’s one of the biggest lessons. I feel like I’ve learned from you, and then speaking to you over the years, is this idea that the idea of fun, right? Because I think if you’re constantly feeling like activism or fighting or progress, is just a slog, and it’s exhausting and it just beats you down, then it’s hard to stay in it. But your approach of it being fun and inspiring, I think it’s just, it’s so important.

 

Gloria Steinem  14:32

Well, that was the approach of the civil rights movement, and is the approach of the civil rights movement. It’s, I mean, think of all the art forms and jokes and songs and you know that come out of movements. It’s movements aren’t just against, they’re also for you are a natural resource for the movement, and we need to take care of you, and you need to take care of yourself.

 

Reshma Saujani  15:06

What do you do to take care of you, Gloria?

 

Gloria Steinem  15:10

Well, let’s see. I mean, in my way, you know, because I don’t have children, I’m responsible for. So I only have to survive economically myself. I watch anything with a narrative is very seductive story. In my case, since I wanted to dance my way out of Toledo into the hearts of America shows like Dance Moms.

 

Reshma Saujani  15:45

I love that show. It’s so good.

 

Gloria Steinem  15:47

Yeah, are kind of rejuvenating. But I think it’s mainly remembering that we’re communal animals, and we can’t exist for long alone, making sure that we meet with friends who, however different we may be, have similar hopes.

 

Reshma Saujani  16:09

Can I ask you, do you have any new year’s rituals that you do to reset or it’s like I always do, I kind of do an assessment of what happened the year before, write down kind of how close or far I got and then set new goals, and my husband and I exchanged them. Do you have anything like that?

 

Gloria Steinem  16:24

No, I wish I did. I think that sounds very enlightened and wonderful. I mean, in my life, New Year’s Eve was, in the first instance, just a time to worry about having a date.

 

Reshma Saujani  16:41

And now it’s still probably worrying about having a date.

 

Gloria Steinem  16:45

Yeah, I don’t it’s not a it. For whatever reason, I didn’t catch the tradition of using New Year’s as a marker.

 

16:57

You know, one of the things that I loved about the last time we were together was this idea of, like, what your home represents. I’ve been there a couple of times, and been there in this circle of women at different moments, helping one another, talking about, when I’m coming back on Monday, what is your home as a sanctuary meant for you?

 

Gloria Steinem  17:20

Well, it’s been very important to me, because I was my generation of women rarely had such a sanctuary on their own. Mostly it was dependent on husbands and children. And I mean, Virginia wasn’t a Virginia Woolf who wrote A Room of One’s Own. I mean, it’s always been very important to have some space that belonged to us, and that’s more common now.

 

Reshma Saujani  17:54

Can you tell the story about the circle and what the circle means?

 

Gloria Steinem  17:59

Well, first of all, the circle means that we are equally connected, unlike a hierarchical structure. So it’s it’s very important and transformative just to sit in a circle, as opposed to at a boardroom table. That spells hierarchy. It it’s, I believe, you know, on this continent and Native American culture always been the way of organizing. I remember a circle in my living room where you were, where Wilma Mankiller, who was chief of the Cherokee Nation, came to visit. And we, of course, thought we had somewhat invented a talking circle. And she listened to us for a while and said, well, when we have our talking circles, we have a feather that we pass from one person to the next. So you know, when you have the power to speak. I mean, we’ve reinvented the ancient.

 

Reshma Saujani  19:06

It’s so powerful, and there’s something about this circle I know, as I’ve been there in your home, that just I’ve seen people cry, I’ve seen people share like their deepest vulnerabilities. I’ve seen ideas being transformed so.

 

Gloria Steinem  19:19

Yes, I mean, we are communal animals. There’s a reason why, universally around the world, solitary confinement is the biggest punishment. You know, we are communal. We need each other.

 

19:33

And maybe as an inspiration for all of our listeners, as we’re going into 2025 that we can create our own community circles, maybe that’s the hope.

 

Gloria Steinem  21:18

Yes, absolutely, and you know, it doesn’t have to be scientific. You can just ask who people who are interested, and some will stay and some won’t. And you know, just let it happen honestly, with spontaneity.

 

22:16

You’ve been really open about having an abortion at a young age, and you’ve always, I think, said you’d known that you didn’t want to have kids. Tell me more about that decision.

 

Gloria Steinem  22:45

I never said to myself, hello, I’m not going to have kids. I just realized that at that particular time I was living in London, I was on my way to India, where I stayed for two years. I could not and did not want to have children, but it wasn’t a final decision, and I think life is not one big decision. It’s like a series of understandings.

 

Reshma Saujani  23:15

What did you think about as you got older, becoming a mother?

 

Gloria Steinem  23:19

I have come to understand that probably because I was a child looking after my mother who wasn’t well, that I got a vision of caregiving that was off putting and also not realistic. I mean, I was a child looking after a grown up, but that I’m sure had a big influence. I’ve never regretted it, not for a moment.

 

Reshma Saujani  23:48

You had said once that you didn’t get married when you were young, because the culture, I’m quoting, the culture, then said once you got married, that was the last choice you could make. Then after that, your husband’s career or your children’s needs really dictated your life. And I think a lot of women are still fighting this notion. And I know that you believe that the lack of democracy begins in the family, that this idea that women should be at home, you know, doing the caretaking, I think we saw kind of the culture of that perception of traditional motherhood really play out also in this election. Do you have any more like, how have you seen this idea about the role of women, whether it’s in marriage, you, I mean, play out throughout the years as we’ve been fighting for equality?

 

Gloria Steinem  24:38

Well, I think we’ve realized more and more there is no role. There’s an individual, unique human being who may have shared vulnerabilities, because there is more violence against women than there is against men, at least in sexual. Violence. But that does not mean that we are a group and we share our humanity. Hopefully, we share empathy with each other, democracy, we have all those hopes, but each person is also unique.

 

Reshma Saujani  25:24

One of the things that, as you know, I’m working on at moms first is really about getting affordable childcare and universal childcare. Do you remember the story, kind of 50 years ago, about the first fight for childcare? And is there anything you can share about that moment that you remember?

 

Gloria Steinem  25:42

You know, I experienced it mainly as a reporter. We had started New York Magazine, and there was a pioneering first early child care center near my house in Manhattan. So I went to write about it. It was run by Dorothy Pittman Hughes, who became my dear friend and speaking partner. And it became more evident to me that we were not a very well developed country because we behaved as if children were born in kindergarten or in first grade or whatever. And it you know, being with her and speaking and wandering around the country educated me, sometimes very simple things. Mean, I, individually or we together, would be addressing a large audience, and a woman with a baby would start to leave because the baby was crying, and we would just say, please don’t leave. You know, a baby crying is a wonderful sound. It’s something, yes, universal and human. You should not have to leave. And that turned out to be the one of the most welcome and revolutionary things we had to say, never mind equal pay.

 

Reshma Saujani  27:13

So true. It’s so true. And how, how do women react when you said that? When you said, no you don’t have to leave the room. You don’t you can, like, be here in your full self, did they stay?

 

Gloria Steinem  27:26

Oh, yes oh, absolutely. People would applaud and go and and a couple of male reporters wrote about it because they found it a relief, too. I mean, it’s such a simple thing, right?

 

Reshma Saujani  27:38

You know, one of the things Laura, I’ve been thinking about is I’ve built Girls Who Code, and the work we’re doing now on childcare, I I’ve built so much community and solidarity with women, but I haven’t organized as much as maybe I should have, or we should with men. What do you think about that? What is the role of men as our as being part of our sisterhood, or community of kind of fighting for the rights that are still left for us to fight for in this moment.

 

Gloria Steinem  28:06

Well, men need to fight for their own revolution, you know, which means the right to be parents, often gay male couples may be more engaged in this fight. It depends what people’s situation is, but men, of course, have the right to be equal parents, and, as in other cultures, take paternity leave when a new baby is born, so they also can be home. There was not an immaculate conception. I mean, there are two parents.

 

Reshma Saujani  28:43

It’s so true, and it is a lot of men I talk to, especially about paid leave, feel like they’re gas lit, you know, I mean, from their bosses at work, when they say that they want to take time off. So there really is this.

 

Gloria Steinem  28:54

Yeah, so they need to organize. I mean, you know, we’ll help, yeah? But they, they need to speak out for their own rights.

 

Reshma Saujani  29:02

Yeah, it absolutely begins with them. I did want to ask you that, as we were organizing, as women were organizing in the 60s and 70s, what were the conversations around paid leave and affordable childcare?

 

Gloria Steinem  29:15

We certainly were calling for childcare centers and individual groups of women, depending on who their employer was, you know, were also talking about realistic leaves for both women and men, that men also needed to be home when a New Baby arrived. And there have been better national examples in Scandinavian countries. That’s, for instance.

 

Reshma Saujani  29:46

That’s right, there’s a, in fact, in some Scandinavian countries, they’re, they’re pretty much at equality in terms of the gender ratio of both men and women doing the cognitive labor, right? And so there’s, I think there’s a lot of bright. Spots for progress. Well, Gloria, thank you so much. You are just an inspiration to so many of us. And just, I think, especially in times, I think your life, your legacy, the fights that you’ve been fighting, the community that you’ve created, the hope you know, is just an inspiration. So thank you.

 

Gloria Steinem  30:19

No, well, thank you. And I just want to say this is nothing like a sacrifice. It’s fun. It’s infinitely engaging.

 

Reshma Saujani  30:29

Well, with that, I really appreciate you and appreciate your time, Gloria.

 

Gloria Steinem  30:33

No, thank you, and it’s fun to see you, even in our limited way here.

 

Reshma Saujani  30:37

Yes, and I’ll see you in a few days. Thank you.

 

Gloria Steinem  30:40

Okay, thank you.

 

Reshma Saujani 30:54

Gloria Steinem is an activist, a journalist and a well known feminist. Her work and wisdom have provided me with so much comfort. As I head into the new year, we’re taking a break over the holidays, we’ll have new episodes of My So Called Midlife in January. Happy New Year midlife first. I can’t wait to see what 2025 has in store for us.

 

CREDITS  31:28

There’s more of My So Called Midlife with Lemonada Premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content, like midlife advice that didn’t make it into the show. Subscribe now in Apple podcast, I’m your host, Reshma Saujani, our producer is Claire Jones. This series is sound designed by Ivan Kuraev. Our theme was composed by Ivan Kuraev, and performed by Ryan Jewell, Ivan Kuraev and Karen […]. Additional music by APM music. Our senior supervising producer is Kristen Lepore. Our VP of new content is Rachel Neel. 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 us 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 the show at speakpipe.com/midlife. Follow My So Called Midlife, wherever you get your podcast, or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership, thanks for listening. See you next week, bye.