Podcast: Unveiling the Layers
I appeared on the HAI podcast, talking about how the Barbie movie touched me deeply - and lit a fire in me to start the process which led to the Death Knell of the Patriarchy show. You can listen to it below, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts: Search for Human Awareness and Marci Graham. The episode is called Unveiling the Layers.
Full episode transcript
[00:00:00] Haje Kamps: Hello, and welcome back to Human Awareness. I am joined today with one of my favorite humans, and I'm so excited to have Marci on the podcast today. I've known Marci for a hot minute now, I think. You were actually there for one of my first, uh, HAI workshops, I think, and there's been a lot of evolution since then.
We've had you on the podcast once before and I really wanted to invite you back would you mind starting by telling us your name, your pronouns, and where in the world you are please?
[00:00:31] Marci Graham: I would love to. My name is Marci Graham, and my pronouns are she, her, and I live in a little town , called Lakeport. It's a tiny town in,, California, and I get to look down over Clear Lake every day and see the horizon. It's , quite magical to live
[00:00:47] Haje Kamps: sounds beautiful.
[00:00:49] Marci Graham: Yeah, it is.
[00:00:50] Haje Kamps: So I imagine many of our listeners know you as a HAI facilitator. Um, but , the reason I wanted to invite you on the podcast today is, you've been writing some really impassioned things on Facebook recently after a trip to the movies. Um, tell us what happened there. What, what, what happened for you?
[00:01:10] Marci Graham: Oh, Haje, I, I had heard just a little bit about go to the Barbie movie and part of me was like, I can't imagine what that's going to be like, and happened to be alone one weekend and I just took myself to the Barbie movie and I sat in the theater going, this is familiar to me, but it's all dressed up and pink and silly plastic and little tiny feet.
And Jason was my partner, who's also a HAI facilitator, came home and I said, , we need to go to that again. So I went again, and then I went a third time. And each time I went, I got I'm going to use the word incensed. I just started getting angry and it was really unexpected, to tell you the truth. I had no idea that it would affect me that way.
And I put my first little, um, I'm going to pause. I tend to diminish myself by saying my little, my little, uh, piece on Facebook.
And this is one of the things about the patriarchy that I'm watching. So, um, I just put out, go see this movie. You know, there's a lot to it. And what really triggered me was people's responses because there was a lot of responses like, Oh, I don't want to see a movie about a doll.
And I found myself answering people, um, in an even more fiery way than I have experienced myself in the past.
[00:02:40] Haje Kamps: I remember both my sister and I playing with Barbie dolls, and I remember the general criticism being like, look, these are completely unreasonable beauty standards. And so when I heard there was going to be a Barbie movie, I was like, Oh, God, this is not going to be good.
And then I saw who directed it and who was in it. And I was like, Oh, wait a minute, this could actually be interesting. . What was the thing that made you go? , I imagine you had a similar impression of the Barbie franchise as I did.
[00:03:07] Marci Graham: That's, that's true. I will tell you that the Barbie doll came out when I was seven years old, and I remember wanting it really badly for no particular reason that I understood at seven. And, um, I think I had just read some little thing that said, the, the Oppenheimer movie came out at the same time, these are two must sees.
And I never actually got to the Oppenheimer movie, but I did go to the Barbie movie and, um, you know, part of, part of my world is about dealing, dealing with, I don't know if I like that word very well, but being present to people that have had consent problems in the world and being able to find a way to talk to them and then also to hear with them.
Um, the person that did this inappropriate thing to them and time after time having people not be willing to be accountable. And so that's woven into , what's, what is this thing that the Barbie movie is presenting? And I'm trying to unravel it still in my mind, but it's just produced so much, awareness, actually.
It's changed my awareness. Deeply, and I thought I already was aware. That's the thing that's really interesting is like, well, I thought I understood this dynamic and I understand it better every day, every single
[00:04:30] Haje Kamps: And so this is a movie that wraps an important concept in bubblegum pink. How did that speak to you?
[00:04:36] Marci Graham: I felt like what Greta was doing was trying to make it palpable for people that wouldn't necessarily think they wanted to see a movie.
I don't think a lot of people go, Oh, I want to go see a movie about the patriarchy because first of all, they get defensive or they get pissed off or whatever. And so I think she's I don't know her at all, I've only read a little bit about her, but it was an extraordinary idea to put this pink bubblegum plastic world over this concept in a way that , maybe, just maybe other people could see it that wouldn't necessarily even consider it.
I think it was a way to look at, have people look at themselves. It was brilliant. Just brilliant.
[00:05:20] Haje Kamps: And so do you feel like this actually made it like more accessible to people?
[00:05:24] Marci Graham: Number one is it was more accessible to people. Um, and I think the, playfulness of it did something also, and watching the different, each time I watched it, I watched their faces and these little subtle things that were in there that you really had to pay attention for, to, to grasp, I think it highlighted some silly things that we humans do that we aren't even aware are the, this under bubbling thing about the patriarchy.
It's a weird thing to say it that way, um,
because I think the patriarchy went underground, and there's a moment in the movie when Ken's wanting a job, and he goes to this big high rise, and there's a group of men standing in the lobby, and the obligatory female standing off to the side with a cup of coffee or something for them, and he wants a job, and the guy says, No, you know, I can't, I don't, I don't have a job for you.
And Ken blatantly just out loud says, I thought you were doing the patriarchy here, meaning you would just hire me because I'm a man, right? And the guy kind of takes a breath and puts his head down,
I'll take a high level, high paying job with influence, please. Okay, you'll need at least an MBA, and a lot of our people have PhDs. Isn't being a man enough? Actually, right now, it's kind of the opposite. You guys are clearly not doing patriarchy very well. No, no, we're, uh, we're doing it well. Yeah, we just, uh, hide it better now.
And that's what I think was, that was a powerful moment to go, Oh, everybody's aware it's still happening.
but we're doing it quietly so nobody can point the finger at us and get pissed off at us, you know, as corporations or companies. So, moments like that. There were others, but that's the one that stands out to like, okay, people, are you paying attention?
[00:07:23] Haje Kamps: And why is this something that is important to you? Why does this make your blood boil?
[00:07:32] Marci Graham: Very big question, Haje. Um, I will say that my life has had tons of patriarchy piled on top of me. I was in a marriage for 24 years that was just stereotypically that dynamic. The guy did this and I did that. Um, there's, I have really worked on this. And what's true is that the remnants of it have never gone away from me.
You know, the remnants of being put down, of being minimized, of being diminished, of being ridiculed, even. Um, it's painful to go in there, and I keep going in there, going, What? gonna say, what the fuck was I thinking? But what I didn't... I didn't know. I didn't actually know. I had no understanding that I could put my, uh, experiences under that label.
So when, when the label started to point out to me, oh, this is patriarchy, that's patriarchy, all of a sudden my, my own narrative became much clearer. Like, oh, that's what was going on. And I didn't have a name for it. I didn't make it. It didn't make it easier, um, it made it easier to understand, but it didn't fix the problems.
[00:08:54] Haje Kamps: So, what I'm hearing from you is that you're observing all these things out in the world that are different than they ought to be, harder than they ought to be, and at some point you're like, wait a minute, there's one word that covers all of those things.
[00:09:06] Marci Graham: Yes, that's exactly, it's everywhere. I cannot... I can hardly find anything that hasn't been touched or, or completely smushed into what that dynamic is in the world. I've just read, just an hour ago, an astonishing article in Scientific American, about the myth of man as the hunter is wrong. I'm like, what?
You know, a whole other place. Okay, now history is going to get rewritten because the scientists are saying that's not actually so. And it was another way to make sure that the male bodied people are superior to the female bodied people.
[00:09:50] Haje Kamps: And how is that showing up for you most vividly right now out in the world or in your life?
[00:09:56] Marci Graham: Well, I have to say that my day to day life is not, the dynamics in my world are not You know, I'm not having upsets with the people that I live with and are in my family. That's not the case. It's most partly the work I was talking about before of being with people that have had inappropriate things occur and um, it makes me super extremely sad. It's heartbreaking to me that even little tiny things are so painful. So, so I'm, I'm hearing people and the, the complaint isn't. necessarily egregious. You know, it's, it's much smaller than they would have been 10 or 20 years ago, but the response is 10 times as big. And so I work at getting underneath what, what is that that's so painful underneath there?
And a lot of it has to do with this insidious, these little Things that happen, and they are insidious, that people can't identify as harming them. You know, they don't, in and of themselves, like, oh, that's a fairly normal way to speak in the world. And then they start piling up. It's just, start piling up.
[00:11:13] Haje Kamps: Without breaking confidence, obviously. Could you bring that to life for me? I'm trying to kind of visualize what that looks like in practice.
[00:11:20] Marci Graham: Let's say that someone, , was in a hug, and , the hand of the, one of the people went below the waist in a way that felt invasive to the person. The, the person doing that may say, well, I didn't mean to, you know, there's a lot of excuses and not intention. But the person who received that, we don't know if there was trauma ahead of that.
We don't know what their history is, and something about that just made them feel unsafe in the world. And there's a lot of people that feel unsafe in the world right now for You know, thousands of reasons. And so then, to pull that apart with the person that felt unsafe, what's under that, what's, you know, do you want to talk about why that felt unsafe?
But this is the part that is most heartbreaking for me to witness, is the person to me, say, and I say, Let's go talk to the person that did this, and the person that put their hands in a place that they weren't welcome, can't be accountable. They want to rather say, well I didn't mean to, or it was just a little thing, that shouldn't have hurt you.
Instead of saying, wow, that hurt you and I'm sorry. be done with it from that perspective. I have had my personal experience of that, of something hurt me and I wanted, I just wanted him to say, I'm sorry that hurt you.
Instead I got, it wasn't my intention, blah, blah, blah, all of this stuff. And even while I coached them to, Can you say it this way? I don't want to hear that. And I was being really good in my communication. I was not attacking. And when they finally got to, I'm really sorry, Mercy. I get that that hurt you.
I burst into tears, Haje. It's so powerful to me. Yeah, it's right, it's right here. The emotion is, Women especially don't feel validated for their feelings.
They just haven't gotten that in the world because it's really scary to say I did something wrong. Doesn't even matter what gender we are. It's just scary to say I, I hurt you because we're more afraid of some punishment or , some consequences we don't want. And so when it's just clear, I'm so sorry that hurt you.
I've witnessed this. Dozens of times of the women finally going, the relief just rolls off of them like, like boulders and they, and they're complete. I had one person come to me as something they'd been carrying for 16 years. It was a comment. It was a single comment.
And by listening to them and saying, I'm so sorry, which wasn't even mine to do. I mean, it wasn't my thing that I did. And they wrote me the next day and said, I had no idea I feel so much lighter. 16 years. That makes me nuts. That makes me crazy.
[00:14:24] Haje Kamps: That's really helpful. Thank you. And when you tie this to the patriarchy, does, does that feel like, um, there's this sense of entitlement or this complete unawareness that that isn't even, like it doesn't even appear on people's radars? Is that what's happening?
[00:14:41] Marci Graham: I think it's both, but I think that, I think that I'm going to use the word cluelessness, but just that it's, I'm a good person, I'm nice, I, I, I connect with people, you know, I want to hug them, I want to share with them, and then they say these little things that are diminishing or minimizing someone. There are those in the world that are all about more money, more entitlement, more power. We know who those, we don't even have to say their names. But, um, the everyday patriarchy is teeny. It's actually teeny. And if you only had one of those a year, you wouldn't notice. But when you have 20 of them a day, All of a sudden, what I witness is like this piling on of something, something like, you know, someone explains something to you after you already know it, or they tell you to smile when you don't, when you're not wanting to smile, or they, they silence themselves, or their response is, uh, or the, you know, um, they get, you get interrupted. Women get interrupted something like four times as much every minute as men. And what I witnessed in myself and others is that just like. And then they're piling on each other, and then all of a sudden one day you're like, I don't want to listen to this person anymore. I don't feel affectionate to this person anymore.
I'm pulling away. I'm becoming more insular and, and just staying in my own self because I don't even want to say anything that'll give me another one of those, I call them little flares. They're like little flares. And so, and then the person doesn't even know that, that that's the patriarchy working on them.
They don't know it, but they know something is feeling shitty, you know, it doesn't feel good anymore. And, and the same with the person doing that, the interrupting. It's just that that has become what we're fluent in.
[00:16:44] Haje Kamps: That's the language of the world. And until we, until we decide we have to take it apart and let it change. And that means we have to call out ourselves and call out others when we, when we do it. I'm, you know, I, I feel one of my little ways of doing it is I stop talking if something hurts me. And I need to step up in myself and go, wait a second, I'm noticing that that hurt. And I don't want to be compliant. Or when I minimize myself like I did at the beginning of saying my little, my little pieces.
It was really beautiful, both to hear you do it and then to catch yourself. Um, I feel like this is part of your practice, that this has become a practice, right? And I think the, um, the kind of cultural norm that women don't get to take up space. or are trying not to take up space, is one instance of exactly what we're talking about so many ways that systems are built to sustain themselves.
[00:17:48] Haje Kamps: And I think that is something that is, it's pervasive, and... Almost invisible, unless you're willing to start looking. And so when you're having a conversation with someone about that, like, hey, I keep seeing this thing, and they haven't seen that thing, you know, it's crazy making.
[00:18:03] Marci Graham: That's absolutely true. There's, there's, uh, I watch myself minimize myself. And I, I don't feel like I show up as a minimized person in the world. I don't. But there's these little things, and I recently read, uh, Carol Gilligan's book, Why Does Patriarchy Persist?
And she calls it a ghost. She calls it, the patriarchy itself, a ghost. It's a framework. And it's not spoken about anymore, you know, early in the 60s and 70s. It was out there. We were, you know, people were protesting and making a big thing about it. And then something happened and it went underground. And when I think of a ghost, I think of, you know, these tendrils and they swoop around.
Invisible, and they wind themselves into people's heads and hearts and bodies, and we don't stand up for ourselves. We don't, we don't say the thing that we need to say. And one of the words that Carol uses is, women are trained not to protest, not to say, No, I didn't like that. I don't want to go there. We just go, what's better for you, honey?
Which makes me go, bleh! Like, what's, what do you want? I did that for years and years and years. Don't do it anymore. Put myself in the back burner. All the time. All the time.
[00:19:25] Haje Kamps: and to me, it feels like that intersects with gender roles in a way that it's really challenging,
[00:19:33] Marci Graham: of the things I haven't been able to figure out or locate is any, like, when, when was that moment? When was that, a million years ago, or thousands of years ago, when all of a sudden it became clear that the men were in charge of everything and the women were not?
Certainly, there were matriarchal cultures, and there still are. Lots of the indigenous people in this country were matriarchal cultures, and, um, Somewhere, I, I, I wish I knew what that moment was, and now reading this article this morning that women hunted just as much as men did, it's like, well, it wasn't then, you know, maybe there was equality then, I don't know,
and, you know, the moment in the Barbie movie was, you know, Ken's day was made if he got noticed by Barbie.
[00:20:28] Haje Kamps: I think for me, the way the movie spoke so loudly was that it, it turns. The preconceived notions on its head, right? So in Barbie land, like the Barbies have all the power. And it is in theory a matriarchy and yet it is so deeply internalized that they don't have the power that they're almost self sabotaging all the way through the film until at the end they go, wait a minute, what are we doing?
When they go outside of Barbieland and kind of go into the real world where it's like, I don't want to use the word normal, but the way we are more experienced with the world, it becomes such a stark contrast that when they go back, you're like, oh yeah, wait a minute. This isn't even all that exaggerated. This is really, like when, when you see it the other way around, it feels extremely jarring. It's like, oh, that's, that should tell us something.
[00:21:20] Marci Graham: Those moments when they, when Barbie was on, you know, Venice Beach skating and suddenly she was being gawked at and, you know, you could just imagine somebody grabbing her butt or something and, and on the other side, Ken was like, Oh, I'm important here. Whoa, isn't that just the coolest thing?
And it was stark. But then the moment, the other moment I loved was when she saw the billboard with all the Miss Americas on
[00:21:48] Audio clip from the Barbie Movie: Oh, look! The Supreme Court! They're so smart. Yeah.
[00:21:56] Marci Graham: And she thought that was the Supreme Court, because that was the Supreme Court in Barbieland, and you're right, it's very unreal. Barbieland is very unreal, and yet everybody, you know, they made them look happy and prosperous and delighted with their lives. That's not really real either.
[00:22:16] Haje Kamps: So what do we do?
[00:22:17] Marci Graham: what do we do? Well, we have to, we have to speak up when we feel it. And in order to feel it, we have to pay really deep attention to ourselves. And that's not what everybody wants. I have had women say to me, I don't want to, I don't want to talk to you about this. You scare me. Um, which is like, wow, it's hard work, actually.
Not to see yourself being compliant, being okay with being interrupted, being minimized, but then you have to somewhere find the courage to say it out loud. And what I've noticed, Haje, is that a lot of people, when they protest, I'm going to say, women that are so disgusted and so absolutely furious. They end up, I don't want this to sound horrible, but they end up , speaking in a way that can't be heard. People are going to go, Oh, that's too much for me. And, and then so the other side of that is so, you mean I can't be emotional when I speak?
I can't raise my voice and be listened to? So there's this finding this courage. It's just raw courage to figure out how to say things that don't cause people to... To want to run away, or to be afraid of you, so that it can go in, and, you know, the other thing I do, uh, is teach these communication courses, and it just gets more and more and more nuanced, and I just see the tiniest little thing can turn someone off, or open their, open them up, and we never know, because we don't know We don't know who we're talking into, actually, because, you know, it's not all written on their face.
We can't see it all. And saying something to one person is like, oh yeah, I get that. And another person is like, how dare you? How dare you talk to me like that?
[00:24:13] Haje Kamps: The scary thing to me, hearing you say that, is that even in your speaking up, there is caretaking you know, of those. And I think that's where we get this really interesting fracture between what the image of what a masculine person should be and how fragile male egos can be. And it's almost like I say something inappropriate, you say, like, I want to call you in.
That wasn't... That wasn't, like, we don't do that. I get defensive, and, like, there's almost a cultural stereotype that at that point I shout or I become violent.
[00:24:52] Marci Graham: huh.
[00:24:53] Haje Kamps: do neither of those things, personally. And, it's like, oh, like, if I did, it's like, oh, that is okay. Because everybody around me goes, yeah, that's what men do. And I think that's where it gets really insidious for me, in that somehow, that is so internalized.
[00:25:10] Marci Graham: You're right. I, I wish I had some really big shiny answer. I don't, I don't, I don't have answers. I have a lot of questions and I I've said, I've written this. I'm like, I don't pretend to know how we're going to get out of this. But I, it's emotional for me. I feel my emotion rising just to say it because it's so, I see so much pain in the world that it's not necessary.
It's just not necessary. So sometimes I think, you know, we have this culture of yeah. reporting something that didn't work. What we don't seem to see is someone coming up saying to me, you know, I think I hurt that person. Can you help me unravel? Can you, can you go with me so that I can apologize in a way that works? It's so hard for people to say, I think I did, I think I did that.
It's way out of balance that There's more complaints rather than admissions, I guess I'll call them admissions. And if we could all just settle into that we're all just human beings really trying really hard to just be kind. I mean,
Renee Brown says we're wired for connection. We are wired for connection. That's what we want. We want to be loved. We want to be seen. We want to be held and taken care of when we need it. And we want to do the reverse for anybody. Uh, we want to give and receive. And so often, these, these things get, these players get in the way that we start to pull back.
And then we, nobody has anything that they want. Nobody's feeling validated in the world. And I just, Know that right now I'm just continuing to say what's going on, what's going on in me, I can't do much more than what's going on in me and talk about it and talk about it in a way that I don't want to hurt people, you know, I don't want to attack, I don't want to have people move away because I'm too scary because I'm saying things they don't want to hear, but that's what I know to do right now. know, Part of me is like, who, who is this Marci right now? I don't even know her, um, been around a long time now, and
I feel like, I feel like it's something beyond me that's asking me to speak, actually. It's, there's something that's nudging me that it's when I write. It feels like I'm taking dictation. It's not something I study and make outlines for and do footnotes. It's just like, whoa, this is just roaring out of my heart.
And I, well, I've been writing for 25 years, you know, and I, and I, and I believe that when it comes out, that it has this. It wants to be heard by at least one other person, if not several, or dozens. I think sometimes asking questions is way better than having answers, actually. People have their own answers, and in the communication courses, we just say, just listen, just listen, keep listening. People will find their way. You know, they'll find their own answers usually. And I watched it, actually last night we had a session and I watched this arc.
This person was really upset and crying and emoting and it was just wrenching their heart. And the person just kept listening and I kept listening. That sounds really hard or whatever. And then it peaked. And then right on the, it just was this most beautiful arc, and then on the other side, Oh, I can do this.
Oh, I can do, I can look at it from this way. Oh, maybe I'm not noticing this part of me that gets triggered. It was stunningly beautiful. And well, I know that nobody listens deep enough in our culture. We just don't. The things that are wrong with communication is that we're thinking when we're listening about how to reply.
[00:29:09] Haje Kamps: mm
[00:29:09] Marci Graham: And I've, and I've sort of just narrowed it down. Most people listen to respond instead of understand. And if we listened just to understand, the world would be different. It would be different, because people are craving to be heard, and like, oh, that was your experience.
Wow. I, and I, I, I have two values that I believe lead my life, and the first one is being in inquiry. And inquiry has nothing to do with having answers, you know. It's just not. I don't have answers. But I do want to go inside myself and be inside others with, what, what do you think? What do you think that is?
Why do you think that's true? And when we have the space to be heard about that, sometimes that changes the trajectory of our life, just by recognizing that, oh, that was that thing that happened when I was a teenager that made me think that. But I'm not that person now. I'm not that. I'm something beyond that.
[00:30:12] Haje Kamps: Yeah. I am curious what you do when I guess what I'm trying to say is that a fish doesn't know it's in the ocean, right? That it's just the ocean. when, occasionally when I talk to people and I call out something they say or do,
it is so hard to get through because they have no idea what I'm talking about. Like you can call something out, but then when there's like, no, do you know what I'm saying? It's kind of hard to find the words. Yeah. Like those, like, I feel like if you and me go into a conversation together, you know, we've both done communication training.
We've both done HAI. You've done a lot more of it than I have. Um, I feel like there's a pretty good chance that I will be heard, that you are leading with curiosity. That is not how most of the world works in my experience. And some of the most egregious, uh, instantiations of the patriarchy are brought forth by people who have the most to gain and the most to lose from the patriarchy going away. you know, they're sitting on their little patriarchy booster seat. I have no idea how to nudge somebody awake. I, That's where I get so horribly stuck. It's like, okay, to have this conversation, I need you to commit to doing a couple of hours of research, and for us to have a real heart open conversation about this. Like, I very rarely have that level of influence over someone.
[00:31:39] Marci Graham: Well, I don't think very many of us have that much influence over anybody, actually. I noticed that when I want to share with someone that something that they, I perceive that they did that hurt me, if I only talk about my feelings and I completely subtract the word Y O U, you, out, I have a better chance of making a little bit of headway.
It's like... You know, instead of saying, what you just said really hurt me, that was blah, blah, blah. Say, I just noticed that the words that I just heard landed in a, in a tender place in me and I'm feeling, feeling really sad right now. And this is not the way most people talk. In fact, it's, it's a tiny little percentage.
[00:32:28] Haje Kamps: Right.
[00:32:29] Marci Graham: But I do get a response from that then that they listen. I think we get in trouble when we want to be somebody's teacher, um, unless they ask us for advice or ask us to help them understand something. Um, it takes a lot of, it takes, it takes, A lot of thought to actually, it's like a whole new language. You know, like, how do I, how do I say this so that somebody's not defensive?
So if I'm in and upset with someone, I go really slow. And I'm like, hang on a minute, I want to get this right. And I try that. Um, but out in the world, when somebody's like in your face, like all of a sudden, you know, the knee jerk thing is... You're being an asshole, or whatever it is, and it's kind of, you know, I never really thought of it this way, it's like, how do I, how do I be peace, or be love, like we talk in HAI?
How do I be love in the face of something that is really painful, and really insulting, or really inappropriate? And it takes enormous, self regulation to go, hang on a minute here, I don't, my value is not to attack, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna feel into if I can say anything at all that will be useful. It doesn't change the world very fast, you know?
[00:33:46] Haje Kamps: Very few things do.
[00:33:48] Marci Graham: that's true, it's very true. I mean, all we have to do is look around us and see. Horrible communication everywhere, you know, and, and death and dying and war because of it. And, you know, I'm not going to go down that path, but, uh,
[00:34:04] Haje Kamps: yeah.
[00:34:05] Marci Graham: So,
[00:34:06] Haje Kamps: I hear that.
[00:34:08] Marci Graham: yeah,
[00:34:08] Haje Kamps: I'm curious, is there anything about this that's giving you hope? Do you see progress anywhere?
[00:34:12] Marci Graham: that's a beautiful question. Um, ,
[00:34:14] Haje Kamps: depends on the answer, I suppose.
[00:34:17] Marci Graham: In this book, the Carol Gilligan book, she says there's the hope of anger. And that landed for me, like, so, sometimes I, I don't even think there is such a thing as hope, because I think it either is or it isn't, sometimes we put all our, you know, all of our, what, eggs in one basket, and, and hope is, you know, it's amorphous, but the anger of hope means I can be angry, and inside of that I have some idea that at least by acknowledging my true feelings, that's a human thing to do, and it's a, and it's a possibility to inspire any other human to at least recognize that in themselves. So, in lots of ways, I'm kind of astonished that I went to a little movie and then I wrote, you know, 20 pieces on Facebook, and you're talking to me about this. It's like, in and of itself, I'm like, well, wow, maybe a couple more people will hear something. Of my answers, when one person said to me early on, he said, well, how come they didn't show Barbie and Ken walking off into the sunset happily ever after?
And I'm like... Oh, honey, you didn't really get it, did you? It was about, it was about female sovereignty and blah, blah, blah, but... But I engaged with them, and then they, for a moment, had another thought about how the world might be, and there were, there were more of those than I thought. And now I'm working on another, another piece that will hopefully be out in the world in six months or so, where I'm talking about this, and it's just preaching to the people that I already know.
I don't think of myself as a preacher, but you know, at the end of workshops, I often say the world needs everybody's love so much. If you can go out in the world and, it's going to make me cry, love one person that is clearly sad or clearly angry and you just love them and listen to them. The ripple, we don't know about the ripples that can go out in the world.
We really don't. And I, I have to have that hope, that one drop of love can go out. And if we throw a whole boulder of love in the, in the lake, they're bigger. And then other people's experiences of not pushing back, of not being angry, of just... I think most people that are saying things that are mean and rude, there's... There's hurt. There's hurt in there. They wouldn't be doing that. People don't want to be mean on purpose. Something in there is still What's going on in there? What's going on? Tell me what your hurt is. And then all of a sudden they're in your arms sobbing because somebody paid attention. So,
[00:37:05] Haje Kamps: What do you wish people noticed about this? Mm
[00:37:09] Marci Graham: Well, I'm going to go back to that. thing about most people, listen to respond. And if they would stop thinking about their opinion and their previous experience that made what you're saying not true, they could just be an inquiry. And you've used the word you're curious several times. It's like, it's just such exquisitely beautiful thing to be curious about the world.
I mean, how could we possibly know all the answers in somebody else's, one person's head, let alone the world? We can't know other people's experience and can't even know all the ways we would personally respond to things that we've never experienced before. It's all magically. So, I wish that, what I wish is people would stop comparing it to their past. Stop comparing anything to their past, about feelings in particular, and go, Hmm, I wonder what this... What is the gift that this person has for me that I have no idea what it is? I had a person in a course that had been fairly quiet, not contributing to the course at all, and then all of a sudden they did share and It was like, whoa, I had no idea.
You know, we do this thing, we judge the cover, and, even if it'd been weeks, and they hadn't happened to say anything, and then they do, and you're like, wow, wow, I didn't know that. And if I'd stuck with my story about them, I would never have had the opportunity to feel the, this beautiful flower that they were, and that they were learning and opening to.
And it was. It just reminds me every time that, that, that those stories we make up about each other deserve a whole bunch of curiosity, a whole bunch of curiosity.
If you, I know you described yourself as not a teacher and not a preacher, but if you were to give somebody an invitation, like somebody's listening to this podcast and like, Hey, I invite you to sit with a question or I invite you to think about something or feel into something. What would you invite?
I would love to invite people to Look within and get really honest with themselves and start to notice the places in their lives that don't flow, that don't have, congruency, that they feel out of step with. And instead of blaming someone else, that they sit with themselves and go, what part of me...
[00:39:40] Marci Graham: Well, part of me is contributing to that. One of the pieces I wrote, like when I silence myself, I'm the patriarchy. When you, when you interrupt me, you are the patriarchy. When I comply, I am the patriarchy. We are all it. This is not gender specific. In fact, It has nothing to do with it in the grand scheme of things there is.
There is the history of it, but right now, women's compliance. Being compliant is as much a part of it as somebody bossing this around. And so if we all realize that we're in this together this is our culture's problem to solve. It's not men's problem to solve and it's not women's problem to solve, and it's not every other gender's problem to solve, it's all of us. We are all in this. And to catch ourselves when we do something that is compliant, that is holding on to the idea that women have to be good and men have to be strong, that, like, well, why? Let's ask ourselves.
[00:40:50] Haje Kamps: Yeah.
[00:40:51] Marci Graham: Write it the heck down. Start to be in inquiry with yourself. I don't know any other way. That would be an invitation look, keep looking.
[00:41:01] Haje Kamps: what I'm taking away from that invitation as I'm sitting with it is, you know, I might not be able to convince anybody else, but I can choose not to be. On that team.
[00:41:12] Marci Graham: years ago when I first started doing work with, HAI Global, was I didn't try to convince anybody in my family to do that. And after several years, one of my sisters said, How come you're so happy? And I'm like, well, here's what I'm doing, you know, there were lots of components, but a lot of it had to do with, I'm looking at myself, thank you to HAI Global, I'm looking, somebody said to me recently, I think you were there, you know, how come you, how come you do this, just make us think in a workshop, you know, and I said, well, my job, okay.
My job is to stir you up. My job is to rip open your chest in the kindest possible way and have you look within and go, what the heck am I doing? Why am I doing that thing? And, and try to come to it from, from the bigger worldview of love doesn't fail, you know?
[00:42:16] Haje Kamps: Love doesn't fail. I think that is a beautiful sentiment to end on.
[00:42:20] Marci Graham: Yeah. Thanks.
[00:42:23] Haje Kamps: Marci, thank you so much for spending some time with me today. I am, it's always a gift.
[00:42:30] Marci Graham: Thank you for your beautiful attention and asking the questions that helped draw me even deeper into where, where I have been peddling for these last months. It's been, it's been a real gift. Thank you so much. Loved it. Every minute..