On Anne's Mind

Tags

» #hateisavirus
» #metoo
» #stopasianhate
» #timesup
» 19th Amendment
» 2020
» 2020 Elections
» 2020 Women on Boards
» 988
» Afghanistan
» African Americans
» African Animals Reserves
» Alexia Barrier
» all girl rodeo
» Allison Donahue
» America
» American democracy
» American West
» Anne Doyle
» anxiety
» aretha franklin
» Asian Hate
» astronaut
» auto industry
» Avalon Healing Center
» Baby Boomers
» baby sleep training
» Barbara McQuade
» Becoming
» Betsy Randolph
» black history
» Black Lives Matter
» blindness
» breast cancer
» breast nipples
» breast reconstruction
» breast surgery
» Brenda Lawrence
» Breonna Taylor
» Brianna Salvatore Dueck
» bullying
» business
» business coach
» cady coleman
» Cambodia
» Cambodia Civil War
» cannabis
» Carol Hutch Hutchins
» Cat Carlyle
» CBD
» cher car kennels
» Christine Brennan
» climate crisis
» college coaching
» college softball
» comics
» comique-con
» concussions
» Congressional Women's Caucus
» coup
» courses with horses
» covid-19
» cowgirl culture
» Critical Race Theory
» Detroit
» Detroit PAL
» Detroit Podcast Festival
» Dick Vitale
» diplomacy
» Discrimination
» dog bites
» dog training
» domestic violence
» Donald Trump
» Donna de Varona
» dressage
» Ellen Hill Zeringue
» Empowerment
» energy healing
» Equal Pay
» Equal Rights Amendment
» equestrian
» Ersilia Vaudo Scarpetta
» ESG
» European Space Agency
» executive coaching
» exotic animals
» fake news
» Family Separation Policy
» Father's Day
» Female soldiers
» Female sports broadcaster
» feminine divine
» feminine marketing
» Feminism
» financial planning
» flint
» Ford Motor Company
» franchise
» free press
» Game Changers
» Gen X
» Gen Z
» Gender
» gender advocacy
» Gender bias
» Gender discrimination
» Gender equity
» Gender gap
» Gender violence
» General Linda Singh
» General Motors
» generational poverty
» Girls
» girls education
» Girls Rugby
» Girls sports
» Glass ceiling
» Global sisterhood
» Governor Gretchen Whitmer
» graphic design
» health care
» HERImpact
» herstory
» history
» holocaust
» horses
» impeachment
» Imposter Syndrome
» inner city girls
» insomnia
» international relations
» International Women's Forum
» investing
» jeffrey tobias halter
» Jim Crow
» joanne gerstner
» journalism
» Julie Foucht
» jumper
» kristen odeh
» Latinas
» Laurel Anne Hill
» Leadership
» Linda Solomon
» magna
» Mallory McMorrow
» marijuana
» Matilda Dodge Wilson
» Meadowbrook Hall
» Megan Rapinoe
» Men
» Men's Leadership
» mental health
» mental illness
» mentoring
» mexico
» Michelle Obama
» Michigan
» migrant children
» military
» militias
» Millenials
» Miss Rodeo
» money
» Monica Doyle
» Mothers
» motor city woman studio
» Motown
» motown music
» nancy trites botkin
» older women
» online dating
» pandemic
» Parenting
» patriarchy
» Patricia Anstett
» Pay gap
» period poverty
» Pictures of Hope
» pit bulls
» Podcast
» podcasting
» Politics
» Powering Up!
» purpose
» race relations
» Racism
» rape
» refugee
» retirement
» robin kinnie
» rodeo
» Ruth Bader Ginsburg
» sailing
» Samar Nassar
» science
» sexism
» Sexual assault
» Sexual harassment
» sexual trafficking
» Share the Dignity
» she factor
» Sisterhood
» Six Degrees of Separation
» Siyafunda Reserve
» soccer
» social entrepreneurship
» Social Media
» space station
» Sports
» sports journalism
» STEM
» Stilettos and Sneakers
» stress
» Sue Kruszewski
» Suffragists
» suicide
» susan douglas
» Sybil Morial
» tampon tax
» thear sy suzuki
» Tiger King
» Title IX
» tomboy
» toxic workplace
» transgender
» trauma
» Trump
» university of michigan
» Vendée Globe
» Vote
» voterunlead
» water crisis
» Weinstein
» western
» white supremacy
» WNBA
» Women
» women and horses
» women and power
» women and sports
» women astronauts
» women athletes
» women candidates
» Women leadership
» women military
» Women on boards
» Women Writing the West
» women's soccer
» women's sports
» Women's Sports Foundation
» womens basketball
» womens history
» Work Life Integration
» workforce
» Workplace issues
» World Cup Soccer
» wrestle like a girl
» writing
» Yolanda Nava
» youth sports
» Ywomen

Thoughts to Remember on a Year to Forget

January 1, 2021

December 31, 2020 Auburn Hills, Michigan  USA 

Many of you have emailed me, even from as far away as Nepal, asking, "Where have you been, Anne? Why haven't you written to your global network since last fall?"

I've been quiet because I felt we were all so overloaded with bad news that there was no value in adding my voice to the deafening drumbeat agonizing about COVID-19, racist atrocities, the most divisive political climate of my lifetime, or the growing reality that women are bearing the motherload of the pandemic toll, with both their families and their careers. 

Of course I was elated and relieved by the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as our next president and vice-president. But it's too soon to celebrate. America is still enduring the destructive death throes of Donald Trump's cruel, corrupt and incompetent presidency.

Plus, the world remains in the grip of some of the darkest weeks of this pandemic, with the death toll in the United States now 340,000 and climbing. 

Ironically, I was anticipating 2020 to be a joyful year, full of national celebrations to mark the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which changed my life and those of millions of women decades before we were born.

Several of my closest friends and I had reservations in Seneca Falls, New York, birthplace of the Women's Suffrage Movement, where we planned to join thousands of others to honor the leadership of Susan B. Anthony, Lucrecia Mott and the legions of American suffragists who tenaciously persisted through the 75-year, often brutal fight for the right to vote.

How ironic that the 100th anniversary of their 1920 victory occurred in a presidential election year when American democracy hung by a thread and women voters, particularly African American women, made the critical difference. 

As I watched the long-anticipated celebrations of a gigantic step in women's herstory pass as a whisper in the pandemic's wake, and began to comprehend the toll that this deadly virus is claiming, particularly for women, people of color and our most vulnerable citizens, I turned inward. Rather than thinking of what I could write or what inspiring podcast guest I could interview, I found myself voiceless. 

But my silence was neither acceptance nor resignation to the multitude of injustices that 2020 forced the world to notice. If anything, I am even more determined to use my experience, my influence, my networks, my resources and whatever years remain to me to do whatever I can, where I can, when I can to help those who cannot. 

I've found inspiration from a multitude of talented, ambitious, kick-ass younger women of every generation. Here are just a few who are inspiring me to rise to the possibilities of 2021, rather than wallow in the reckonings of 2020. 

Kim Brooks, writing in the New York Times that "Feminism Has Failed Women," calls for a New Feminism that is "grounded in solidarity (with other women and men who support us) rather than (merely) success." 

Gitanjali Rao, a 15 year old, brilliant young scientist and inventor, selected by TIME MAGAZINE as "Kid of the Year." Rao told interviewer Angelina Jolie, "I think more than anything right now, we just need to find that one thing that we're passionate about and solve it. Even if it's something small. Don't feel pressured to come up with something big." 

Kate Davis, deputy editor of Fast Company magazine who did a fascinating POWER UP WOMEN! podcast with me about her powerful commentary, Whitmer vs. Cuomo: A Case Study in American Sexism. 

And, of course, Kamala Harris, who will become the first woman and woman of color to become vice president of the United States, on January 20 of the New Year we all so eagerly await. We must have her back as she faces the inevitable sexist headwinds that still blow so hard against women who dare to push the edges of possibility. 

So, as we close the book on 2020, let's not hurry back to NORMAL LIFE. I hope you'll join me in taking the time to embrace the many lessons of a year that refused to allow us to look away.

For me, the most important lesson has been the reminder of the collective responsibility we all have to one another and to the children, planet and all living things in our care. For those of us lucky enough, as I am, to have come through 2020's many tests with our health, a safe place to live, food for our families, health insurance and without fear of what tomorrow may bring, we are called upon to do MORE.

After nearly five decades of often finding myself on the front line of fights for human equity and opportunity, there are days when I think it is time for me to step aside. There is nothing that gives me hope more than watching talented, diverse, ambitious kick-ass women stepping forward and tackling complex problems that my generation has left unsolved.

But I was recently issued a fresh challenge by Karina Funk, one of the "100 Most Influential Women in Finance" and a leading voice and expert on Sustainable Investing, whom I was privileged to interview for the January IWF GAME CHANGERS podcast. We were talking about the courage that it requires for women to ask tough questions and advocate for diversity and the planet in boardrooms or executive suites where we are still minority voices. 

"If you are (a woman) in a boardroom, you are already at a point in your career where you've made a lot of decisions that have built your reputation," Karina urged. "Use that reputation to take career risks... to make an impact."

So that's my New Year's resolution: to accept Karina Funk's challenge, which reminded me of the inspiring words of Mary Lou Anderson.

"Leaders are called to stand in that lonely place between the no longer and the not yet, and intentionally make decisions that will bind, forge, move and create history. We are not called to be popular. We are not called to be safe. We are not called to follow. We are the ones called to take risks. We are the ones called to change attitudes, to risk displeasures. We are the ones called to gamble our lives for a better world." 

So long 2020. Let's get started 2021! 

 

 

Women Were't Given the Vote. They Fought For It!

September 2, 2020

Last week the long-anticipated statue of American Suffragists Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Sojourner Truth was unveiled on the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment being signed into the U.S. Constitution on August 26, 1920. It was the first-ever statue in New York's Central Park depicting real women!

I've been interested for a long time in the Suffragists -- both the Americans and the more radical English reformers -- who fought with single-minded tenaciousness for decades for women's right to vote.

My favorite movie is Iron-Jawed Angels with Hillary Swank playing Alice Paul, the fierce, second-generation Suffragist who led the final battles for passage years after Susan B. Anthony, the amendment's "mother," was in her grave. 

So I thought I knew a lot -- about the history, the decades of leaders who took up the fight, the mockery and violence that thousands of women endured, and the complexities of racism entwined in the fight that split white and black women. But my understanding was just the tip of the iceberg.

I had no idea about the powers that fought so long and so bitterly to keep half of the population of an alleged Democracy disenfranchised. The real story, the WHOLE story is one of the most important stories in American history.  It is as essential to understanding who we are as is the American Civil War. And the bitter lessons that the struggle taught about political power are as relevant today as 100 years ago. 

I hope you will take the time to watch the outstanding, two-part PBS documentary, THE VOTE, which is worth every minute of your time and FREE onlline. 

 If you are an American citizen, it will deepen your understanding of the powerful forces and divisions that shape our country and will challenge you to think deeply about who "We the People" really are.

If you are a citizen of a another country, wondering what the heck is going on with the USA, it will help you understand why I believe the upcoming U.S. presidential election is the most important of my lifetime.

In a democracy, there is nothing more important than safe and fair elections that truly represent the will of ALL THE PEOPLE. 

Stay in touch with Anne

Sign up here to receive special messages from Anne about current topics.

Processing