May 5, 2025 • 53 mins
Melinda French Gates knows everyone wants to talk about her divorce.
She gets it, and she's covered it her new book, Next Day, about handling life's transitions. But also, what she wants to talk about is change. How we pick ourselves up after those big moments that knock us off course, whether it's the end of a relationship, losing a job, becoming a parent, kids leaving home, losing someone or a a big career shift. Transitions, she knows, are moments of both struggle and opportunity.
French-Gates is the computer scientist, philanthropist and advocate who, along with her former husband, Bill Gates, founded the Gates Foundation, raising and donating billions of dollars to improve health outcomes for some of the most vulnerable communities in the world.
After her separation, French-Gates established her own philanthropic organisation, Pivotal, to advance issues that affect women and girls.
In this episode of MID she talks about how to tap into that inner whisper that becomes a roar, what her life looks like post-divorce and what she wants everyone to know about moving on 'The Next Day'.
You can buy Melinda French Gates' book here.
CREDITS:
Host: Holly Wainwright
Guest: Melinda French Gates
Executive Producer: Naima Brown
Senior Producer: Grace Rouvray
Producer: Tahli Blackman
Audio Producer: Jacob Round
Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to Amma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on. Let's start, as so
many gen X stories do, with Oprah. She's not my girlfriend,
but if she was, I like to imagine she'd give
me the kind of advice she gave today's guest. It starts,
(00:35):
Oprah said, with a whisper. But if you ignore that whisper,
it comes thumping you on the head, and that thump
turns into a problem.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
You might not have.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Oprah in your girl group to alert you to whispers
and thumps, but Melinda French Gates does, and today I
talked to her about the whispers that turn into thumps,
that turn into something we know a lot about at
this time in our lives, transitions. The whisper that Melinda
and Oprah were talking about was the one that Melinda
(01:08):
could no longer ignore that after twenty seven years of marriage,
of raising kids, and running a global foundation with her husband,
Bill Gates, me, Linda knew her marriage was over. I'm
going to read you a short extract from her new
book next day about that moment when Melinda knew she
couldn't ignore the whisper or the thunking on the head.
(01:30):
It was incredibly destabilizing to find myself in that position.
I had never ever imagined that I was someone who
would get divorced. My three siblings are all in stable,
happy marriages. My parents have been married for sixty three years.
I had spent almost my entire adult life invested in
this man and our family. After all of that, to
(01:52):
contemplate approaching my sixtieth birthday single on my own it
seemed unthinkable, until gradually it didn't. At some point I
noticed that quietly my default assumption had changed. Once I
had wondered how could I possible leave, now I wondered
(02:12):
how can I possibly stay.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
I didn't travel a straight.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Line to the answer. There were days when I was
certain I knew what I wanted to do, followed by
days when I was no longer sure. There were days
when I felt confident I'd reached a final decision, and
days when I went back on what I'd decided with
the clarity of hindsight. I think it's fair to say
that even through this excruciatingly circular decision making process, my
(02:38):
inner voice was clear and unequivocal that I needed to get.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Out of my marriage.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
It was the other voices that made me doubt it,
voices around me that asked a lot of questions, starting
with but what about what about the kids, one of
whom was still under eighteen? But what about our foundation?
What about having to tell my family? I didn't really
care what the news coverage would be like or what
the headlines would be. But the thought of telling my
very Catholic parents was horrible. And then there was the
(03:06):
other complicating factor, maybe the most complicated of them. I
loved Bill. Not only that, but I valued our family
life deeply, and I felt enormous responsibility to the foundation
we'd started together. Was I going to rip it all apart?
Was I going to forego the future we'd imagined for
so long? That was an extract from Next Day by
(03:28):
Melinda French Gates. And if some of that rings a
bell with you, I'm pretty certain that just as you
or I don't have Oprah on speed dial, we're all
so likely not divorcing one of the world's richest men.
But the inevitability of transitions isn't only for the privileged.
Next Day, Melinda's book is about the day after the
big thing happens, As French Gates writes, the real work
(03:53):
starts the next day. The next day, when the graduation
confetti has been swept up, or the wedding favors have
been handed out, or the movers have departed, leaving you
in a sea of cardboard boxes. It's when the real
transition truly begins. And we can all feel that, even
if our transition don't make headlines and don't come with
extra zeros and decisions that will impact global philanthropy, I'm
(04:17):
Holly Wainwright, and I am mid and I don't get
to interview the likes of Malinda French Gates every day,
a deeply impressive, intelligent, empathetic woman who, after being one
of the few female computer science enthusiasts at her school
and then university, had a major role to play in
establishing Microsoft with her then husband, and an even bigger
(04:39):
role after her kids were born in the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, which had delivered more than seven billion
dollars in grants by the time Melinda left it. Her
purpose now is to advance the cause of women and girls,
and she has already, through her pivotal ventures, pledged to
donate one billion dollars to that cause over two years.
(05:00):
So I was nervous and delighted to have this conversation
inspired by the book about the big transitions that Gates
wants to talk about, motherhood, loss, divorce, career, shock, big birthdays.
She was unsurprisingly warm and professional, boundaried, and full of
the kind of wisdom I might expect from a woman
who gets her life advice directly from Oprah. And so
(05:23):
here is Melinda Frenchgates all the way from America. Melinda Frenchgates,
thank you so much for being here with us today.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Thanks for having me Holly.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Your book it's beautiful, it truly is. I really loved it.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
I was very moved by it. Often I wish I'd
had a physical copy because I would have scribbled like
it was one of those books that I took a
lot of notes through. And I think that there's an
enormous amount in here. Although your life has obviously been
certainly not ordinary, there's an enormous amount in here about
the transitions that most grown up women, as I like
to call us, go through in various at various times,
(06:01):
whether that's you know, right from leaving home and starting
career to motherhood, to the loss of loved ones, kids
leaving home, and of course divorce. And there's a lot
to talk about in all those transitions, and we will.
I would love to start, though, if you're happy to,
with the chapter about divorce, because you write so beautifully
about it, both with a lot of honesty and restraint.
(06:21):
That chapter starts with a recurring dream that you were having.
Would you tell us about that?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Sure? I start that chapter with a dream I kept
having about being on a cliff and it falling away,
and I was on the cliff falling away, and my
family was on the other part of the cliff. And
I'd had the dream enough times that you know, it
didn't take a lot to figure out what it was about.
And I knew I was at a transition point where
(06:48):
I had some really tough decisions to make, and I
knew I could only make them on my own. And
I talk about in that chapter amongst many transitions, but
in that chapter, I really talk about distilling your inner voice,
that you really have to listen to that place inside
of you that maybe has been whispering to you for
a long time. You've been trying to ignore it, but
(07:11):
that you need to tend to it and see what
it has to say to you.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
That's exactly right. You say it starts with a whisper.
I'm not sure if maybe you're quoting Oprah when you
say that, but that often it starts with a whisper.
Whatever that truth is, and it can be very difficult
to tune into it. Do you have advice for people
who are trying to tune into that, whether it's in
a difficult part of their life, whether they're just worrying
and ruminating, or whether it's really time to listen to
(07:37):
that voice.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Well, I think that you can do it in several
different ways, you know. I also talk in the book
quite a bit about friendships, and in my case, many
female friendships. I talk about some males too, but female ones.
I think we plant ourselves in other trusted relationships, like
really trust a relationship, pieces of ourselves, and if we're
(08:01):
being honest with ourselves and our friends are being honest
with us, they know us in deep ways and they've
known us. If they've known you over the course of
your life or a long period of it, they also
have a view on you that you don't always have
on yourself and so when I talk about listening to
your inner voice, for me, it was for sure journaling
and starting by writing down what that, as Oprah calls it,
(08:24):
that whisper was saying to me, really spending time and
reflecting on it, but then also over a period of
time talking to different friends about you know, how have
I changed, how have I not changed? What were my
hopes and dreams? Where am I with those? And so
I think we can if we spend at least in
(08:44):
my case, time in quiet meditation or time alone, or
also journaling, but also in the context and company of
friends and or in therapy, you start to really, at
least in my case, I started to really listen to
my inner voice.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
The book's called The Next Day because, as you write,
transitions really begin the day after a life defining moment.
I just want to read you a tiny bit of
what you say about that you say, the real work
starts the next day. The next day when the graduation
confetti has been swept up, or the wedding favors have
been handed out, or the movers have departed, leaving you
in a sea of cardboard boxes. The next days when
(09:22):
we begin to make choices. Sometimes unconsciously about how we'll
respond to change, what will carry forward, and what we'll
leave behind. If someone picks up this book because they
find themselves on the edge of that next day, it's
full of wisdom, But do you think there's a particular
piece of wisdom that's very useful for deep breath this
(09:43):
next stage.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
I would say, leave room for your plans to change.
So on that next day, as you said, let's say
you've even moved houses and you're sitting in the sea
of boxes. You know, you may think that everything you
carried from the old house is one you want in
your new space, your new living space. But you know,
when you get to that new living space, be open
(10:06):
to maybe the lights flooding in in a different way
than you expected, maybe you appreciate something differently in this
space than you had in the last. And maybe there's
actually more you need to let go of that's in
those boxes that you didn't clear out before you moved,
before you start placing everything in its place. So I
talk about in these transitions that leave room what I
(10:29):
call in the clearing in that space in between. In
a transition, once you've ended something and before you start
something next, there is huge growth that can happen, but
you have to leave yourself open to that growth.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
One of the themes that runs through the book actually
is from when you were a little girl, is that
you're very goal oriented. You talk a lot about your
binder of goals and plans and how one of the
big lessons has been to allow the space for things
to change right totally. There is a wonderful in the
chapter about parenthood. There's a really wonderful bit about this
(11:06):
because you say that even in your first pregnancy with Jen,
you realize the process of letting go of perfectionism started
right when you were pregnant, because you were like, I'm
going to eat what I want to eat, I'm not
going to deny my Well things tell me a bit
about that about perfectionism and how sometimes it can.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Hold us back.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Well, I will say in my case, but I've also
talked to a number of other women, many actually, who
we hold ourselves to this perfect standard. Whatever that perfect
standard is, it's different in different people's mind. There actually
is no such thing. But I think sometimes it's because
of either what's happened to us in life or messages
(11:48):
that we get along the way of how we're supposed
to look, how we're supposed to dress, how we're supposed
to act in a business setting, in a personal setting,
and if you let all of those voices in, you
sort of create this image of who you're supposed to be.
But that's not realistic. And so for me at least,
in dropping the perfection and saying, you know what, I'm
(12:10):
good enough, like take me or leave me if you
like me the way I am, great, if you don't,
too bad. As soon as I sort of started to
let that drop, I write about this in that chapter
and I call it's the ease of letting go. You
start to live into who you are and you let
go of some of those expectations. And quite frankly, for
me at least, it cleared out a lot of mind
(12:32):
space that I could spend on other things and other times.
And in parenting, I learned the concept. I wish i'd
learned it earlier. My kids were in middle school and
I learned it, but I learned the concept of a
good enough parent. I kept trying to be this perfect mom, this,
do it well, work well, all of that, and there
is no such thing. It was an illusion in my
mind and once I realized, once I read the definition
(12:54):
of what a good enough parent is, I could say
to myself, I am definitely a good enough parent. And
guess what. It made me less anxious. It took, you know,
this whole level of just I just let down and
let go some and guess what, it made the thing
easier for my kids too. They talked about, oh, Mom,
you weren't kind of on our case so much, or
(13:15):
you didn't expect me to like look a certain way
when I left the house, or you were less anxious.
So it ended up being a really wonderful concept, and frankly,
I wish i'd learned it earlier.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
There's a piece of wet parenting advice from your mother,
though that I actually scribbled down, which was you said,
I don't know if neuroscientists would back this, but it
rings true to me. You said, the children come in
sort of eighty percent who they are, and we're playing
with the ten percent at the edges, so holding them
back from the worst ten percent, I guess of their urges,
(13:46):
encouraging them to push towards the ten percent best that
I found that idea very very freeing in a way,
and I think that that's really interesting as well as
what Michelle Obama said to you. I think this could
only be your book where I'm quoting Michelle Obama to you,
but that she says that my job is to set
(14:07):
them free, you know, to grow into humans, not look
after little babies.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Can you tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yes, my mom also said, you know, her job was
to give us our wings to fly, and she, you know,
she was clear that when we launched for college, it
wasn't going to be easy for her. She loved us deeply,
but I always knew that she saw us as independent
human beings and that we should. Her job was to
help us develop and grow and then give us our
(14:34):
wings to fly and to be who we're supposed to
be in the world. And so I took that into
parenting my children as well. And as I said in
the book, I believe that about from her, eighty percent
of their characters formed. And so when I could realize that, okay,
I really can only affect kind of these edges, keep
them from their worst self and nudge their best selves,
I don't know, it just takes some pressure off, you know,
(14:56):
and especially for me at least, it helped me appreciate
each child for who they were, because my three couldn't
have been more different. A girl, boy, girl, such different personalities,
and I hear many parents say this, and so even
the way I parented each of them was slightly different
(15:16):
based on you know, how tough were they on themselves
about their grades and schoolwork versus where they slacked. Was
one of them slacking off a little bit, you know,
and the ones that were so tough on themselves, I
had to tell them to calm down, You're doing fine, right,
And the one who maybe was slacking off a little
you have to kind of prop that one up a
little and go, okay, come on, you know, get down
to work for a bit here. So it helped me
(15:38):
to see each child for who they were and parent
them for who they were, not trying to mold them
into some mold amorphous mold I had in my head.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Friends, there is so much more of My conversation with
Melinda Frenchgates did not go away.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
We'll be back in a tick.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
In talking about that transition into parenthood, you also talked
about the transition into being a working parent and the
guilt that you felt. First of all, you talk about
the transition of deciding to be the primary parent, the
person who is going to be at home. And I
wanted to just ask you quickly about that. If you think,
now that's a decision that every family has to make,
(16:20):
and if sometimes that can feel a little bit like
a trap for women because it's nearly always them who
becomes that parent, what do you think, Well.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
I think it's very different by family. Look some families,
I was in an incredibly privileged position that we didn't
need both spouses incomes. There are many families that need
both spouses incomes if they're going to put their kids
through school and have the house that they want, right,
But if you're lucky enough that both spouses don't have
(16:49):
to work, What I say to women is whatever choice
you make is going to be fine. Whether you choose
to stay home and raise the kids and go back
to work later, you choose to stay home forever, you
choose to work full time while you have kids. Any
choice is yours to make, and society should let you
make that choice. So I think too often we sort
(17:11):
of assume the woman's going to stay home. And yet
I can't speak to Australia, but I can speak in
the United States. Of most parents today that have children,
in both heterosexual and homosexual couples, both parents are working,
So that is more the norm today than otherwise. And
the other thing I guess I learned over time when
(17:31):
I let go of the guilt of the fact that
I wanted to work and have children. In my case, again,
I was very lucky I could choose my work, and
I chose that I really wouldn't work full time until
my youngest ended up in preschool, that you know, I
would be home for those early years. But as my
kids say to me now, Mom, we're glad you worked
(17:53):
like you weren't this completely hoavering parent, helicopter parenting me,
and we could see that you also got meaning from
your work, and we want to work. Like all three
of my children, our adults now they're in their twenties,
they all want to work. Right, You find meaning both
in I think if you choose to have children, raising
(18:14):
children and in meaningful work.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Absolutely and clearly that was a very good lesson to
show them, because in your particular case, I guess your
children could have said, we're.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Not going to work.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
And you know the value of it when you transition
to being a working mum. You were working at the
Gates Foundation, and you talk about the guilt and wishing
there was another hour in the day every day, which
is very relatable to nearly every working parent. Do you
think that guilt, when it is very much a choice
rather than necessity, do you think that guilt is harsher?
And when you talk to young women, because I'm sure
(18:45):
that many women would young women would ask you about
how to juggle career and family, what do you tell
them about dealing with that guilt?
Speaker 1 (18:53):
I tell them to work on it, to name it,
to work on it, and that they are good enough.
And I've also said I've asked many of them, do
you know this concept of a good enough parent? And
if not, I tell them what it is and I
can say, well, do you think you're living up to that? Right?
I think I will say this. I know so many
young women that have that guilt, and I remind them
(19:17):
that this is kind of universal for women. But the
sooner they can work through it and drop it, the
better off they're going to be and their child's going
to be. And I also will often point out to them,
your child is thriving, I mean, and they really are right,
you know, But we have all these expectations on ourselves
as women, or society puts them on us. Other women
(19:38):
and other men put those expectations on us at times, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
The empty nest because your children obviously are grown up.
Now you write about the joy of being a grandparent.
That's a big transition too, that no longer being my
to do list is as long as my arm, I'm
juggling everything.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Have you found joy in that transition?
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Massive joy is right, Yeah, it is, you know, when
you finally suddenly wait up and realize, oh, wait a minute.
You know, I'm at a point now in life where
my kids just don't need me as much. I mean,
they still need you some in college, but then when
they launch, it's even less right, and then to have
(20:22):
these grandchildren. You don't get to pick when you have grandchildren.
I don't know any grandparent that's got to make the
decision of how old they were when their child has
a child. But it's a wonderful thing because all of
a sudden you find yourself doing the things you did
with your children, going down the slide again, you know,
running barefoot in the grass, trying to do a summer assault.
If you still can, and at least for me, it's
(20:44):
quite motivating to do my squats in the gym so
I can lift up those grand babies off the floor.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Absolutely just to shift gearze.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
I hope you don't mind me saying, but perhaps my
favorite chapter in the book, I'm the one that did
actually make me cry was the one about the loss
of one of your closest friends, about dealing with grief
and lost John Nielsen. John and his wife Emmy were
very good friends of yours and Bills, the kind of
magical couple friends where you go on holiday together and
you share a lot of landmarks. And John died much
(21:13):
too young. Among a lot of the beautiful emotional pieces
in that chapter, there's also some very I thought, some
very practical advice for people who are going through or
trying to support friends through very difficult times in grief.
Can you tell me a bit about ring theory?
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Sure. Ring theory is this concept of understanding that the
person who is going through the hardship in the middle,
say they're sick with cancer or they're in a situation
where they're dying. Understanding. You know, if you think about
dropping a stone in a quiet pond, you see the
ripples that go out, and understanding which ring you are
(21:53):
around that person in the center is really important. Are
you in the innermost ring? Probably not if you're a friend,
that's usually the person's family. Are you in the next ring?
Are you one of the closest friends. Okay, maybe you're there.
Are you kind of a little more distant than that,
Maybe you're in a third ring, or maybe your business colleague,
you're in the fourth or fifth ring. But knowing where
(22:14):
you are, which ring compared to the person in the center,
and then making sure that if you're grieving that person's loss,
because you probably are that you're going to lose them,
you never dump that into the center. You always dump
it to somewhere out in the ring, further out. And
your job for the family and the people closest in
(22:35):
in the ring is to be a comfort for them.
And yes, you're grieving, but you don't put that on them.
And I was able to get permission from one of
my absolute favorite spiritual poets and authors, Mark Nepo. He
calls it being a greenhouse, and that's what I labeled
the chapter, and that is even when you can do
nothing for that person, no more meals, No more you know, interactions,
(23:00):
no more phone calls, because they really are, you know,
near the end. What you can still provide then, and
all the way along the way is and light and
they will feel it and their spouse will feel it,
and they will know that it's there. And sometimes that's
the most you can do. And yet that is also
beautifully beautiful and incredibly important.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
That the greenhouse part is a part I immediately texted
to a friend. So this is, you know, in terms
of I think your book, as I say, helping a
lot of people through transitions. I immediately texted that to
a friend because I thought it was so beautiful. And
your friends feature very prominently in this book because those
relationships are clearly very important to you. And I'd love
(23:45):
you to tell me a bit about your truth counsel.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Yeah. So there's a group that I walk with every
single Monday morning that I'm in town rain or shine,
and it rains a lot in Seattle, especially certain months
of the year. And we have walked together now for
over twenty years. And what I can say, it's three
other women. One of them is Emmy Nielsen, who passed
(24:09):
away his wife Emmy. We know each other deeply. We
have lived through ups and downs in our marriages. We
have lived through you know, I live through John's death,
as to one of the other women in the group.
We've lived through raising little infants and kids, to middle schoolers,
to high schoolers, to college and beyond. We're now many
(24:30):
of us moving into the grand parent phase and we
just know one another deeply, and we try to offer
comfort to one another candor about ourselves and our ups
and downs, and even reminding people each other of maybe
they're going something hard, through something hard, but we can
(24:50):
remind them of a beautiful time. Or maybe they're struggling
with one of their children or adult children, and we
can remind them the perspective we have on that child.
So we just are really a truth counsel. And I
call it that because for me, I wouldn't show up
there and hide something from that group. And if I
fel fel like I want to hide something and not
(25:11):
tell them on a Monday morning, I have to kind
of stop and say, Hmm, what am I hating from myself?
Why wouldn't I want to reveal that? What is it about?
If they really are my truth counsel, what is it about?
That because and that helps me keep on the path
of my values.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
That's a really interesting filter is to think that why
wouldn't I tell these women about this? Obviously women supporting
women are making their lives better as a massive focus
of your life, and we will get to purpose soon
because I think friends help us through these difficult transitions
so much. Do you think it's very much friend's role
to bolster and support or also to sometimes call us
(25:48):
out when we maybe are not being that honest about
what's happening.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
In our lives. Are you the calling out friend?
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Are you the one who'll say, hey, you've been complaining
about this for too long now?
Speaker 1 (25:59):
It depends. It depends on where that friend is in
parsing through their deep feelings about something. So if they're
still in a grieving phase, it's too bolster and support.
If it's more in a phase of maybe transition, but
maybe they're not quite seeing something that I have noticed,
(26:22):
or they're not being completely honest with themselves. I try
to think of a graceful way to bring something up,
because I've really learned that in friendship it's really our candor.
We so often don't see ourselves right. We so often
as one spiritual leader talks about Byron Katie that you
(26:44):
have to look at the finger that's pointing out at
somebody else. Say you're mad at somebody and you're pointing
a finger, How dare they? How could they? You have
to look at the three fingers pointing back at yourself,
and so often we don't. Right. There's an old passage
in the Bible. I think that says, why is it
we see the splinter in our neighbor's eye and not
the log in our own? And we so often don't
(27:07):
see ourselves? And so I feel like with true friendship,
I do want them to be candid with me, gently candid,
but candid, and vice versa.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Talking about the things that get you through the transitions.
You write about meditation, and you write about therapy. You
actually write that as a product of a sort of practical,
very Catholic upbringing. You used to think that therapy was
for other people until you found the right therapist. Can
you tell me a bit about that journey?
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Yeah, I think part of it might have been, you know,
the generation I grew up in part of it, as
I grew up in the South and I was Catholic,
and so yeah, it seemed like it was maybe for
other people. But then luckily again I had a friend,
not as part of that walking group, but a different
friend in one of my spiritual groups who gently said
to me, you know, Melinda, when she saw I was
(27:58):
going through a really tough time in the marriage, she
was said, have you ever considered therapy? And she was
really gentle about it, but I knew exactly what she
was saying, which is I think you would benefit from it?
And I resisted the idea at first, but then I realized, no,
she's right, I could at least just try it and
(28:18):
see I might like it, I might not. And I
even talk about in the book I had one therapist
that just wasn't quite right for me, and I had
to switch to a different one. The reason I put
that in the book is I want people to know
it's you know, you do have to find the right match,
and that doesn't always happen on the first go round.
And that's okay.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
You're right that you were going and saying there's this
problem at work, it's a work problem, and then they
was sort of like, I don't think it's a.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Work problem, but generally brought you to that that's that thing.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Isn't it about you not being able to see what's
right in front?
Speaker 3 (28:52):
Necessarily we can't.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
We so often can't, And so again you have to
have somebody who's not going to judge you, who's compassionate,
who can let you work through that thing that's there
on the surface that might actually be a problem. And
in this case it was actually a problem of toxic employee.
But over time they could get me to see that
there was even a much deeper problem than that one
(29:16):
going on. So yes, deal with that problem on the surface,
it's here and now, but let's get to some of
the deeper things going on.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
The nerve to cool things out and make big transitions
is the thing you've got to find in yourself, right,
and you write about also finding that in meditation. Almost
every smart woman I speak to on this show tells
me that meditation is an absolute key part of what
gets it through.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Why it's a game changer, because you steal yourself down
and you can start to see your feelings and your
thoughts bubble up, but you don't have to stay in
those feelings or thoughts. You start to learn that, oh
(30:02):
those will pass. Oh that's just a thought right now, Oh,
you can examine your thoughts. Is that true? That not true?
And at least for me, it's been a place where
I can quiet my mind down the busy noise of
the day, the busy mind, and just get a sense
of sort of essence and being. And it's just it's
(30:22):
a beautiful place. And I can't recommend it more highly.
And I have one of my friends in my walking
group says, very wisely, do what you can, not what
you can't. So if you can only spend five minutes
in meditation a day, praise yourself for the five minutes.
Don't beat yourself up that it wasn't ten minutes. Or
(30:43):
you spend ten minutes in meditation a day, don't beat
yourself up that it was ten minutes and not twenty.
Do what you can, not what you can't. And I
think of it as those drops in the bucket. You know,
if you put a drop in a bucket every day, eventually,
maybe it's going to take you ten years, but you
fill that bucket with water every day. If you put
a drop of meditation in, you are going to change
(31:04):
your life, and you'll change your mind, and you'll change
your thinking.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
I think enough people have told me this now that
it is.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Clearly it is clearly true.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
I want to talk about goals and purpose because you
say in the book that you're something of a reformed
goal setter.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Like you said, you know, you were very driven as
a young woman, which you clearly had to be because
you were making it in what must have been, particularly
then but still is a very male dominated field. So
being very focused must have helped you enormously.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah. So I write about goals and goal setting in
the book, some of which honestly are highly embarrassing. I
wrote down a few of them that I had I
put in the book a few of them that I
had written down as an eighth grader and it's high school.
But it helped me, see, you know how, My goals
hopefully are a little more lofty now and have changed.
But I think goals served an amazingly good purpose in
(31:58):
my life, particularly, as you say, because I was in,
you know, a very male dominated feel I was a
computer scientist in college. I worked at Microsoft in the
early days, so it me going. It kept me focused
and driven. I still to this day have goals in
mind and ideas of where I'm going, but I'm not
(32:19):
as rigid about them. I leave room for more growth
and more openings and more flexibility, Like, okay, I mean
a big lofty goal I have is how do we
lift women up all over the world because families. I
just know this from good data and from seeing it
myself over many years of traveling families, communities, societies are
(32:40):
better when women are lifted up and have their full power.
So it's a big lofty goal to get there. But
I don't have these rigid goals of Okay, this year
we have to get from this number of CEOs to that,
or this many women in politics to that. It's much
more that I leave room for flexibility and change depending
on the strategies I'm trying to evoke, and quite frankly,
(33:03):
based on even the economic or the political environment. So
I still have goals, but they're a little bit more loose,
is what I would say.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
So would you advise women who are maybe again on
the edge of one of these big transitions and they
can't yet see, like if you're you know, if you're
going through a marriage breakdown or if you're in grief,
the idea that there is another side can be very
hard to see. Do you think goals play a real
part in helping you get there, like the stepping stones
to get there?
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Well, I can only speak to my experience, and I
would say, at least for me during that time, no,
having somebody hold out the perspective for me that, look,
your life is going to be beautiful on the other
side at some point. Yes, even once you once it's finalized,
(33:53):
will certainly be rough patches of things having to get
sorted out. But having somebody hold that perspective. But at
least when you're in that transition, or I was in
that transition, there was so much grief and pain that I,
you know, I couldn't see whether I was going to
have a wave of one day or be just fine.
Some days I'd wake up and I was kind of
(34:13):
just fine, and other days I was just you know,
could hardly pick myself up to go to work. And so,
at least for me, I wouldn't say goals helped. Then.
It was more just knowing I was growing and I
was going to be okay, and that I was surrounded
by other you know, just really close family and friends.
As I was going through a difficult time, and I
also will say I learned that you need to at
(34:34):
least you need to lean into that kind of support
in a way that maybe you never have before.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Yeah, women are very good at being I'm fine.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
I don't need it. I'm fine.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Don't worry about me looking after everybody else. I appreciated
your generosity of including an anecdote though during your divorce
of one time when you pulled the car over and
listened to a sad song and how to cry, and
then just got.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Back on the road and kept driving. I thought, that's
very relatable. Fail, the failing, get it out. Let's get
on with it.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
After this shortbreak, the rest of my conversation with the
very brave and very wise Melinda French Gates, including her
decision to leave the foundation that she had spent so
much of her life building. Your transition is in stages,
as you were saying, you know, obviously there was your separation,
and then that you were still very much involved with
(35:24):
the Gates Foundation. Now you have your own organization, which,
as you say, is very focused on women. I would
love you to tell me a bit about Pivotal and
also how you're feeling about this mission of lifting women
up in what is, let's be honest, a very difficult
time globally, and sometimes it can feel like our daughters,
(35:47):
maybe granddaughters too, are not even going to have the
same rights that we had. How is it feeling well.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Part of my decision to leave the Gates Foundation was
one it's in very good shape and that work will
continue as a great board, a great CEO, good leadership.
So I knew that work would continue to go forward
and go forward well. But I also felt that with
(36:15):
watching our rights rolled back even in the United States,
a decision taken by our Supreme Court, literally my granddaughter
right now has less rights than I had growing up.
That just shouldn't be. And so when you see such
a big step back, for me, it's a call to action.
It's saying, Okay, we've got to work on this, We've
(36:37):
got to do far more. And so I started to
look at you know what's going on here? Why have
so many organizations been on the defensive on this issue. Well,
they haven't been well funded. We don't do a lot
of funding to gender based organizations. And so I came
out of the Foundation and I immediately made a one
billion dollar commitment. A piece of it is to support
(36:59):
organizations really holding up women's rights. Another piece of it
is for women's health. We don't do great basic science
research for women's health come out with drugs that will
help women for diseases that are specific to them or
that they experience differently than men. Another piece of it
was supporting global leaders who are pushing forward women's rights,
(37:21):
whether it's the women Shabana in Afghanistan who's dedicated her
life to making sure Afghani girls get educated, or whether
it's other global leaders thinking about, you know, how do
we expand women's rights and access for women's So I
wanted to signal that I think this is just a
really important place that we need to make investments, and
(37:42):
so I'm hopefully also role modeling and leading by example.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Absolutely, can it be difficult too? I mean, I know
that you can affect change at so many different levels,
but can it be difficult to remain optimistic and positive
in the face of everything that's happening? And also I
wonder about that more broadly for you, because you have
obviously for decades with the Gates Foundation, traveling the world
seeing real disadvantage and very difficult situations, particularly for women
(38:08):
in goals, but not only how do you remain positive,
optimistic focused on the mission?
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Well. I write about this a bit in my previous
book in twenty nineteen, The Moment of Lift, which is
you know, I have traveled the globe and been in
many difficult situations in low income countries where you see
the devastation of poverty. You see women who are barely
eking out a living in a very small field, and
(38:38):
they have five children, right, and they can't find work
and their husband can't find work. I always remember that,
first of all, I'm unbelievably lucky both to be in
those situations where the women will share their deep stories
of their life, but that I get to leave at
the end of the day, right when the trip's over,
I get to go home and I have warm running
(39:01):
water in a clean shower and a toilet. Right. So
you have to hold both of those things in juxtaposition,
and I talk about in that book you have to
actually feel the feelings and let your heart break. I mean,
my heart breaks for these families that they're in that situation.
What if that was me? What if that was my children? Right,
So you have to feel the feelings and let them
(39:22):
move through you, and that can take some time, and
then I can move from there to say, Okay, now
what do I do? What's the call to action here?
About how I might incentivize others, myself and others to
help lift up people in those situations and to keep hope.
(39:44):
I look for moments of light and joy, you know,
you look for someone who's just simply kind to somebody
else who's I was in a situation in Malawi with
a family who had some food but not a lot,
and you know what they were doing. Every night they
would take a meal. The mom would, after she'd finished
the day making the meal for her family, serving it,
(40:05):
she would give a meal to her oldest child and
have them walk it to a woman in the village
whose husband had died a year before, and so they
were feeding that woman every night. She could count on
a meal from them, from part of their family meal.
And I thought, my gosh, I mean they are barely
eking it out over here, and yet talk about giving
(40:26):
something to your neighbor. Right, So when you see these
points of light and these moments of joy, or I
have a moment of joy even with one of my granddaughters,
you know, it just fills you up and you remember
that it's all these little drops in the bucket or
points of light that ultimately lead to good things, even
when there are big world setbacks.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
I wanted to ask about that in terms of us
getting older. I know sometimes I look at my own mother,
who's a strong feminist woman, and sometimes she can get
very disheartened that at this point in her life she
feels like that's being rolled back a little bit. And
I know that you work with so many amazing young women.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
Are you OPTI?
Speaker 1 (41:10):
I am? I am When I see the way young
women are approaching their bodily autonomy or approaching work, or
by hook or by crook, getting themselves through college, you know,
they have opportunities that our mothers did not have. Is
it easy? No? And are there still lots of barriers? Yes,
(41:34):
but you are seeing more women starting to make it
in society. Have they reached all the top levels and
the right numbers? Definitely not? But are more of them
graduating from college and getting the career that they would
choose to get in some countries. Yes? And so I
constantly look for those points of light, And so I'm
(41:56):
I stay a realist about what the truth is because
I look at the data a lot. I help collect
the data on women around the world, but I also
remain an optimist. I also try to remember that societal
norms and movements to take a long time. You know,
we're working on something really hard here changing norms, but
it is possible. And you know, I even look at
(42:19):
over the course of Nelson Mandela's life, Look how long
it took him to get the change she and others
were pushing for in Africa, but he ultimately got it.
So sometimes it is, you know, a step forward and
it feels like, oh, two steps back, but you just
got to keep marching forward and hoping those steps stay
forward over the long term.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
For the version of you that was studying computer science
and was the only, well one of the very few
women in that world, hopefully that at the time that
has shifted. But yet it seems still looks, certainly visually
at the moment, very front and center for all of
us lots of male tech leaders. Do you think that
that is shifting enough or do you think that representation
(43:03):
of this sort of extreme masculinity in that world is
a bit excluding to women still?
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Well, I never like anything that pits men versus women.
So optically you're seeing a set of technology billionaires. Let's
call them out, you know, kind of front and center.
But here's what I would say. At the time I
was in college, women were on the rise like men.
In computer science, we got up to about thirty seven percent.
(43:29):
Just like law and medicine in the United States, law
and medicine kept going up, and now we graduate about
fifty percent females. fIF you're sent males in medicine and
in law. Computer science, it went up, and it took
a precipitous drop. There has been, though, a concerted effort
over the last five years to start to bring those
(43:49):
numbers back up, and they are coming back up in
computer science. So I will know that we are finally
making it when I see, you know, fifty percent of
graduates in computer science being women. But it will take
a long time for women's to get to the upper
echelons of those fields. Women still aren't there in medicine.
(44:09):
They're getting there in the law, but it just takes time.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
This book required a lot of vulnerability from you, and
I wanted to ask about that as you again in
relation a little bit to age. One of the very
smart journalists I interviewed once on this show is saying
that one of the paradoxes of ages that you get
wiser and stronger, but your skin also gets thinner. Almost
you can feel a lot of suffering of the people
(44:35):
around you in a way that when you were young
it bounced off you more. Is that something you experienced.
Is it getting more difficult for you to see the
suffering around you or are you confident enough in your
mission to stay strong on that.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
I don't think it's getting harder. I guess maybe because
I traveled so much to so many low income countries.
It was so painful for me in my thirties and
forties and fifties, especially when I'm raising young children to
go out and see a mom or dad with a
child who's dying of something that they wouldn't die of
in the United States. Dates like I've seen babies, three
(45:11):
babies seconing on one oxygen canister in the developing world,
right and you can see the terror in the parent's
eyes because the kids have pneumonia. They don't know if
they're going to get through it. So, at least for me,
I wouldn't say it's gotten harder. I think it's made
me more determined to put investments and resources in my
(45:32):
voice and decision making behind these issues. And I'm in
a very lucky position that I can even do that.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
Was it difficult for you to be so vulnerable in
this book and write it the way that you have,
As I say, it's very emotional book. Was it a
difficult choice?
Speaker 1 (45:50):
It was difficult. They are parts of it, like the
chapter on my friend John's death, you know, going back
to my notes from that time, the photos, that is
very difficult and very raw, and yet I thought it
would be beneficial that I thought there might be something
that I had learned and experienced. One of my friends
(46:11):
says that aging is just another form of living. Right
when you get to sixty, It's like, hey, I've lived
a lot of years. I've lived six decades. So to me,
it felt worth sharing those things, even if they were
raw and vulnerable at times, because my hope is they
might be helpful to somebody else going through one of
those types of transitions.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
I think, absolutely, will you write it isn't in that chapter,
but it's a little further on you. Right, all of
us have lost something on the journey here. A dear friend,
a sister, a parent, a job we loved, a healthy
working body. None of us gets this far in life
with everything intact.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
It's true, Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
On that the idea that aging is just another word
for living. There's a lot of focus at the minute
that maybe we can beat aging entirely. With the right
resources and technology, we could live forever. I think you
would know about that, chap Bran Johnson, what are your
feelings about that? What are your feelings about that? In
a place to put resource?
Speaker 1 (47:05):
Well, I know some of the things he's doing. I
think it be kind of an exhausting way to live.
I'd rather live with the time I have. Right, there's
age span and then there's health span and lifespan. Right,
And for me, it's about, you know, living each day
to its fullest. We're not going to beat mortality. We're
just not. And so to me, it's about gathering the
(47:28):
wisdom and the lessons. Like I gathered a lot of
wisdom and lessons from my friend John who passed away.
I had another friend, close friend who was in the
early fifties I was in my forties who passed away. Look,
we don't get to choose necessarily when we die and
quite you know, you could be in a car accident
today tomorrow. So live the most while you're here is
the way I like to focus my time.
Speaker 3 (47:49):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (47:51):
You write about the practices and rituals and methods that
get you through. We've talked about some of them today.
Speaker 3 (47:57):
Your life. Now you are on the other side.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
I don't know if you see it this way, but
you're on the other side of this very intense period
of transition. What are the things that you do now
every day that might be helpful to people to grounding
themselves in a new reality, as it were.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
I still meditate every morning, I have my favorite coffee.
I try to get some time and nature in the
mornings before I go into work, or before I even
go out for a walk with friends or go to
the gym to do my exercise, So taking that time
in quiet and then I also am very purposeful these
days about putting the news down and not letting myself
(48:38):
get caught at night when I'm tired, I might get
caught more in the doom scrolling as you know the
young people call it, or you know, following the news.
I really try to put my phone away after dinner
and just do something in the evenings that I enjoy doing,
whether it's a dinner with a friend, or it's watching
something fun on you know, one of the streaming services,
just kind of get away from all the news of
(49:01):
the day.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
That is one of the big things of the moment
the people are battling between. I need to be aware.
I need to be across all these things that are happening.
You can't look away because you know the standards you
walk past.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
Et cetera.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
But it is very bad for us to swim in
that much negativity, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
I think we need to be purposeful about how we
dip into the news and read it. Certainly we want
to be informed citizens. Certainly we need to know where
to speak up and use our voices, or use our resources,
or write our parliamentarian or our senator. So I think
it's super important for citizen read to be informed. But
(49:40):
I think we have to be very purposeful because we are.
We also have to remember, you know, I think back
to when my parents used to watch the news on
TV at night and we were little kids, you know,
before dinner or right after dinner. You know, it was
kind of thirty minutes of the news and might be
Walter cronkaid in the World News, but you weren't hearing
about this instantaneous shooting in a school or a bombing here,
(50:04):
that it's just this constant bombardment. So now it's up
to us to put the guardrails on it to keep
ourselves healthy.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
Finally, and that reminds me of something I've heard you
say a lot that when you and Bill were starting
the foundation, and obviously there are so many requests constantly
for assistance when you are a philanthropist, and you have
quoted often that Warren Buffett said to you, choose a
small target. That's really interesting because I think that even
(50:33):
for those of us who aren't thinking about it literally
like that, with a philanthropic fortune, that can be very useful,
even in terms of what you were just talking about,
rather than the overwhelm of the everything, to focus in
on a small target.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
Or sure, do you think for sure? Let's say you've
set aside in your budget that you're going to give
away the equivalent of two hundred and fifty dollars a
year or the equivalent of a thousand dollars a year,
knowing what you most care about and where you think
your resources can have the most good in terms of
what you think could change something. Having a focus for
(51:10):
it I think really helps. And same thing if you're
volunteering your time. I tell people, look at where your
talents and your gifts are. Are you a patient person? Like?
Are you a good teacher? Would you be a good
mentor to a student after school or a coach for
a team. Would you be better off being somebody who
maybe prepares meals for a homeless shelter. Would you be
better at maybe serving on a board? Would that give
(51:34):
you joy and use your talents? Because if it does,
you'll probably spend more time doing it, and you'll probably
get more out of it, and the people around you
in that organization will get more from your talents. So
I think being targeted in our approach for time or
money or energy makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
And even attention as well, right in terms of what
you're going to focus on. Thank you so much, Melinda
Frenchgates for talking to me today, being so genous with
your time, and for writing.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
A truly beautiful book.
Speaker 2 (52:03):
I think the next day is going to be helpful
to full content.
Speaker 1 (52:07):
Thanks for having me, Holly.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Melinda Frenchgates. I
have to say, as I had said in the intro,
I was nervous to talk to her because gosh, there
are a few more impressive women that you get to
sit down with than French Gates. But look, if she
can't convince me to meditate, nobody can. I think it's
definitely time if you are wrestling, probably on a very
(52:34):
different scale with the transition of divorce. I want to
point you to some other Mid episodes that have conversations
around that. Vicky Parkinson, who was blindsided by an email
late at night that spelled out the end of her marriage.
Amantha Imba, who has remarried after falling in love post divorce,
and she talks about how she made that happen because
(52:54):
she really did like make that happen, And Julie Cohen,
who talks about sexuality in midlife and why it isn't
time to settle. Thank you so much for being with
us through this episode of Mid and I hope you'll
join us again next week. The executive producer of this
episode is named A.
Speaker 3 (53:10):
Brown.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
The senior producer is Grace Ruveray. The producer is Charlie Blackman,
and there's been audio production by Jacob Brown.
Speaker 3 (53:18):
See you next time.
You're listening to Amma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on. Let's start, as so
many gen X stories do, with Oprah. She's not my girlfriend,
but if she was, I like to imagine she'd give
me the kind of advice she gave today's guest. It starts,
(00:35):
Oprah said, with a whisper. But if you ignore that whisper,
it comes thumping you on the head, and that thump
turns into a problem.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
You might not have.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Oprah in your girl group to alert you to whispers
and thumps, but Melinda French Gates does, and today I
talked to her about the whispers that turn into thumps,
that turn into something we know a lot about at
this time in our lives, transitions. The whisper that Melinda
and Oprah were talking about was the one that Melinda
(01:08):
could no longer ignore that after twenty seven years of marriage,
of raising kids, and running a global foundation with her husband,
Bill Gates, me, Linda knew her marriage was over. I'm
going to read you a short extract from her new
book next day about that moment when Melinda knew she
couldn't ignore the whisper or the thunking on the head.
(01:30):
It was incredibly destabilizing to find myself in that position.
I had never ever imagined that I was someone who
would get divorced. My three siblings are all in stable,
happy marriages. My parents have been married for sixty three years.
I had spent almost my entire adult life invested in
this man and our family. After all of that, to
(01:52):
contemplate approaching my sixtieth birthday single on my own it
seemed unthinkable, until gradually it didn't. At some point I
noticed that quietly my default assumption had changed. Once I
had wondered how could I possible leave, now I wondered
(02:12):
how can I possibly stay.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
I didn't travel a straight.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Line to the answer. There were days when I was
certain I knew what I wanted to do, followed by
days when I was no longer sure. There were days
when I felt confident I'd reached a final decision, and
days when I went back on what I'd decided with
the clarity of hindsight. I think it's fair to say
that even through this excruciatingly circular decision making process, my
(02:38):
inner voice was clear and unequivocal that I needed to get.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Out of my marriage.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
It was the other voices that made me doubt it,
voices around me that asked a lot of questions, starting
with but what about what about the kids, one of
whom was still under eighteen? But what about our foundation?
What about having to tell my family? I didn't really
care what the news coverage would be like or what
the headlines would be. But the thought of telling my
very Catholic parents was horrible. And then there was the
(03:06):
other complicating factor, maybe the most complicated of them. I
loved Bill. Not only that, but I valued our family
life deeply, and I felt enormous responsibility to the foundation
we'd started together. Was I going to rip it all apart?
Was I going to forego the future we'd imagined for
so long? That was an extract from Next Day by
(03:28):
Melinda French Gates. And if some of that rings a
bell with you, I'm pretty certain that just as you
or I don't have Oprah on speed dial, we're all
so likely not divorcing one of the world's richest men.
But the inevitability of transitions isn't only for the privileged.
Next Day, Melinda's book is about the day after the
big thing happens, As French Gates writes, the real work
(03:53):
starts the next day. The next day, when the graduation
confetti has been swept up, or the wedding favors have
been handed out, or the movers have departed, leaving you
in a sea of cardboard boxes. It's when the real
transition truly begins. And we can all feel that, even
if our transition don't make headlines and don't come with
extra zeros and decisions that will impact global philanthropy, I'm
(04:17):
Holly Wainwright, and I am mid and I don't get
to interview the likes of Malinda French Gates every day,
a deeply impressive, intelligent, empathetic woman who, after being one
of the few female computer science enthusiasts at her school
and then university, had a major role to play in
establishing Microsoft with her then husband, and an even bigger
(04:39):
role after her kids were born in the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, which had delivered more than seven billion
dollars in grants by the time Melinda left it. Her
purpose now is to advance the cause of women and girls,
and she has already, through her pivotal ventures, pledged to
donate one billion dollars to that cause over two years.
(05:00):
So I was nervous and delighted to have this conversation
inspired by the book about the big transitions that Gates
wants to talk about, motherhood, loss, divorce, career, shock, big birthdays.
She was unsurprisingly warm and professional, boundaried, and full of
the kind of wisdom I might expect from a woman
who gets her life advice directly from Oprah. And so
(05:23):
here is Melinda Frenchgates all the way from America. Melinda Frenchgates,
thank you so much for being here with us today.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Thanks for having me Holly.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Your book it's beautiful, it truly is. I really loved it.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
I was very moved by it. Often I wish I'd
had a physical copy because I would have scribbled like
it was one of those books that I took a
lot of notes through. And I think that there's an
enormous amount in here. Although your life has obviously been
certainly not ordinary, there's an enormous amount in here about
the transitions that most grown up women, as I like
to call us, go through in various at various times,
(06:01):
whether that's you know, right from leaving home and starting
career to motherhood, to the loss of loved ones, kids
leaving home, and of course divorce. And there's a lot
to talk about in all those transitions, and we will.
I would love to start, though, if you're happy to,
with the chapter about divorce, because you write so beautifully
about it, both with a lot of honesty and restraint.
(06:21):
That chapter starts with a recurring dream that you were having.
Would you tell us about that?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Sure? I start that chapter with a dream I kept
having about being on a cliff and it falling away,
and I was on the cliff falling away, and my
family was on the other part of the cliff. And
I'd had the dream enough times that you know, it
didn't take a lot to figure out what it was about.
And I knew I was at a transition point where
(06:48):
I had some really tough decisions to make, and I
knew I could only make them on my own. And
I talk about in that chapter amongst many transitions, but
in that chapter, I really talk about distilling your inner voice,
that you really have to listen to that place inside
of you that maybe has been whispering to you for
a long time. You've been trying to ignore it, but
(07:11):
that you need to tend to it and see what
it has to say to you.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
That's exactly right. You say it starts with a whisper.
I'm not sure if maybe you're quoting Oprah when you
say that, but that often it starts with a whisper.
Whatever that truth is, and it can be very difficult
to tune into it. Do you have advice for people
who are trying to tune into that, whether it's in
a difficult part of their life, whether they're just worrying
and ruminating, or whether it's really time to listen to
(07:37):
that voice.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Well, I think that you can do it in several
different ways, you know. I also talk in the book
quite a bit about friendships, and in my case, many
female friendships. I talk about some males too, but female ones.
I think we plant ourselves in other trusted relationships, like
really trust a relationship, pieces of ourselves, and if we're
(08:01):
being honest with ourselves and our friends are being honest
with us, they know us in deep ways and they've
known us. If they've known you over the course of
your life or a long period of it, they also
have a view on you that you don't always have
on yourself and so when I talk about listening to
your inner voice, for me, it was for sure journaling
and starting by writing down what that, as Oprah calls it,
(08:24):
that whisper was saying to me, really spending time and
reflecting on it, but then also over a period of
time talking to different friends about you know, how have
I changed, how have I not changed? What were my
hopes and dreams? Where am I with those? And so
I think we can if we spend at least in
(08:44):
my case, time in quiet meditation or time alone, or
also journaling, but also in the context and company of
friends and or in therapy, you start to really, at
least in my case, I started to really listen to
my inner voice.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
The book's called The Next Day because, as you write,
transitions really begin the day after a life defining moment.
I just want to read you a tiny bit of
what you say about that you say, the real work
starts the next day. The next day when the graduation
confetti has been swept up, or the wedding favors have
been handed out, or the movers have departed, leaving you
in a sea of cardboard boxes. The next days when
(09:22):
we begin to make choices. Sometimes unconsciously about how we'll
respond to change, what will carry forward, and what we'll
leave behind. If someone picks up this book because they
find themselves on the edge of that next day, it's
full of wisdom, But do you think there's a particular
piece of wisdom that's very useful for deep breath this
(09:43):
next stage.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
I would say, leave room for your plans to change.
So on that next day, as you said, let's say
you've even moved houses and you're sitting in the sea
of boxes. You know, you may think that everything you
carried from the old house is one you want in
your new space, your new living space. But you know,
when you get to that new living space, be open
(10:06):
to maybe the lights flooding in in a different way
than you expected, maybe you appreciate something differently in this
space than you had in the last. And maybe there's
actually more you need to let go of that's in
those boxes that you didn't clear out before you moved,
before you start placing everything in its place. So I
talk about in these transitions that leave room what I
(10:29):
call in the clearing in that space in between. In
a transition, once you've ended something and before you start
something next, there is huge growth that can happen, but
you have to leave yourself open to that growth.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
One of the themes that runs through the book actually
is from when you were a little girl, is that
you're very goal oriented. You talk a lot about your
binder of goals and plans and how one of the
big lessons has been to allow the space for things
to change right totally. There is a wonderful in the
chapter about parenthood. There's a really wonderful bit about this
(11:06):
because you say that even in your first pregnancy with Jen,
you realize the process of letting go of perfectionism started
right when you were pregnant, because you were like, I'm
going to eat what I want to eat, I'm not
going to deny my Well things tell me a bit
about that about perfectionism and how sometimes it can.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Hold us back.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Well, I will say in my case, but I've also
talked to a number of other women, many actually, who
we hold ourselves to this perfect standard. Whatever that perfect
standard is, it's different in different people's mind. There actually
is no such thing. But I think sometimes it's because
of either what's happened to us in life or messages
(11:48):
that we get along the way of how we're supposed
to look, how we're supposed to dress, how we're supposed
to act in a business setting, in a personal setting,
and if you let all of those voices in, you
sort of create this image of who you're supposed to be.
But that's not realistic. And so for me at least,
in dropping the perfection and saying, you know what, I'm
(12:10):
good enough, like take me or leave me if you
like me the way I am, great, if you don't,
too bad. As soon as I sort of started to
let that drop, I write about this in that chapter
and I call it's the ease of letting go. You
start to live into who you are and you let
go of some of those expectations. And quite frankly, for
me at least, it cleared out a lot of mind
(12:32):
space that I could spend on other things and other times.
And in parenting, I learned the concept. I wish i'd
learned it earlier. My kids were in middle school and
I learned it, but I learned the concept of a
good enough parent. I kept trying to be this perfect mom, this,
do it well, work well, all of that, and there
is no such thing. It was an illusion in my
mind and once I realized, once I read the definition
(12:54):
of what a good enough parent is, I could say
to myself, I am definitely a good enough parent. And
guess what. It made me less anxious. It took, you know,
this whole level of just I just let down and
let go some and guess what, it made the thing
easier for my kids too. They talked about, oh, Mom,
you weren't kind of on our case so much, or
(13:15):
you didn't expect me to like look a certain way
when I left the house, or you were less anxious.
So it ended up being a really wonderful concept, and frankly,
I wish i'd learned it earlier.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
There's a piece of wet parenting advice from your mother,
though that I actually scribbled down, which was you said,
I don't know if neuroscientists would back this, but it
rings true to me. You said, the children come in
sort of eighty percent who they are, and we're playing
with the ten percent at the edges, so holding them
back from the worst ten percent, I guess of their urges,
(13:46):
encouraging them to push towards the ten percent best that
I found that idea very very freeing in a way,
and I think that that's really interesting as well as
what Michelle Obama said to you. I think this could
only be your book where I'm quoting Michelle Obama to you,
but that she says that my job is to set
(14:07):
them free, you know, to grow into humans, not look
after little babies.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Can you tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yes, my mom also said, you know, her job was
to give us our wings to fly, and she, you know,
she was clear that when we launched for college, it
wasn't going to be easy for her. She loved us deeply,
but I always knew that she saw us as independent
human beings and that we should. Her job was to
help us develop and grow and then give us our
(14:34):
wings to fly and to be who we're supposed to
be in the world. And so I took that into
parenting my children as well. And as I said in
the book, I believe that about from her, eighty percent
of their characters formed. And so when I could realize that, okay,
I really can only affect kind of these edges, keep
them from their worst self and nudge their best selves,
I don't know, it just takes some pressure off, you know,
(14:56):
and especially for me at least, it helped me appreciate
each child for who they were, because my three couldn't
have been more different. A girl, boy, girl, such different personalities,
and I hear many parents say this, and so even
the way I parented each of them was slightly different
(15:16):
based on you know, how tough were they on themselves
about their grades and schoolwork versus where they slacked. Was
one of them slacking off a little bit, you know,
and the ones that were so tough on themselves, I
had to tell them to calm down, You're doing fine, right,
And the one who maybe was slacking off a little
you have to kind of prop that one up a
little and go, okay, come on, you know, get down
to work for a bit here. So it helped me
(15:38):
to see each child for who they were and parent
them for who they were, not trying to mold them
into some mold amorphous mold I had in my head.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Friends, there is so much more of My conversation with
Melinda Frenchgates did not go away.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
We'll be back in a tick.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
In talking about that transition into parenthood, you also talked
about the transition into being a working parent and the
guilt that you felt. First of all, you talk about
the transition of deciding to be the primary parent, the
person who is going to be at home. And I
wanted to just ask you quickly about that. If you think,
now that's a decision that every family has to make,
(16:20):
and if sometimes that can feel a little bit like
a trap for women because it's nearly always them who
becomes that parent, what do you think, Well.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
I think it's very different by family. Look some families,
I was in an incredibly privileged position that we didn't
need both spouses incomes. There are many families that need
both spouses incomes if they're going to put their kids
through school and have the house that they want, right,
But if you're lucky enough that both spouses don't have
(16:49):
to work, What I say to women is whatever choice
you make is going to be fine. Whether you choose
to stay home and raise the kids and go back
to work later, you choose to stay home forever, you
choose to work full time while you have kids. Any
choice is yours to make, and society should let you
make that choice. So I think too often we sort
(17:11):
of assume the woman's going to stay home. And yet
I can't speak to Australia, but I can speak in
the United States. Of most parents today that have children,
in both heterosexual and homosexual couples, both parents are working,
So that is more the norm today than otherwise. And
the other thing I guess I learned over time when
(17:31):
I let go of the guilt of the fact that
I wanted to work and have children. In my case, again,
I was very lucky I could choose my work, and
I chose that I really wouldn't work full time until
my youngest ended up in preschool, that you know, I
would be home for those early years. But as my
kids say to me now, Mom, we're glad you worked
(17:53):
like you weren't this completely hoavering parent, helicopter parenting me,
and we could see that you also got meaning from
your work, and we want to work. Like all three
of my children, our adults now they're in their twenties,
they all want to work. Right, You find meaning both
in I think if you choose to have children, raising
(18:14):
children and in meaningful work.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Absolutely and clearly that was a very good lesson to
show them, because in your particular case, I guess your
children could have said, we're.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Not going to work.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
And you know the value of it when you transition
to being a working mum. You were working at the
Gates Foundation, and you talk about the guilt and wishing
there was another hour in the day every day, which
is very relatable to nearly every working parent. Do you
think that guilt, when it is very much a choice
rather than necessity, do you think that guilt is harsher?
And when you talk to young women, because I'm sure
(18:45):
that many women would young women would ask you about
how to juggle career and family, what do you tell
them about dealing with that guilt?
Speaker 1 (18:53):
I tell them to work on it, to name it,
to work on it, and that they are good enough.
And I've also said I've asked many of them, do
you know this concept of a good enough parent? And
if not, I tell them what it is and I
can say, well, do you think you're living up to that? Right?
I think I will say this. I know so many
young women that have that guilt, and I remind them
(19:17):
that this is kind of universal for women. But the
sooner they can work through it and drop it, the
better off they're going to be and their child's going
to be. And I also will often point out to them,
your child is thriving, I mean, and they really are right,
you know, But we have all these expectations on ourselves
as women, or society puts them on us. Other women
(19:38):
and other men put those expectations on us at times, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
The empty nest because your children obviously are grown up.
Now you write about the joy of being a grandparent.
That's a big transition too, that no longer being my
to do list is as long as my arm, I'm
juggling everything.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Have you found joy in that transition?
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Massive joy is right, Yeah, it is, you know, when
you finally suddenly wait up and realize, oh, wait a minute.
You know, I'm at a point now in life where
my kids just don't need me as much. I mean,
they still need you some in college, but then when
they launch, it's even less right, and then to have
(20:22):
these grandchildren. You don't get to pick when you have grandchildren.
I don't know any grandparent that's got to make the
decision of how old they were when their child has
a child. But it's a wonderful thing because all of
a sudden you find yourself doing the things you did
with your children, going down the slide again, you know,
running barefoot in the grass, trying to do a summer assault.
If you still can, and at least for me, it's
(20:44):
quite motivating to do my squats in the gym so
I can lift up those grand babies off the floor.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Absolutely just to shift gearze.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
I hope you don't mind me saying, but perhaps my
favorite chapter in the book, I'm the one that did
actually make me cry was the one about the loss
of one of your closest friends, about dealing with grief
and lost John Nielsen. John and his wife Emmy were
very good friends of yours and Bills, the kind of
magical couple friends where you go on holiday together and
you share a lot of landmarks. And John died much
(21:13):
too young. Among a lot of the beautiful emotional pieces
in that chapter, there's also some very I thought, some
very practical advice for people who are going through or
trying to support friends through very difficult times in grief.
Can you tell me a bit about ring theory?
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Sure. Ring theory is this concept of understanding that the
person who is going through the hardship in the middle,
say they're sick with cancer or they're in a situation
where they're dying. Understanding. You know, if you think about
dropping a stone in a quiet pond, you see the
ripples that go out, and understanding which ring you are
(21:53):
around that person in the center is really important. Are
you in the innermost ring? Probably not if you're a friend,
that's usually the person's family. Are you in the next ring?
Are you one of the closest friends. Okay, maybe you're there.
Are you kind of a little more distant than that,
Maybe you're in a third ring, or maybe your business colleague,
you're in the fourth or fifth ring. But knowing where
(22:14):
you are, which ring compared to the person in the center,
and then making sure that if you're grieving that person's loss,
because you probably are that you're going to lose them,
you never dump that into the center. You always dump
it to somewhere out in the ring, further out. And
your job for the family and the people closest in
(22:35):
in the ring is to be a comfort for them.
And yes, you're grieving, but you don't put that on them.
And I was able to get permission from one of
my absolute favorite spiritual poets and authors, Mark Nepo. He
calls it being a greenhouse, and that's what I labeled
the chapter, and that is even when you can do
nothing for that person, no more meals, No more you know, interactions,
(23:00):
no more phone calls, because they really are, you know,
near the end. What you can still provide then, and
all the way along the way is and light and
they will feel it and their spouse will feel it,
and they will know that it's there. And sometimes that's
the most you can do. And yet that is also
beautifully beautiful and incredibly important.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
That the greenhouse part is a part I immediately texted
to a friend. So this is, you know, in terms
of I think your book, as I say, helping a
lot of people through transitions. I immediately texted that to
a friend because I thought it was so beautiful. And
your friends feature very prominently in this book because those
relationships are clearly very important to you. And I'd love
(23:45):
you to tell me a bit about your truth counsel.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Yeah. So there's a group that I walk with every
single Monday morning that I'm in town rain or shine,
and it rains a lot in Seattle, especially certain months
of the year. And we have walked together now for
over twenty years. And what I can say, it's three
other women. One of them is Emmy Nielsen, who passed
(24:09):
away his wife Emmy. We know each other deeply. We
have lived through ups and downs in our marriages. We
have lived through you know, I live through John's death,
as to one of the other women in the group.
We've lived through raising little infants and kids, to middle schoolers,
to high schoolers, to college and beyond. We're now many
(24:30):
of us moving into the grand parent phase and we
just know one another deeply, and we try to offer
comfort to one another candor about ourselves and our ups
and downs, and even reminding people each other of maybe
they're going something hard, through something hard, but we can
(24:50):
remind them of a beautiful time. Or maybe they're struggling
with one of their children or adult children, and we
can remind them the perspective we have on that child.
So we just are really a truth counsel. And I
call it that because for me, I wouldn't show up
there and hide something from that group. And if I
fel fel like I want to hide something and not
(25:11):
tell them on a Monday morning, I have to kind
of stop and say, Hmm, what am I hating from myself?
Why wouldn't I want to reveal that? What is it about?
If they really are my truth counsel, what is it about?
That because and that helps me keep on the path
of my values.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
That's a really interesting filter is to think that why
wouldn't I tell these women about this? Obviously women supporting
women are making their lives better as a massive focus
of your life, and we will get to purpose soon
because I think friends help us through these difficult transitions
so much. Do you think it's very much friend's role
to bolster and support or also to sometimes call us
(25:48):
out when we maybe are not being that honest about
what's happening.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
In our lives. Are you the calling out friend?
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Are you the one who'll say, hey, you've been complaining
about this for too long now?
Speaker 1 (25:59):
It depends. It depends on where that friend is in
parsing through their deep feelings about something. So if they're
still in a grieving phase, it's too bolster and support.
If it's more in a phase of maybe transition, but
maybe they're not quite seeing something that I have noticed,
(26:22):
or they're not being completely honest with themselves. I try
to think of a graceful way to bring something up,
because I've really learned that in friendship it's really our candor.
We so often don't see ourselves right. We so often
as one spiritual leader talks about Byron Katie that you
(26:44):
have to look at the finger that's pointing out at
somebody else. Say you're mad at somebody and you're pointing
a finger, How dare they? How could they? You have
to look at the three fingers pointing back at yourself,
and so often we don't. Right. There's an old passage
in the Bible. I think that says, why is it
we see the splinter in our neighbor's eye and not
the log in our own? And we so often don't
(27:07):
see ourselves? And so I feel like with true friendship,
I do want them to be candid with me, gently candid,
but candid, and vice versa.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Talking about the things that get you through the transitions.
You write about meditation, and you write about therapy. You
actually write that as a product of a sort of practical,
very Catholic upbringing. You used to think that therapy was
for other people until you found the right therapist. Can
you tell me a bit about that journey?
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Yeah, I think part of it might have been, you know,
the generation I grew up in part of it, as
I grew up in the South and I was Catholic,
and so yeah, it seemed like it was maybe for
other people. But then luckily again I had a friend,
not as part of that walking group, but a different
friend in one of my spiritual groups who gently said
to me, you know, Melinda, when she saw I was
(27:58):
going through a really tough time in the marriage, she
was said, have you ever considered therapy? And she was
really gentle about it, but I knew exactly what she
was saying, which is I think you would benefit from it?
And I resisted the idea at first, but then I realized, no,
she's right, I could at least just try it and
(28:18):
see I might like it, I might not. And I
even talk about in the book I had one therapist
that just wasn't quite right for me, and I had
to switch to a different one. The reason I put
that in the book is I want people to know
it's you know, you do have to find the right match,
and that doesn't always happen on the first go round.
And that's okay.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
You're right that you were going and saying there's this
problem at work, it's a work problem, and then they
was sort of like, I don't think it's a.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Work problem, but generally brought you to that that's that thing.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Isn't it about you not being able to see what's
right in front?
Speaker 3 (28:52):
Necessarily we can't.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
We so often can't, And so again you have to
have somebody who's not going to judge you, who's compassionate,
who can let you work through that thing that's there
on the surface that might actually be a problem. And
in this case it was actually a problem of toxic employee.
But over time they could get me to see that
there was even a much deeper problem than that one
(29:16):
going on. So yes, deal with that problem on the surface,
it's here and now, but let's get to some of
the deeper things going on.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
The nerve to cool things out and make big transitions
is the thing you've got to find in yourself, right,
and you write about also finding that in meditation. Almost
every smart woman I speak to on this show tells
me that meditation is an absolute key part of what
gets it through.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Why it's a game changer, because you steal yourself down
and you can start to see your feelings and your
thoughts bubble up, but you don't have to stay in
those feelings or thoughts. You start to learn that, oh
(30:02):
those will pass. Oh that's just a thought right now, Oh,
you can examine your thoughts. Is that true? That not true?
And at least for me, it's been a place where
I can quiet my mind down the busy noise of
the day, the busy mind, and just get a sense
of sort of essence and being. And it's just it's
(30:22):
a beautiful place. And I can't recommend it more highly.
And I have one of my friends in my walking
group says, very wisely, do what you can, not what
you can't. So if you can only spend five minutes
in meditation a day, praise yourself for the five minutes.
Don't beat yourself up that it wasn't ten minutes. Or
(30:43):
you spend ten minutes in meditation a day, don't beat
yourself up that it was ten minutes and not twenty.
Do what you can, not what you can't. And I
think of it as those drops in the bucket. You know,
if you put a drop in a bucket every day, eventually,
maybe it's going to take you ten years, but you
fill that bucket with water every day. If you put
a drop of meditation in, you are going to change
(31:04):
your life, and you'll change your mind, and you'll change
your thinking.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
I think enough people have told me this now that
it is.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Clearly it is clearly true.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
I want to talk about goals and purpose because you
say in the book that you're something of a reformed
goal setter.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Like you said, you know, you were very driven as
a young woman, which you clearly had to be because
you were making it in what must have been, particularly
then but still is a very male dominated field. So
being very focused must have helped you enormously.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah. So I write about goals and goal setting in
the book, some of which honestly are highly embarrassing. I
wrote down a few of them that I had I
put in the book a few of them that I
had written down as an eighth grader and it's high school.
But it helped me, see, you know how, My goals
hopefully are a little more lofty now and have changed.
But I think goals served an amazingly good purpose in
(31:58):
my life, particularly, as you say, because I was in,
you know, a very male dominated feel I was a
computer scientist in college. I worked at Microsoft in the
early days, so it me going. It kept me focused
and driven. I still to this day have goals in
mind and ideas of where I'm going, but I'm not
(32:19):
as rigid about them. I leave room for more growth
and more openings and more flexibility, Like, okay, I mean
a big lofty goal I have is how do we
lift women up all over the world because families. I
just know this from good data and from seeing it
myself over many years of traveling families, communities, societies are
(32:40):
better when women are lifted up and have their full power.
So it's a big lofty goal to get there. But
I don't have these rigid goals of Okay, this year
we have to get from this number of CEOs to that,
or this many women in politics to that. It's much
more that I leave room for flexibility and change depending
on the strategies I'm trying to evoke, and quite frankly,
(33:03):
based on even the economic or the political environment. So
I still have goals, but they're a little bit more loose,
is what I would say.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
So would you advise women who are maybe again on
the edge of one of these big transitions and they
can't yet see, like if you're you know, if you're
going through a marriage breakdown or if you're in grief,
the idea that there is another side can be very
hard to see. Do you think goals play a real
part in helping you get there, like the stepping stones
to get there?
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Well, I can only speak to my experience, and I
would say, at least for me during that time, no,
having somebody hold out the perspective for me that, look,
your life is going to be beautiful on the other
side at some point. Yes, even once you once it's finalized,
(33:53):
will certainly be rough patches of things having to get
sorted out. But having somebody hold that perspective. But at
least when you're in that transition, or I was in
that transition, there was so much grief and pain that I,
you know, I couldn't see whether I was going to
have a wave of one day or be just fine.
Some days I'd wake up and I was kind of
(34:13):
just fine, and other days I was just you know,
could hardly pick myself up to go to work. And so,
at least for me, I wouldn't say goals helped. Then.
It was more just knowing I was growing and I
was going to be okay, and that I was surrounded
by other you know, just really close family and friends.
As I was going through a difficult time, and I
also will say I learned that you need to at
(34:34):
least you need to lean into that kind of support
in a way that maybe you never have before.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Yeah, women are very good at being I'm fine.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
I don't need it. I'm fine.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Don't worry about me looking after everybody else. I appreciated
your generosity of including an anecdote though during your divorce
of one time when you pulled the car over and
listened to a sad song and how to cry, and
then just got.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Back on the road and kept driving. I thought, that's
very relatable. Fail, the failing, get it out. Let's get
on with it.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
After this shortbreak, the rest of my conversation with the
very brave and very wise Melinda French Gates, including her
decision to leave the foundation that she had spent so
much of her life building. Your transition is in stages,
as you were saying, you know, obviously there was your separation,
and then that you were still very much involved with
(35:24):
the Gates Foundation. Now you have your own organization, which,
as you say, is very focused on women. I would
love you to tell me a bit about Pivotal and
also how you're feeling about this mission of lifting women
up in what is, let's be honest, a very difficult
time globally, and sometimes it can feel like our daughters,
(35:47):
maybe granddaughters too, are not even going to have the
same rights that we had. How is it feeling well.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Part of my decision to leave the Gates Foundation was
one it's in very good shape and that work will
continue as a great board, a great CEO, good leadership.
So I knew that work would continue to go forward
and go forward well. But I also felt that with
(36:15):
watching our rights rolled back even in the United States,
a decision taken by our Supreme Court, literally my granddaughter
right now has less rights than I had growing up.
That just shouldn't be. And so when you see such
a big step back, for me, it's a call to action.
It's saying, Okay, we've got to work on this, We've
(36:37):
got to do far more. And so I started to
look at you know what's going on here? Why have
so many organizations been on the defensive on this issue. Well,
they haven't been well funded. We don't do a lot
of funding to gender based organizations. And so I came
out of the Foundation and I immediately made a one
billion dollar commitment. A piece of it is to support
(36:59):
organizations really holding up women's rights. Another piece of it
is for women's health. We don't do great basic science
research for women's health come out with drugs that will
help women for diseases that are specific to them or
that they experience differently than men. Another piece of it
was supporting global leaders who are pushing forward women's rights,
(37:21):
whether it's the women Shabana in Afghanistan who's dedicated her
life to making sure Afghani girls get educated, or whether
it's other global leaders thinking about, you know, how do
we expand women's rights and access for women's So I
wanted to signal that I think this is just a
really important place that we need to make investments, and
(37:42):
so I'm hopefully also role modeling and leading by example.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Absolutely, can it be difficult too? I mean, I know
that you can affect change at so many different levels,
but can it be difficult to remain optimistic and positive
in the face of everything that's happening? And also I
wonder about that more broadly for you, because you have
obviously for decades with the Gates Foundation, traveling the world
seeing real disadvantage and very difficult situations, particularly for women
(38:08):
in goals, but not only how do you remain positive,
optimistic focused on the mission?
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Well. I write about this a bit in my previous
book in twenty nineteen, The Moment of Lift, which is
you know, I have traveled the globe and been in
many difficult situations in low income countries where you see
the devastation of poverty. You see women who are barely
eking out a living in a very small field, and
(38:38):
they have five children, right, and they can't find work
and their husband can't find work. I always remember that,
first of all, I'm unbelievably lucky both to be in
those situations where the women will share their deep stories
of their life, but that I get to leave at
the end of the day, right when the trip's over,
I get to go home and I have warm running
(39:01):
water in a clean shower and a toilet. Right. So
you have to hold both of those things in juxtaposition,
and I talk about in that book you have to
actually feel the feelings and let your heart break. I mean,
my heart breaks for these families that they're in that situation.
What if that was me? What if that was my children? Right,
So you have to feel the feelings and let them
(39:22):
move through you, and that can take some time, and
then I can move from there to say, Okay, now
what do I do? What's the call to action here?
About how I might incentivize others, myself and others to
help lift up people in those situations and to keep hope.
(39:44):
I look for moments of light and joy, you know,
you look for someone who's just simply kind to somebody
else who's I was in a situation in Malawi with
a family who had some food but not a lot,
and you know what they were doing. Every night they
would take a meal. The mom would, after she'd finished
the day making the meal for her family, serving it,
(40:05):
she would give a meal to her oldest child and
have them walk it to a woman in the village
whose husband had died a year before, and so they
were feeding that woman every night. She could count on
a meal from them, from part of their family meal.
And I thought, my gosh, I mean they are barely
eking it out over here, and yet talk about giving
(40:26):
something to your neighbor. Right, So when you see these
points of light and these moments of joy, or I
have a moment of joy even with one of my granddaughters,
you know, it just fills you up and you remember
that it's all these little drops in the bucket or
points of light that ultimately lead to good things, even
when there are big world setbacks.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
I wanted to ask about that in terms of us
getting older. I know sometimes I look at my own mother,
who's a strong feminist woman, and sometimes she can get
very disheartened that at this point in her life she
feels like that's being rolled back a little bit. And
I know that you work with so many amazing young women.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
Are you OPTI?
Speaker 1 (41:10):
I am? I am When I see the way young
women are approaching their bodily autonomy or approaching work, or
by hook or by crook, getting themselves through college, you know,
they have opportunities that our mothers did not have. Is
it easy? No? And are there still lots of barriers? Yes,
(41:34):
but you are seeing more women starting to make it
in society. Have they reached all the top levels and
the right numbers? Definitely not? But are more of them
graduating from college and getting the career that they would
choose to get in some countries. Yes? And so I
constantly look for those points of light, And so I'm
(41:56):
I stay a realist about what the truth is because
I look at the data a lot. I help collect
the data on women around the world, but I also
remain an optimist. I also try to remember that societal
norms and movements to take a long time. You know,
we're working on something really hard here changing norms, but
it is possible. And you know, I even look at
(42:19):
over the course of Nelson Mandela's life, Look how long
it took him to get the change she and others
were pushing for in Africa, but he ultimately got it.
So sometimes it is, you know, a step forward and
it feels like, oh, two steps back, but you just
got to keep marching forward and hoping those steps stay
forward over the long term.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
For the version of you that was studying computer science
and was the only, well one of the very few
women in that world, hopefully that at the time that
has shifted. But yet it seems still looks, certainly visually
at the moment, very front and center for all of
us lots of male tech leaders. Do you think that
that is shifting enough or do you think that representation
(43:03):
of this sort of extreme masculinity in that world is
a bit excluding to women still?
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Well, I never like anything that pits men versus women.
So optically you're seeing a set of technology billionaires. Let's
call them out, you know, kind of front and center.
But here's what I would say. At the time I
was in college, women were on the rise like men.
In computer science, we got up to about thirty seven percent.
(43:29):
Just like law and medicine in the United States, law
and medicine kept going up, and now we graduate about
fifty percent females. fIF you're sent males in medicine and
in law. Computer science, it went up, and it took
a precipitous drop. There has been, though, a concerted effort
over the last five years to start to bring those
(43:49):
numbers back up, and they are coming back up in
computer science. So I will know that we are finally
making it when I see, you know, fifty percent of
graduates in computer science being women. But it will take
a long time for women's to get to the upper
echelons of those fields. Women still aren't there in medicine.
(44:09):
They're getting there in the law, but it just takes time.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
This book required a lot of vulnerability from you, and
I wanted to ask about that as you again in
relation a little bit to age. One of the very
smart journalists I interviewed once on this show is saying
that one of the paradoxes of ages that you get
wiser and stronger, but your skin also gets thinner. Almost
you can feel a lot of suffering of the people
(44:35):
around you in a way that when you were young
it bounced off you more. Is that something you experienced.
Is it getting more difficult for you to see the
suffering around you or are you confident enough in your
mission to stay strong on that.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
I don't think it's getting harder. I guess maybe because
I traveled so much to so many low income countries.
It was so painful for me in my thirties and
forties and fifties, especially when I'm raising young children to
go out and see a mom or dad with a
child who's dying of something that they wouldn't die of
in the United States. Dates like I've seen babies, three
(45:11):
babies seconing on one oxygen canister in the developing world,
right and you can see the terror in the parent's
eyes because the kids have pneumonia. They don't know if
they're going to get through it. So, at least for me,
I wouldn't say it's gotten harder. I think it's made
me more determined to put investments and resources in my
(45:32):
voice and decision making behind these issues. And I'm in
a very lucky position that I can even do that.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
Was it difficult for you to be so vulnerable in
this book and write it the way that you have,
As I say, it's very emotional book. Was it a
difficult choice?
Speaker 1 (45:50):
It was difficult. They are parts of it, like the
chapter on my friend John's death, you know, going back
to my notes from that time, the photos, that is
very difficult and very raw, and yet I thought it
would be beneficial that I thought there might be something
that I had learned and experienced. One of my friends
(46:11):
says that aging is just another form of living. Right
when you get to sixty, It's like, hey, I've lived
a lot of years. I've lived six decades. So to me,
it felt worth sharing those things, even if they were
raw and vulnerable at times, because my hope is they
might be helpful to somebody else going through one of
those types of transitions.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
I think, absolutely, will you write it isn't in that chapter,
but it's a little further on you. Right, all of
us have lost something on the journey here. A dear friend,
a sister, a parent, a job we loved, a healthy
working body. None of us gets this far in life
with everything intact.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
It's true, Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
On that the idea that aging is just another word
for living. There's a lot of focus at the minute
that maybe we can beat aging entirely. With the right
resources and technology, we could live forever. I think you
would know about that, chap Bran Johnson, what are your
feelings about that? What are your feelings about that? In
a place to put resource?
Speaker 1 (47:05):
Well, I know some of the things he's doing. I
think it be kind of an exhausting way to live.
I'd rather live with the time I have. Right, there's
age span and then there's health span and lifespan. Right,
And for me, it's about, you know, living each day
to its fullest. We're not going to beat mortality. We're
just not. And so to me, it's about gathering the
(47:28):
wisdom and the lessons. Like I gathered a lot of
wisdom and lessons from my friend John who passed away.
I had another friend, close friend who was in the
early fifties I was in my forties who passed away. Look,
we don't get to choose necessarily when we die and
quite you know, you could be in a car accident
today tomorrow. So live the most while you're here is
the way I like to focus my time.
Speaker 3 (47:49):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (47:51):
You write about the practices and rituals and methods that
get you through. We've talked about some of them today.
Speaker 3 (47:57):
Your life. Now you are on the other side.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
I don't know if you see it this way, but
you're on the other side of this very intense period
of transition. What are the things that you do now
every day that might be helpful to people to grounding
themselves in a new reality, as it were.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
I still meditate every morning, I have my favorite coffee.
I try to get some time and nature in the
mornings before I go into work, or before I even
go out for a walk with friends or go to
the gym to do my exercise, So taking that time
in quiet and then I also am very purposeful these
days about putting the news down and not letting myself
(48:38):
get caught at night when I'm tired, I might get
caught more in the doom scrolling as you know the
young people call it, or you know, following the news.
I really try to put my phone away after dinner
and just do something in the evenings that I enjoy doing,
whether it's a dinner with a friend, or it's watching
something fun on you know, one of the streaming services,
just kind of get away from all the news of
(49:01):
the day.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
That is one of the big things of the moment
the people are battling between. I need to be aware.
I need to be across all these things that are happening.
You can't look away because you know the standards you
walk past.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
Et cetera.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
But it is very bad for us to swim in
that much negativity, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
I think we need to be purposeful about how we
dip into the news and read it. Certainly we want
to be informed citizens. Certainly we need to know where
to speak up and use our voices, or use our resources,
or write our parliamentarian or our senator. So I think
it's super important for citizen read to be informed. But
(49:40):
I think we have to be very purposeful because we are.
We also have to remember, you know, I think back
to when my parents used to watch the news on
TV at night and we were little kids, you know,
before dinner or right after dinner. You know, it was
kind of thirty minutes of the news and might be
Walter cronkaid in the World News, but you weren't hearing
about this instantaneous shooting in a school or a bombing here,
(50:04):
that it's just this constant bombardment. So now it's up
to us to put the guardrails on it to keep
ourselves healthy.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
Finally, and that reminds me of something I've heard you
say a lot that when you and Bill were starting
the foundation, and obviously there are so many requests constantly
for assistance when you are a philanthropist, and you have
quoted often that Warren Buffett said to you, choose a
small target. That's really interesting because I think that even
(50:33):
for those of us who aren't thinking about it literally
like that, with a philanthropic fortune, that can be very useful,
even in terms of what you were just talking about,
rather than the overwhelm of the everything, to focus in
on a small target.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
Or sure, do you think for sure? Let's say you've
set aside in your budget that you're going to give
away the equivalent of two hundred and fifty dollars a
year or the equivalent of a thousand dollars a year,
knowing what you most care about and where you think
your resources can have the most good in terms of
what you think could change something. Having a focus for
(51:10):
it I think really helps. And same thing if you're
volunteering your time. I tell people, look at where your
talents and your gifts are. Are you a patient person? Like?
Are you a good teacher? Would you be a good
mentor to a student after school or a coach for
a team. Would you be better off being somebody who
maybe prepares meals for a homeless shelter. Would you be
better at maybe serving on a board? Would that give
(51:34):
you joy and use your talents? Because if it does,
you'll probably spend more time doing it, and you'll probably
get more out of it, and the people around you
in that organization will get more from your talents. So
I think being targeted in our approach for time or
money or energy makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
And even attention as well, right in terms of what
you're going to focus on. Thank you so much, Melinda
Frenchgates for talking to me today, being so genous with
your time, and for writing.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
A truly beautiful book.
Speaker 2 (52:03):
I think the next day is going to be helpful
to full content.
Speaker 1 (52:07):
Thanks for having me, Holly.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Melinda Frenchgates. I
have to say, as I had said in the intro,
I was nervous to talk to her because gosh, there
are a few more impressive women that you get to
sit down with than French Gates. But look, if she
can't convince me to meditate, nobody can. I think it's
definitely time if you are wrestling, probably on a very
(52:34):
different scale with the transition of divorce. I want to
point you to some other Mid episodes that have conversations
around that. Vicky Parkinson, who was blindsided by an email
late at night that spelled out the end of her marriage.
Amantha Imba, who has remarried after falling in love post divorce,
and she talks about how she made that happen because
(52:54):
she really did like make that happen, And Julie Cohen,
who talks about sexuality in midlife and why it isn't
time to settle. Thank you so much for being with
us through this episode of Mid and I hope you'll
join us again next week. The executive producer of this
episode is named A.
Speaker 3 (53:10):
Brown.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
The senior producer is Grace Ruveray. The producer is Charlie Blackman,
and there's been audio production by Jacob Brown.
Speaker 3 (53:18):
See you next time.
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