Melinda French Gates
Appearances
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And I don't think they're the values that most families hold dear. To me, we need to really think about our values and align our government funding with those values. And we seem to be headed in the wrong direction in my point of view on those issues right now.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
Well, it's interesting. It's – you know, when we started out with the Giving Pledge, which was Warren Buffett's big idea, that for society it was right that if you had earned a billion dollars, which I completely agree, you – if you have a billion dollars, you have an absurd amount of wealth. And so you should give – at least half of it back to society because you have benefited from society.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
You've benefited from those laws or those roads or the people that helped you along the way to get that scholarship into the college you wanted to go to. You have benefited from that society.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And so we set out to role model for society with the Giving Pledge, founded by Warren Buffett, my ex-husband Bill Gates, and myself, to say, if you're of this level of wealth, join us and commit to giving half away. Neither of us, none of the three of us, would have thought that we would have over 240 families now that are part of the Giving Pledge.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And we have not just first-generation givers, but now we have second and some third-generation givers. And so they're also in countries, I think it's over 30 countries now from around the world. So we just didn't expect that it would grow that large. And I will tell you, there are ripple effects and knock-on effects where they are also convincing others, even others who aren't of age.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
as substantial means, right? And what I always say to people is no matter who you are, the nuns in my high school taught us this as girls, you have something to give back. You know, they sent us out in society to volunteer our time. My only point is we all have things to give back, our time, our energy, our intellect. and or our money. And I think that we should all look for ways to do that.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And guess what? The funny thing is you also benefit from it. It's just an unbelievable kind of side benefit.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
Well, the cuts of things like USAID are absolutely devastating for families all over the world. I Everything, you know, that philanthropy does is we try and find catalytic wedges and ways to work. We take risk where a government can't with taxpayer money and shouldn't. But then once we know something works, it's really up to government to scale it up.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
Thank you for that question. It you know. I knew when they were growing up that, again, this was just, you know, a crazy amount of wealth and that they were, you know, going to grow up in this extraordinarily large house. And so the only thing I knew to do was to say, okay, what was my childhood? What were the middle class values my parents had?
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
What things did they, I really reflected on how they parented me, both the things that I wanted to repeat and a few things I didn't want to repeat, right? And in reflecting on that, it was in a parenting class that I was taught this, I could then say, okay, how should I raise these kids? If I'm going to raise them to the best of my ability, I wanted them to know they were loved.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
I wanted them to have deep values. And I wanted them to know they were lucky, right? And so I... purposely put them in schools. I didn't homeschool them because or have them homeschooled because I wanted to be part of the community. I thought it would benefit them. And they did go through some knocks or we did also as a family being in and out of different schools in and around Seattle.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
We were in and out of many different schools because I believed in choosing the right school for the right kid. But I also took them out into the community and And I took them out, even when they were lucky enough to travel to a place like Africa, we went out and saw what life was like for other kids. And even in the Seattle community, we would go out and
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
work with the homeless, work in a community shelter, be on the lines where they're feeding people. And so my kids got to see, my gosh, are we lucky, and to really think about their role in society. And as I would take them on trips, one of my daughters, my youngest one, actually worked in Rwanda for three or four, I think, summers.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
during her middle school and some of her high school years and lived with a family in Rwanda. And so, you know, my kids got to see what life was like and that Seattle was this tiny speck on the map. And so I tried to ground them in that, ground them with
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
chores, ground them with an allowance, you know, and the people who were helping me in and around the house, you know, also people just with good values. So I did my best. And yeah, I'm proud of all three of them. They're all in their 20s now.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
Okay, that quote, I literally just heard today because I guess he said it on some podcast. So I really don't have a comment on that because I'm not even sure what his 1% of what amount that is now.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
I mean, I have no idea. Tariffs. I have no idea what his wealth is today or yesterday when he said that. So I'm just going to let that one sit.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
Well, what I'll say about divorce, and I wrote about it in the book because I felt it would be disingenuous of me not to. People knew I had been through it and we had been through it. You know, what I will say about divorce is it's just painful for everybody involved. There were five of us, right? Two adults and three children. And It's really not something I would wish on any family.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
You're pulling apart something that has been together. But the stories about how it affected my kids or they affected me, those are ones for us to keep in private between them and us because it just was a painful time. And I don't want to dig that back up for them because they had their own journeys through it, right? Right.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
So to see that women won't have health services or there'll be more cases of malaria next year. It's almost unimaginable to me, especially given that both Republican and Democratic administrations really relied on USAID and not only saw the good work that it was doing, but started to scale it up even more. It's why we actually have less death and disease in the world.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
Well, I started to regain my voice when we were talking earlier about traveling the world and meeting women and realizing, wow. I have something I really want to do here, which is contraceptives. And I gained my voice in pulling the foundation together when the foundation was on one trajectory and I had to say, we're also going to do this, right?
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And pulling the people together, getting the data, doing the research, finding out where there was and wasn't research, and then leading this global charge, I realized in doing that, oh... I have regained my voice. And so then I had to kind of go back and look and say, well, what was it? Where did I not feel I could speak out? Where did I enter a room?
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And I was still put down, even though I was the head of a foundation, right? And I talk about this too, and I have it before publicly, where, you know, I go into a room with a prime minister or president and they would immediately turn to my ex-husband as if he was the expert on the foundation, when in fact he was still working at Microsoft and I'd been traveling more, right?
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
So I think in all of those sort of moments that happen or those slights, you start to lose or I started to lose who I was. But then in doing the work and really stepping out and having the courage to step out for something that was hard because I was also Catholic. I started to regain my voice and say, no, no, no, no, no.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
This voice is really important, and it's something I want to use and use it boldly in the world. When you say you were Catholic and it was hard, what do you mean by that? Well, I grew up in a church that was extraordinarily hierarchical. As I said earlier, run by priests. The women were all nuns. But, you know, the Catholic Church does not believe in birth control. And yet I do.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
I know the difference it makes for women all over the world. And so I had to really wrestle with my faith, this faith that has, as I came to really wrestle with it, these man-made rules. You know, a woman should not use a contraceptive. So does that outweigh the fact that she might die or her child might die? Like, I had to really spend time in quiet and wrestle with that.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And I read a lot of different theologians. I literally had a couple of scholars from Notre Dame come teach me how to have the Catholic Church gotten to this position over time. Um, I read a lot and listened a lot to Richard Rohr, who is a quite liberal, uh, Catholic priest and had to form my own point of view because I knew what I felt was right.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
But I, I was living in a religion that was telling me, you know, thou shalt not use contraceptives. And yet I was using them and I believed in them and I believed other women should absolutely have access to them. So I had to, what I call wrestle with my own faith and those, those rules. Yeah.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
I still go to church some, certainly not as frequently as I did when I was growing up. But for me, really what I've come to learn is that there are different religions around the world today. But really, they come down to, do you have a spirituality? Do you have a sense of values? Do you have a morality that you believe in? To me, that's the essence, really, is the spirituality.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And then, okay, the rules are somewhat man-made by other people. And so I am today in two different spiritual groups. I write about these in the book. One that I've been with for over 20 years. We go on silent retreats together. We meet monthly. I just met with them yesterday. We'll go on silent retreat in May.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And then another smaller spiritual group that's a little bit more new, but we are, it's a non, both are non-denominational groups, but we're all reading the same texts, reading different books that we bring, talking about topics that help us explore our own spirituality. And quite frankly, even our own mortality, because that's important to do as well. And I've really benefited from those groups.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
Well, luckily, I knew a lot about money because my parents were running this real estate business, as I said, which was our college fund to put us four kids through college. My dad and mom had bought this Apple three computer for our house. And we used the spreadsheet. And my sister and I put in all the entries. We could see what rent was coming in.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
We could see what money was going out the door for repairs. We could see where my parents had lost a deposit. And so I totally knew the flows of money. And I could see when they were going to have trouble meeting that. I knew what their loan that they'd taken out on some of these places were. So I could see the months it was going to be tough for them to meet that loan payment, right?
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
But we didn't certainly, and as a family, we worked really, really hard. Like, I was told that when I, by my parents, all of us were siblings, that the day you cross stage and you're done with college, you're on your own. Like, that's it. So, you know, buying your first car, that's going to be up to you.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
You know, getting your first apartment will help you find it, but you got to pay the rent, not us. Right. And so I was always earning money in high school and in college in preparation for that. And I was earning money to my own spending money in college. And that just felt great.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And then if I wanted something nice, let's say I wanted a new dress or a nice dress, I really had to wait for Christmas or birthdays. And there's nothing wrong in waiting. I taught that to my kids, too. They didn't just... get things they wanted, they had to put it on their Christmas wish list.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And maybe they'd get it from their grandparents or their parents or their aunts and uncles, or maybe they wouldn't. And same for their birthday. You know, it wasn't just that, oh, you always got these new things.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And I remember a very specific time that first came up was with my oldest daughter and she was in middle school and she saw this purse, you know, in the window of a store that she just had to have, had to have. And she said to me, why won't you buy it? Like you can clearly afford it. And I came up with this phrase, just because you can doesn't mean you should. Right.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
To know right now in the United States that my two beautiful little granddaughters will have fewer rights than I had growing up, that just doesn't make any sense to me. And so in some ways it makes my work all the more pressing. And I'm still doing what I have been doing. I'm putting more money, though, now into women's health.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And I said, you know, if you show up at school with that particular branded purse, what are the other girls going to think of you? How will they think of you? Like, it's my job as your mom, I know you want it, but to think through those things with you and for you. And, you know, those are not easy conversations, but they're really important ones to have.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And then the other thing I'll just say about money is, you know, I was incredibly fortunate. I joined Microsoft when it was a very young company, less than, you know, 1500 employees. And so I felt really good about earning my own money. Yeah. I remember my first furniture set for my apartment.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
I put one piece back then on layaway because I didn't want to like put all my money out for the furniture right away. But I felt good about earning my own money. And then again, because the company rose up so quickly and they gave us stock options back then, you know, I had my own wealth before I got married. And that was also just an incredibly good feeling. And I was very proud of that.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And I managed that money quite well. I ended up buying a small house for myself and buying, my first car was a Honda Prelude, which, and then my second car was a bit nicer, right? And that just feels good when you're, as a woman, managing your own independent wealth.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
I mistakenly thought that that philanthropy could change things more than it could. I didn't realize that it takes philanthropy in concert with civil society and government, massive government funding to change things. So if you really want to affect philanthropy, children's lives around the world and get vaccines out, that takes enormous government funding. Philanthropy cannot do it on its own.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
If you want to affect maternal health around the world, you really have to have philanthropy, again, taking on the experiments, trying things, figuring out what works, doing the research, but then it really takes government funding to scale those things up. So I learned that and I learned also very much the power of the collective.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
Like I just did not understand how much power there is when a group bands together to stand up for something that's wrong. And I learned that being out in many, many situations with women, that when they banded together as a group, they could stand for their rights. They could demand the government come in and build the health clinic. It was just something I had never understood or known before.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And I think it would have taken me longer to learn that had I not been in philanthropy and, again, gotten to travel and see it in action in so many different cultures around the world.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
I made a billion dollar commitment when I came out of the foundation that through Pivotal Ventures, we would try and really work on some of these places where organizations, for instance, in the United States had been playing defense in terms of women's issues to help put them on the offense. But also we announced 250 million of that is for a women's health fund.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And we're taking proposals from all over the world. to figure out what are ways that we can really advance women's health across the world.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
You know, where it's the most chaotic and devastating is when you go out on the ground. So I was down in Louisiana about a month ago and to hear that doctors don't even know which services they can provide women for. What can they counsel on? What can they not counsel on? Women who are very concerned about their health saying, I can't have another baby, but where am I going to get birth control?
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
Or, wow, I show up at the system and the bias in the system, they're not even listening to what I know about my own body. So to think that we are doing things from the highest level right now in the for moms and babies, it just, it's almost incomprehensible. I mean, to have a child, two children now die of measles, measles in the United States. Wow.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
When that is completely preventable, do you know how devastating that is for those families? That's where the chaos is. And that's where the saddest part of what's going on is happening.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
Well, I think we all want authentic, real connection with other human beings, right? And we can't, you know, we can't really know more than, I don't know, they say maybe 100 people, 100, some people say 150. But, you know, I know who my closest family and friends are. I treasure them, they treasure me. I know who's kind of in my next ring and my ring beyond that.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
But I do want audiences to see that, you know, great wealth does not shield you. But what I want people to know is that I'm a human being and they may put a label on me, but that label doesn't really define who I am. I know who I am. And so by being my authentic self, I hope they can see, okay, she's gone through struggles and hardship too, but come out the other side. And so maybe I can as well.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
Well, my dad would often talk at the dinner table about how his teams, he was working on the Apollo mission, and how his teams were better when they had females on them, female mathematicians. And so as the teams would change and be reconstructed, he was always trying to get women on onto his team. And so for me, this played out because we would go in the summer to the company picnics.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And my dad would make sure my sister and I met those women. So we met not only the men on his teams, but we met the women. And I could see, literally see women in these roles, smart women that I admired and who I could talk to. And I would say, oh, okay, I guess my dad's right here. And so That played out for me as an influence of, oh, I could be like her if I wanted to be.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And that was having that role model, having both a father who believed in me and parents who were both determined that their children would all go to college and that they would take on the debt, which was a huge gift to us as siblings. But then to have these role models specifically in front of my eyes, that really had a huge influence on me.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
I think, again, because he had lived experience, he could see that, okay, this engineering project, like putting a man on the moon, that is audacious. And he was a piece of it, right? But to see that his teens literally were better because these women were on it... He had a lived experience to say, this could be great for my daughters and for society. And my dad wasn't afraid to speak up.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
He encouraged us to speak up, even when he didn't necessarily agree with him. But he also believed in us. And I think that I cannot stress enough the importance a father's imprint makes on a daughter. Like my dad, literally, we were walking as a family. We would often go out to lunch on a Sunday and then take a walk.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And we were literally walking by this new IBM building at this sort of beautiful office park. And my dad, as we walked by, literally said, Melinda, you should put your resume up on that door. You should tape it up on the door. And I said, dad, what are you talking about? He said, they would be silly not to hire you.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And he could see in me and my sister what I couldn't see myself, which was, okay, you're in college, you're getting a computer science degree. There aren't very many of you. And so they should want to hire you. And guess what? He was right. I eventually did get hired by IBM. Yeah.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
Sure. We were quite involved as a family in our local parish church and school, and they were attached to one another. And so the head of the school was a female, was a principal, a nun. The head of the church was a male. The priests were all males. And Somewhat frequently, the priests would come over and make sure that all the rules were being followed.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
So, you know, our skirts as girls had to be, you know, so far from the floor when you knelt down. Okay, fine. But anyway, they had this rule that you couldn't have nail polish on. And I wasn't trying to be rebellious. I don't remember, but I put some sort of light, clear pink nail polish on some point during the weekend. trying to look presentable.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And so there we are, I think it's on a Monday or Tuesday, and they come around and all the girls have to put, not the boys, all the girls have to put their hands on the table. And the priests come around and see who has nail polish on it. And I literally didn't think I was going to be in trouble because here I have this clear pink nail polish on.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And sure enough, I get tapped on the shoulder and sent to the principal's office. Well, Principal, secretary, whatever, calls home to my mom, and the rule was that my mom and the other moms had to come to school with nail polish remover. Well, my mom had two young sons at home, so she had to get in the car, get them in the car, drive to the school. You know, we took care of it.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
I go home that afternoon or that evening, and when my father comes home and he hears the story, he is incensed. Not at me. He's like, okay, what's the big deal about nail polish, clear nail polish? But that the priest would have the audacity to pull the girls out of class for a rule infraction, but take our mom's time away from to come to the school to take care of it.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
It's a different thing to say, go home and take the nail polish home at the end of the day off and come back the next day. And so my dad had my back and my mom's back and said, just because these men, he's basically saying have the power, doesn't mean it's right. Your mom never got to go to college, but she wanted to. She did.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And her parents just... She grew up at a day and age where her parents had two girls, and they just didn't see the need for her to go to college. She certainly could have gone, and... And she ended up regretting that. She took some college classes later. My mom is plenty smart. And later, my parents start a family real estate business.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And my mom is the one, I mean, they're both running it at night, but it's my mom running it during the day and making sure all the pieces come together of all the various properties they have and tenants and laws and all of that. So she and my dad were determined that both their two girls and their two boys would go through college because they just thought it really was
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
a ticket in life to go where you wanted.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
Well, I'll say... When I was working at the foundation, you know, I started to see through all my travels the difference that when a woman could space the births of her children, it made an enormous difference in the children's health and being able to go to school and then ultimately the wealth of the family.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And yet I would meet so many women around the world who knew about contraceptives but didn't have access. And as I started to learn and study about it and think, is this the right thing for us to do as a foundation? I learned the history of contraceptives and when women had had them and under what circumstances and when they hadn't.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
And I realized we needed to do something about this as a foundation. So I decided on the global stage. I'm going to set the agenda because for whatever reason, this has fallen off the global health agenda. And yet it's vital for women and for babies.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
We were losing, we still are, too many moms in childbirth because their babies were coming too close and too often, particularly in these low-income countries. And then the babies were dying as well.
Fresh Air
Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth
Yes. And I always say, you know, what is it that we value as society? Don't we value our children and our babies more? If you value our children and our babies, don't their mothers need to be healthy? We know a mom is healthier when she can space the births of her children. So to me, it's that we are getting some of our values misaligned right now. And they aren't the values that I hold dear.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
Well, the cuts of things like USAID are absolutely devastating for families all over the world. I Everything that philanthropy does is we try and find catalytic wedges and ways to work. We take risk where a government can't with taxpayer money and shouldn't. But then once we know something works, it's really up to government to scale it up.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
So to see that women won't have health services or there'll be more cases of malaria next year – It's almost unimaginable to me, especially given that both Republican and Democratic administrations really relied on USAID and not only saw the good work that it was doing, but started to scale it up even more. It's why we actually have less death and disease in the world.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
To know right now in the United States that my two beautiful little granddaughters will have fewer rights than I had growing up, that just doesn't make any sense to me. And so in some ways it makes my work all the more pressing. And I'm still doing what I have been doing. I'm putting more money, though, now into women's health.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
I made a billion dollar commitment when I came out of the foundation that through Pivotal Ventures, we would try and really work on some of these places where Organizations, for instance, in the United States had been playing defense in terms of women's issues to help put them on the offense. But also we announced $250 million of that is for a women's health fund.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
And we're taking proposals from all over the world to figure out what are ways that we can really advance women's health across the world.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
You know, where it's the most chaotic and devastating is when you go out on the ground. So I was down in Louisiana about a month ago and to hear that doctors don't even know which services they can provide women with. What can they counsel on? What can they not counsel on? Women who are very concerned about their health saying, I can't have another baby, but where am I going to get birth control?
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
Or, wow, I show up at the system and the bias in the system, they're not even listening to what I know about my own body. So to think that we are doing things from the highest level right now in the United States that are making things worse on the ground, for moms and babies, it just, it's almost incomprehensible.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
I mean, to have a child, two children now die of measles, measles in the United States. Wow. When that is completely preventable, do you know how devastating that is for those families? That's where the chaos is. And that's where the saddest part of what's going on is happening. Yeah.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
Well, I think we all want authentic, real connection with other human beings, right? And we can't, you know, we can't really know more than, I don't know, they say maybe 100 people, 100, some people say 150. But, you know, I know who my closest family and friends are. I treasure them, they treasure me. I know who's kind of in my next ring and my ring beyond that.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
But I do want audiences to see that, you know, great wealth does not shield you. But what I want people to know is that I'm a human being and they may put a label on me, but that label doesn't really define who I am. I know who I am. And so by being my authentic self, I hope they can see, okay, she's gone through struggles and hardship too, but come out the other side. And so maybe I can as well.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
Well, my dad would often talk at the dinner table about how his teams, he was working on the Apollo mission, and how his teams were better when they had females on them, female mathematicians. And so as the teams would change and be reconstructed, he was always trying to get women on onto his team. And so for me, this played out because we would go in the summer to the company picnics.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
And my dad would make sure my sister and I met those women. So we met not only the men on his teams, but we met the women. And I could see, literally see women in these roles, smart women that I admired and who I could talk to. And I would say, oh, okay, I guess my dad's right here. And so that played out for me as an influence of, oh, I could be like her if I wanted to be.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
And that was having that role model, having both a father who believed in me and parents who were both determined that their children would all go to college and that they would take on the debt, which was a huge gift to us as siblings. But then to have these role models specifically in front of my eyes, that really had a huge influence on me.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
I think, again, because he had lived experience, he could see that, okay, this engineering project, like putting a man on the moon, that is audacious. And he was a piece of it, right? But this see that his teens literally were better because these women were on it. He had a lived experience to say, this could be great for my daughters and for society. And my dad wasn't afraid to speak up.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
He encouraged us to speak up, even when he didn't necessarily agree with him. But he also believed in us. And I think that I cannot stress enough the importance a father's imprint makes on a daughter. Like my dad, literally, we were walking as a family. We would often go out to lunch on a Sunday and then take a walk.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
And we were literally walking by this new IBM building at this sort of beautiful office park. And my dad, as we walked by, literally said, Melinda, you should put your resume up on that door. You should tape it up on the door. And I said, dad, what are you talking about? He said, they would be silly not to hire you.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
And he could see in me and my sister what I couldn't see myself, which was, okay, you're in college, you're getting a computer science degree. There aren't very many of you. And so they should want to hire you. And guess what? He was right. I eventually did get hired by IBM.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
And her parents just she grew up in a day and age where her parents had two girls and they just didn't see the need for her to go to college. She certainly could have gone and left. And she ended up regretting that. She took some college classes later. My mom is plenty smart. And later, my parents start a family real estate business.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
And my mom is the one, I mean, they're both running it at night, but it's my mom running it during the day and making sure all the pieces come together of all the various properties they have and tenants and laws and all of that. But she and my dad were determined that both their two girls and their two boys would go through college because they just thought it really was
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
Well, I'll say when I was working at the foundation, I started to see through all my travels that The difference that when a woman could space the births of her children, it made an enormous difference in the children's health and being able to go to school and then ultimately the wealth of the family.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
And yet I would meet so many women around the world who knew about contraceptives but didn't have access. And as I started to learn and study about it and think, is this the right thing for us to do as a foundation? I learned the history of contraceptives and when women had had them and under what circumstances and when they hadn't.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
And I realized we needed to do something about this as a foundation. So I decided on the global stage. I'm going to set the agenda because for whatever reason, this has fallen off the global health agenda. And yet it's vital for women and for babies.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
We were losing, we still are, too many moms in childbirth because their babies were coming too close and too often, particularly in these low-income countries. And then the babies were dying as well.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
Yes. And I always say, you know, what is it that we value as society? Don't we value our children and our babies? Yes. If you value our children and our babies, don't their mothers need to be healthy? We know a mom is healthier when she can space the births of her children. So to me, it's that we are getting some of our values misaligned right now. And they aren't the values that I hold dear.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
And I don't think they're the values that most families hold dear. To me, we need to really think about our values and align our government funding with those values. And we seem to be headed in the wrong direction in my point of view on those issues right now.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
Well, it's interesting. It's, you know, when we started out with the Giving Pledge, which was Warren Buffett's big idea, that for society, it was right that if you had earned a billion dollars, which I completely agree, if you have a billion dollars, you have an absurd amount of wealth. And so you should give back. at least half of it back to society because you have benefited from society.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
You've benefited from those laws or those roads or the people that helped you along the way to get that scholarship into the college you wanted to go to. You have benefited from that society. And so we set out to role model for society by,
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
with the Giving Pledge, founded by Warren Buffett, my ex-husband Bill Gates, and myself, to say, if you're of this level of wealth, join us and commit to giving half away. Neither of us, none of the three of us, would have thought that we would have over 240 families now that are part of the Giving Pledge.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
And we have not just first-generation givers, but now we have second and some third-generation givers. And so they're also in countries, I think it's over 30 countries now from around the world. So we just didn't expect that it would grow that large. And I will tell you, there are ripple effects and knock-on effects.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
where they are also convincing others, even others who aren't of as substantial means, right? And what I always say to people is no matter who you are, the nuns in my high school taught us this as girls, you have something to give back. You know, they sent us out in society to volunteer our time.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates
My only point is we all have things to give back, our time, our energy, our intellect, and or our money. And I think that we should all look for ways to do that. And guess what? The funny thing is you also benefit from it. It's just an unbelievable kind of side benefit.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
But you know, does it get, is it regulated in the right way? Does it get in the wrong hands? We can't answer those questions right now.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
Surround yourself with people who will be truth tellers to you. Surround yourself with really deep, good friends. Cherish and nurture those friendships, but make sure they will tell you the truth and that you will tell them the truth at hard times in their life.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
Jamie Kern Lima.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
Definitely, yeah. And it wasn't easy. It takes courage, right? It wasn't what I wanted. I was sad. But yeah, I feel like I can now be fully true to myself.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
We're water.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
We're so much more than we think we are. And we have these constructs of who we think we are. But when we endure the change, and especially if we can work to not resist it, like in the case of the waves, they're coming up to the beach, whether they care about them or not, right? I also... use this analogy from Amdas of the big wave who's worried, and then the small wave.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
And the small wave has perspective on the big wave. And if we can find somebody that has perspective on our life, it's the small wave that says, don't be scared. And the big wave is saying, but I'm terrified. We're going to crash into a storm. And the small wave says, yeah, but We're water. We're water.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
We need to have people in our lives who have perspective that we're going to be OK when we get to the other side of that change. We're going to be OK when we go through the clearing, even if it's tough, even if it has stickers and brambles in it. And as we're moving through it, it feels painful. We're going to be OK on the other side.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
And the truth is, when you have something that changes, you end one thing. you're actually creating an opening for something new and you just don't know what it is. And the point is to not be, try not to be anxious, right? Like we rush, I used to too, rush across the clearing because I'm anxious. I need to know exactly what's coming next. But actually we don't. Yeah. Right.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
Like you probably didn't know you were going to start a makeup company. You probably didn't know you were going to be able to sell it to L'Oreal for a gazillion dollars. You probably didn't know. You hoped you probably didn't know you were going to host a podcast. All those things have come. Right. But if you hadn't ended some other things, there wouldn't have been room for these things.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
No, never. No, I like the position I'm in right now and feel like I can hopefully create a lot of change with the partners I work with for women and and others from this role.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
My dad always told us when we were growing up, consider the source.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
I do, despite the fact that change is hitting us very quickly and swiftly, and it feels like there's a lot, right? But what keeps me optimistic is when you're out in communities, People are so much more alike than they are different.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
And they're finding places where there's the center, where one might believe one religion, another might believe a different one, or one might be on one side of the political aisle, another on the other.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
But they're still working, let's say, to benefit the community, to benefit those who are homeless and on the street, or they're still working on improving that school because it will be good for everyone's kids.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
So I see a lot more at the community level where people are knitting together and it's almost as if they feel they need to because things are so chaotic on the broader national scale, but they're like, if I focus on what's close at home to me, this is the piece I can do. And what I've always said to people is every little drop in the bucket adds up, right?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
And it's the knitting of all these communities together that will get us the change that we want. So I still remain optimistic when I see the beauty and the connections between small organizations or large organizations or people, right, trying to make the world improve the world while they're here.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
My dad always told us when we were growing up, consider the source. Hmm. Yeah. So I often try and consider the source. And I think what's so difficult online is you don't know who the source is. They put their little moniker out there.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
I remember saying to my oldest daughter in high school when she eventually did have social media late in high school and somebody said something rude about her online. And I said to her, well, we don't even know who that person is. That could be a 11-year-old boy sitting in his basement.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
You know, that could be, you know... Like, I just gave her, like, five different archetypes of what it might be, and I was like, so, how do you know whether you should take that judgment? And she was like, yeah, right. So...
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
The honest critics, like we need to listen to honest critics, people who are giving us feedback, who are honest enough to say, you know, you tried to do this, but it had a different impact in this community. But I want to know the source because that helps me know where, okay, they really are being an honest critic or no, they just want to point their finger at everybody and say you did it wrong.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
Right. There's a phenomenal book I read years ago by Renee Brown called Daring Greatly. Yes. And she talks about the leader who's in the arena versus the people sitting in the seats. In the seats, yes. And boy, did that help me because I thought, wow, I'm in the arena. I'm doing the hard work. It's so easy to sit in the cheap seats and be the critic. Yes.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
And even I have to look at that about myself. If I'm criticizing somebody else, I have to say, well, but are they doing the work? Are they in the arena? Yeah. Well, maybe I need to look deeper at that. Maybe I do agree with them. Maybe I don't. But, you know, I'm up here in these seats just looking down.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 3): Life-Changing Lessons on How to Do Hard Things, Navigate Change & Find Yourself Again
I think we do not know the impact it's going to have on society yet. We can get glimpses. We can see some of the good it will do for sure in health. I see some of the amazing things we're all able to learn. Even I was just in a different country I'd never been into and all the things I could learn as I just asked question after question after question that led to another one.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
First of all, the only reason I even include a chapter about that time in my life in the book is because... We need to pause for a super brief break.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
I think more people have them than we realize. I had read about them, and I remember being skeptical, like, mm.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
First of all, The only reason I even include a chapter about that time in my life in the book is because people know I went through a divorce. And it would be incongruous if I didn't put it in. It would be disingenuous. And as you said, so many people unfortunately go through it. And it is hard, right? Really hard.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
And it's hard for everyone involved, including the kids, including and for sure the kids. So I included it for that reason. I, again, to use your word, or to use a different word, I didn't feel like I could, I got to a point in my marriage where I felt like I absolutely knew what my values were. I felt like we had agreed on our values as a couple going into the marriage.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
that a real thing like what is that you know i've been anxious before but um but when you have one yeah it is it's so terrifying yeah just terrifying at least for me the whole world falls away and you are just by yourself and just literally that like deer in the headlights like you can't sweaty palms can't think your heart is racing
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
But I got to a point where I didn't feel like I could be fully integrated and live those values in the marriage because of some things going on around me that I had previously not been aware of. And there comes a point at which, to be true to yourself, you have to do what's right, even though you may not want to, right? Like, and I talk in the book that I was afraid to call my parents.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
Like, you know, what are they going to think? I feel terrible. You know, it's not what I dreamt of on the day I got married. But in the end of the day, like I do think often about I have for a long time, I write about in the book, my friend John Nielsen, who died in his 30s. It's got me from a young age in my 30s because that's how old I was when he passed away, too.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
to think about what do you want the last day to look like and work backwards in your life from there. And for me, the last day is, was I loved by my family and friends? Did they know I love them? Do I know that they love me? Did I do meaningful work in the world? And was I true to myself? Right? I mean, only we're going to answer for ourselves on the last day.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
Not your children, not your spouse, not your mother, not your father. We are responsible for ourselves. And so if I couldn't be true to myself and be an integrated whole person, then I need to look at that relationship I was in and say, it's not working anymore. I've done my best. I've given everything. I've done a lot of work on it. I've done a lot of forgiveness.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
But at some point, only I answer for myself.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
I certainly have had times in my life where I didn't think I was When I transitioned into being a co-founder of the foundation and but then I talk about in the book, you know, all of a sudden it was unbelievable that Warren Buffett was going to take the assets from Berkshire Hathaway and put them into our foundation. Like, what an amazing gift. What an amazing gift.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
But it catapulted the foundation where we were growing it like this, but all of a sudden the growth in the foundation and the public exposure was exponential.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
And so to sit then at the head of the table at the foundation where you're having a meeting with 30 people around the table and there's some of the top scientists in tuberculosis and the top scientist in malaria and the top scientist in maternal mortality I don't have a background in medicine. I don't have a background in global health. My background is in computer science.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
And so I think they're really important to talk about because we can also help one another and coach one another through them. Finally, your body just stops you dead in your tracks and says, this is not right, and you know it. Yeah. Do you have them now? Trusting your faith. There were times I sort of moved away from faith.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
And so I would sit at the front of the table and think, am I worthy to be here and worthy to be the one at the head of the table asking the questions, making the decisions about resources. And I had to really grow into that role.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
And I feel like there were times I don't feel I know there were times where people were rolling their eyes like, you know, OK, that question she asked that one wasn't a very good one. Right. And I had to learn that, no, my voice mattered. And sometimes the question I asked turned out to be exactly the right question. And And that would give me courage then the next time. I'll give you an example.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
We were out in Southeast Asia. My ex-husband and I were traveling with a group of scientists. We were going around and learning about tuberculosis in a village, in several villages. And we'd done these site visits. They'd lasted more than half the day. We're kind of all about ready to go. But the woman, one of the women we talked to earlier was there. but no one was talking to her.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
And so I just went over and talked to her. The scientists were still talking. And then they kind of started to come in. And then I said to her, you know, everybody's kind of ready to go. And I said to her, well, could you show me, we've talked to you about your experience with tuberculosis in your family and what's happened, but could you show me the actual pill packet
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
And you could see all the scientists just like kind of rolling their eyes like, what a you know, why would you ask that question? Who cares what the pill packet looks like? She brought it out and everybody was shocked, including me, the number of pills in this pill packet.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
And we started looking at it and realizing that the manufacturer was putting all these placebo pills in the packaging in this particular country. And there really was only one pill in there per day that made a difference, not the other eight in the packet for that day, too. So here's this poor woman and her family. These are hard pills to take. You need food.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
And it literally got us advocating to the government saying, you've got the wrong manufacturer for this thing. Like, do you know what they're doing with your government money? So even while all the scientists sort of thought it was a not very great question and I felt unworthy actually in the moment, it turned out to be exactly the right question. So you have to trust.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
You have to trust that something's moving through you.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
And that's why I say to people, you actually have to practice these transitions, right? Like when you're in them, I talk about in the book, don't rush from one thing if you can help it to the next. Stop and learn the lessons in between because that's where the beauty happens and the growth and eventually the resilience.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
And the more you go through one transition, the easier the next one will be and the next one and the next one. And you just... you have to trust. There's a parable called the parable of the trapeze, where a trapeze artist is swinging on a trapeze and they've got both hands, but then they're gonna go and get the next bar.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
Well, as that other bar is coming towards them and they're let going of this one, they have to trust that they've got the timing right to grab the next bar, right? There's a huge piece of trust there as they're flying through the air and it could be terrifying, it could be exhilarating.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
It is hard, right? Really hard. And it's hard for everyone involved, including the kids. I felt like we had agreed on our values as a couple going into the marriage. But I got to a point where I didn't feel like I could be fully integrated and live those values in the marriage because there comes a point at which to be true to yourself, you have to do what's right, even though you may not want to.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
There's a beautiful, at the end of the musical Les Miserables, they say to love another person is to see the face of God.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
But the more they practice that, the more they're going to land that move and the better off they're going to be at it. I love that.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
I think more people have them than we realize. I had read about them. And I remember being skeptical, like, is that a real thing? Like, what is that? You know, I've been anxious before. But when you have one, it is...
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
at least for me, the whole world falls away and you are just by yourself and just literally that like deer in the headlights, like you can't, sweaty palms, can't think, your heart is racing. And so I think they're really important to talk about because we can also help one another and coach one another through them.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
So one of my, my youngest daughter, one of her friends had one, we were going to get on a plane situation And I was able to coach her through it. And it felt good for her and for me at the time. And then I had an adult female friend who had one in the last six months and called me and thank God she called me.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
Like I could hear it in her voice and she didn't even quite know what was happening, but I could ask her, what are the circumstances? What was being asked of you? What were you thinking you were going to do? And I could see that the person that was calling her to pull her to do something was doing something for their own interests, not hers.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
And every single thing in her body was telling her not to do it, but she felt guilt. She felt reasons that she should go. Like that person was quite good at manipulating her, right? And so I was able to talk her down enough that she could calm herself. We could talk later. She didn't end up going and doing the thing the person asked her to do. And thank God she did not.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
Do you think that when we have a panic attack, it's our body telling us something's not right or something's incongruent? And I think it's been giving you a lot more signals before it gets to the attack. And we just keep not listening to them. We just keep pushing them down and acting like they're not there or not tuning to them.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
And finally, your body just stops you dead in your tracks and says, this is not right. And you know it.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
Or when's the last one? I have not had one recently, not in the last four years.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
And so talk about an incongruency, right? And I had to really then reckon with my faith. And I just realized, wow, I need to actually unlearn some of these things because I can't square the circle.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
It's so terrifying. Yeah. Just terrifying. And I think that's why we need to not only talk about them and give people tools, but we need to say when it's happened to us, because I think people look out and say, oh, well, it couldn't have happened to her or him. You know, they're so confident. No, they can happen to anybody.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
And again, it has to do with, are you living that, you know, are you being in touch with your body and the messages it's giving you? Are you living a fully integrated life? Yeah.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
um for me not for everybody because i know some people say they don't dream or they dream very little but for me i have a very rich dream life and have for a long time and have tried to understand my dreams some dreams will take me years to understand but if they're recurring i know i need to pay attention to them anyway this dream as i say in the book
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
doesn't really take Freud to figure it out, which was, you know, after those articles, the things that had come out publicly, I had this dream that I was on a cliff and my ex-husband Bill and the kids were also on the edge of the cliff, but my part of the cliff crumbled away, and I was dropping down into a pit, and they were still on the edge of this cliff together, and they were safe, so I wasn't worried about my children.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
But I knew when I woke up, oh, this means I need to separate
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
You have to trust that something's moving through you. And taking your power back. I certainly have had times in my life where I didn't think I was worthy. I would sit at the front of the table and think, am I worthy to be here and worthy to be the one at the head of the table asking the questions, making the decisions about resources?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
I know there were times where people were rolling their eyes, like, you know, okay, that question she asked, that one wasn't a very good one, right? And I had to learn that, no, my voice mattered. And sometimes the question I asked turned out to be exactly the right question.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
Everybody needs Jamie Kern Lima in their life. Jamie Kern Lima.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
And how has it evolved? It's fundamental in my life still. And I will certainly say there were times I sort of moved away from faith, but then I always think goodness came back to it. Like one of them was in college, right? I actually tried several different faith traditions. I remember calling my mom and she was just like, Oh, you're doing what, you know? But then I came back to my roots.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
I'm less now about a structured religion because I realized that religions all have man-made rules that are part of them, right? But they're all pointing to the same thing, which is a belief in spirituality or a goodness in the universe, or maybe a God in some cases. And so for me, the spiritual piece is is just absolutely grounding in my life.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
And I still, I go to church some, I'm still Catholic, I go to church some, not nearly as often as when I was growing up. But I'm also, maybe even more importantly, in these two spiritual groups that are both non-denominational. One I've been with for 20 years, another one's kind of the last five years. And we are reading the same things by spiritual teachers over
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
you know, who taught for centuries sometimes or somebody who's more current. And then we're sharing ideas about what we're learning through our faith and spirituality. I still go on a silent retreat once a year. In fact, I'll go in May with my group that I've been with for 20 years. We'll go on silent retreat. We met yesterday to prepare for that. because it's a journey to go on silent retreat.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
I would say it's fundamental. And then the other thing I would say, and you alluded to this in your own life, which is, again, when you have doubt and in those times you need to lean in or lean forward, just remembering there's something much bigger than you. And there must be some reason you're here. You have no idea how you got placed in this position, right? Right.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
I have no idea how I, you know, the sequence of events that led up to other things in my life. It's just it's hard to put it together. But when you can remember there's something much bigger and you can trust that, at least for me, I know I just I sink into it and I just I calm down.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. And there's a beautiful, at the end of the musical Les Miserables, they say to love another person is to see the face of God. And so I've also come to learn that God is also amongst us and in our relations and in our relationships, too, and that I can look for that. And you see where you make some of those connections.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
But what I encourage people to do who've grown up, if you're lucky enough to have grown up in a faith tradition, because I do think that's lucky, it means you had some values and moral structure. It may not have all been right. It may have put some things on you you wish you didn't have. But I really encourage people to go back and look at that faith and learn about it. Where did it come from?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
What are the origins? How did it come into being? Where did it change over time? Like I grew up in the Roman Catholic Church, but there's a Celtic version of the Catholic Church that is actually even closer to what I believe it turns out. And so just learning your own history so you can decide what you believe now, but practicing your faith is also really important.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
Of course. I've been to Denny's many times with my kids. Have you been to Denny's? Yes, for a long time. But when they were little, they loved Denny's. Did they really? Oh yeah, the pancakes. The pancakes? Yeah.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
And so this is why I have these two groups. They're almost like accountability measures we are for one another. And then I also believe in faith in action. So part of the work I do in the world is putting what I believe to be true in my faith and all the things that I've learned through this unusual path I've had in life that I couldn't have added it all up.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
I put that faith into action and hopefully I'm creating positive change in the world.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
yeah i love your word incongruent because we know certain things yeah we just there's an inner knowing about things and for me i'll say as i was traveling the world more and more i was so lucky on behalf of the foundation i got to travel but you know i was out in low-income countries three sometimes four times a year all over the world and
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
And I was learning from these men and women in villages about their lives. And they would talk about children. And both the men and the women knew that when they could space the births of those children, they were better off. Or if they could limit, let's say they could limit and decide they were only going to have three or four instead of six or seven. They knew they could then feed their kids.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
Their kids could go to school. They had a chance, those kids, of maybe growing up and living their dreams. But if you, I would go in these villages and I would ask people, I literally was in a village I remember one time and we all gathered under a tree. There were about 150 people and I said, how many of you know somebody that, a woman that has died in childbirth?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
And the number of hands that went up was astounding. And then I said, how many of you know of a baby that's been lost in childbirth? And, like, even more hands went up. And this was a group where they knew about contraceptives but didn't have access. The world had backed away after the 1970s. We used to make sure that people had access to contraceptives, not for all the right reasons.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
But the world had backed away. And as I learned the difference... And that child was lost because... the mom had them too close together. She didn't mean to, but all of a sudden the next one came and boom, she lost that baby prematurely because the birth was too quick and her body wasn't ready. I started to realize I believe in life.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
I believe in these children's lives, the worthiness of them, the inherent beauty on the day they're born. But because of a manmade rule in the church that I'm in, the Catholic church, we're not allowing women to have access to contraceptives. And so talk about an incongruency, right? And I had to really then reckon with my faith. I brought in some Notre Dame scholars to teach me.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
I had this dream that I was on a cliff and my ex-husband Bill and the kids were also on the edge of the cliff, but my part of the cliff crumbled away and I was dropping down into a pit and they were still on the edge of this cliff together. And I knew, oh, this means I need to separate. and do something else. I need to figure this out, and I'm gonna be alone in figuring this out.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
I learned the history, how the Catholic church had gotten there, why they'd gotten there. I started to learn from a very liberal Jesuit priest, listening to his lectures and his teachings and his books, Richard Rohr. And I just realized, wow, I need to actually unlearn some of these things because I can't square the circle. I believe in the dignity of life.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
And yet we're losing more children because of this. We won't allow this tool to be given to women. And it really was almost a crisis of faith, but I was able to eventually reconcile them and say, no, no, no, this is what I believe and I know to be true, and I am going to speak the truth in the world. And that took, again, a lot of courage and a lot of leaning forward.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All (Pt 2): Life-Changing Lessons on Igniting Your Courage, Hearing Your Intuition & Taking Your Power Back
But boy, did it feel right to give voice to what these families and these women were telling me. Like if I had the privilege of being there and them sharing their lives with me, I felt given my position at the foundation, I had a responsibility to go voice that and do something about it on the world stage. And it became, it animated my life.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
I felt like I needed to be kind of dressed head to toe and look perfect all the time. And now like I'm perfectly comfortable going out, maybe too comfortable some days with, you know, not having washed my hair for four days and it's in a ponytail and I'm still going to go out and walk to the store, you know, and I am who I am.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
If I'm also telling my three children back then to use their voice in the world and to stand up to a bully on the playground and help somebody else, if I'm saying that to them, I realized I needed to be role modeling it too. and how to choose yourself. I have to coach myself, quite honestly. I don't enjoy big social gatherings. They drain me, right?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
Not very often is the honest truth. Yes. I deserve to be where I am in life. Like I've worked really hard to get here and I know myself. And so I don't, if people don't like me or they don't like what I'm saying, I'm kind of at the point in life where I'm like, okay. take it or leave it. Like, if I'm not your cup of tea, that's okay. And maybe, I don't know, maybe that comes with being 60.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
My mom said to me, I remember when she was getting a bit older, she's still alive, both my parents are, very close to them. But I remember when she crossed 60, she said, you know, I just somehow just feel very confident going around. I go to pick up the clothes at the cleaners, and I tell them how they could be more organized.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
I can have doubt going into those, and so I actually have to push myself to do it. I definitely have doubt before I enter like a big, say you're going into a ballroom and it's 300 people at tables, you know, and I'm like, ah.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
Or I go to the grocery store, and something's not quite right at the cash register, and I speak out and tell them what they ought to be doing. She goes, I don't know what's gotten into me, but I just feel comfortable speaking my truth. And so maybe that's sort of the wisdom that comes with 60, is you just get very comfortable in your skin. But I don't have that a lot anymore.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
But I, boy, boy, boy, did I struggle with that for many, many, many years, for sure.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
Oh, it's so freeing. It's so freeing. Like, okay. You don't. Okay. Well, you're you, I'm me. You know, we don't have to necessarily like the same things, or maybe you don't like my outfit. I grew up in Texas where I felt like I needed to be kind of dressed head to toe and look perfect all the time. And, um,
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
Now, like I'm perfectly comfortable going out, maybe too comfortable some days with, you know, not having washed my hair for four days and it's in a ponytail and I'm still going to go out and walk to the store, you know, and I am who I am. Yes. And I also think people put labels on us. I mean, part of...
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
Part of the reason I even opened up so much in this book is one, I feel like I've benefited so much. I've learned so much from other people, from my friends, from being in therapy, from the wisdom of the ages, these authors and the quotes I put in. But also I feel a bit like we just get to this point where people are throwing all these labels on each other.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
Like I know some people, I walk in the room, they're like, oh, they instantly think billionaire. Well, I don't think of myself that way, but what can I do about that? That's what they put on me. But if I'm my true, open-hearted, authentic self, maybe they'll get a chance to rethink what they think of me, right? And wouldn't that be a lovely thing?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
Because maybe we'll actually make a genuine connection. And if not, well, okay, then we don't.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
Exactly. And I think sometimes we don't admit our own bias. We don't say to ourselves okay why that person walking down the street or those two people that i don't even know why did i judge them because one had purple hair and the other had on a sweatshirt that i didn't know the name of the band of like what is it about me like why why should i sit in that
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
that sort of judging situation, why not just be open to it? Maybe there's something I could learn from them, right?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
Yeah, so I had to have a truce with my doctor because every time I would go in, you know, they always, which is important, they put you on the scale, right? And he really was concerned. And I finally said to him, okay, are you concerned because this is a problem for my health or my baby's health? And he said, no.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
I deserve to be where I am in life. Like I've worked really hard to get here and I know myself. And so I don't, if people don't like me or they don't like what I'm saying, I'm kind of at the point in life where I'm like, take it or leave it. Like if I'm not your cup of tea, that's okay.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
And I said, well, every time you talk to me about that my weight is up over the number it should be, you know, or it's going up quickly. And I said, so what's the problem? And he said, I'm afraid you're going to be mad at me because when this is over, it'll take you a while to get the pregnancy weight off. And I said... Well, tell you what, let's have a truce.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
You never bring up my weight unless it's a health problem for me or the baby. And I promise to not be mad at you when this is over. And I just, there was something about when I got pregnant, I was like, great. I know I'm going to get large. I don't know how large I'll get. It doesn't matter. I'm, you know, I'm going to grow a baby.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
I was so excited to grow a baby, but it was like, finally, I didn't have to worry about, you know, Looking good, trying to be thin, what I put in my mouth other than things that I knew I wanted to eat healthy. But I just enjoyed the pregnancy. I enjoyed it immensely. And so much so, I mean, I was just ecstatic. enormous. And I couldn't pass.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
I remember one time I was actually in the boardroom at Microsoft. I was still working at Microsoft and it was a group of execs around the table, whatever. And we happened to be using that room. And one of the men who I liked a lot and I knew his wife and they had three boys and he was very funny. So he did not offend me.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
But I tried to pass between his chair and the wall to get to my chair on the other side. I couldn't fit through. And he saw me and like, I kind of bounced back a couple of times and he turns around and he goes, huh? Thought you could get through, huh? I said, I clearly can't. You're going to have to move that chair. And he laughed and he did.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
And again, I'd seen his wife get large and then get small, get wired. It just, but yeah, it was like this for me, it was this freeing of, oh my God, these expectations that I look a certain way or be a certain way. And then much later in my life, I realized, hmm, what are the expectations I have of myself? Who's putting that on me? Maybe society, but maybe myself.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
And so you have to really eventually look at that too, right?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
caring in high school but i felt good about myself or i should say good enough about myself right um but then i had a boyfriend in college that really was not a positive relationship for me at all and he cared a lot about how i looked and said a lot of things about it to me and And that really is not OK. It really is not.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
And I eventually obviously got out of that relationship, but it took me too long and I inculcated too many of those messages. And and I would say that carried through with me into my 20s and even into my 30s. And it wasn't probably till I got to 40 that I got more OK with who I was. Mm hmm. Right.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
And now I want to be fit because I want to be able to do all the things I want and I want to be healthy. But I'm not so focused on, you know, am I X weight or Y weight or do I fit in that size pants or another? It's still there in the back of my head a little bit, but it just doesn't isn't a big isn't a big call anymore.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
And boy, when you take that down, that perfectionism around weight and body image, you want to talk about you take that down. Right. you have so much more mind space. Yes. It's an anxiety that's in there, right? I had to work with several different nutritionists and I did some work in therapy, but God, when I took that down, it was like, whew, okay, that feels better.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
It feels free.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
I think also I got to a point where I realized that I wasn't role modeling right for my daughters.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
I know some people, I walk in the room, they're like, oh, they instantly think, you know, billionaire. Well, I don't think of myself that way. But what can I do about that? That's what they put on me. But if I'm my true, open-hearted, authentic self, maybe they'll get a chance to rethink what they think of me, right?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
Right. Because. For them, it was really important that I, you know, work on this in myself. So I didn't put any of that on them. And so when they had body issues, they could come to me and I could be honest with them. One of the things I always said to all three of my kids is you can count on me to be honest with you. Right.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
Like if they actually come to me and say, do you like this T-shirt on me? I'm like, you know, they're like, well, I'm going to wear it anyway. Or, oh, OK, thank you, mom. Right. So that honesty. But also the other thing the data shows is that if women are working and doing meaningful work, they focus less on body image.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
Right. Which, again, how beautiful is it to be able to put that energy in that time into things that you care about doing for the world?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
Just when you're getting uncomfortable, actually lean forward and do the thing that your doubt is kind of telling you not to do, because that's where courage is.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
I had a boyfriend in college that really was not a positive relationship for me at all, and he cared a lot about how I looked and said a lot of things about it to me. And that really is not okay. It really is not. And I eventually obviously got out of that relationship, but it took me too long and I inculcated too many of those messages.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
I think you're right. I think a lot of us as women go through this, right? Where, and I love your word that we have so many different roles. It's like we have so many different hats and we're changing them all the time. And I know at least for me, I felt like I so wanted to have kids and I wanted to work at some point. And I knew I would step back from work at first. And hopefully go back.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
I didn't know to what afterwards. But there's something about when you are a new mom and everything's new and you love it and it's hard. But then when you step back into work, at least I was always changing hats and I felt like I could never give enough time to any one thing. Right. And so it for me was a process. And I think it was maybe.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
maybe around 2010 that I started to do what I call learn my way back to myself. Like, I feel like I really knew myself when I left high school. I was very lucky to be in an all girls Catholic high school. So it was very affirming. But then somewhere along the way, I started to lose my voice as I went out into the world.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
And I think because society tells women, you can't be this, you can't do that, or maybe you're not enough, or somebody speaks over you in a meeting, or someone repeats your point. But in 2010, I started to relearn who I was. And it was because I was seeing so much in these low-income countries. And I realized I wanted to give voice to what those women were telling me.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
Boy, when you take that down, that perfectionism around weight and body image, you wanna talk about, you take that down, whew, you have so much more mind space. It's an anxiety that's in there, right? I had to work with several different nutritionists and I did some work in therapy, but God, when I took that down, it was like, whew, okay, that feels better. How to trust yourself.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
And it took a lot of courage, quite frankly, to voice what these women needed and wanted on the world stage. But the more I started to live into that and to learn and to know it was important, the more it animated my life and the more I felt like I started to be true to myself.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
And I kept feeling for them like, oh, I feel bad for them that they don't have their full power or they can't make that decision or they don't have their voice. But then I had to turn the question back on myself and say, do I have my full voice? Am I really speaking my truth in the world? And here I am raising kids and I really want to be a whole integrated person.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
But if I'm also telling my three children back then to,
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
Exactly.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
Yeah. You have to find the courage inside yourself. And for me, I can look and see other women who've done it and say, I want to be like that. I see her being strong. I see her, how did she get there? And if I can learn her story, her backstory, you start to realize that, you know, they didn't just magically appear in that position. They've gone through hardship themselves.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
I started to do what I call learn my way back to myself. Somewhere along the way, I started to lose my voice. Society tells women, you can't be this, you can't do that, or maybe you're not enough, or somebody speaks over you in a meeting. Was there any part of you that had stopped using your voice in some way? For sure.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
And I have to coach myself quite honestly to, lean forward, which is what I tell my friends and my daughters or even my son. If you have doubt, which we all have times of doubt, right? If you have humility, hopefully, if you're a humble person, you can admit you have some doubt at some point.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
So just when you feel like leaning back, like, ooh, I don't know if I want to do that, that's when you either need to reach out to somebody who can remind you of your worth and remind you, you deserve to be there and you deserve to speak up or you got to find it in yourself and just lean forward.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
I always say to them, just when you're getting uncomfortable, actually lean forward and do the thing that your doubt is kind of telling you not to do because that's where courage is. And the more you can practice that courage, the more you grow. And I think the easier than it becomes.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
You and I talked about earlier that you're an introvert, right?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
People think I'm an extrovert, but I'm right on the line. Introvert, extrovert, but I actually fall on the introvert side of the line. And so I don't enjoy big social gatherings. They drain me, right? And so I can be very, I can have doubt going into those. And so I actually have to push myself to do it. I don't do it all the time because it's not where I want to be in life.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
But when it's an important reason and I'm showing up, I have to say to myself, well, just trust, trust that you're going to find someone, you know, or try and connect with somebody in a, just a one-on-one. And by pushing myself to do that, oh, then I can enter that big room.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Melinda French Gates Reveals All: Life-Changing Lessons on Transitions, Trusting Your Inner Voice & Choosing Yourself! (Even if it’s for the first time ever or the first time in a long time!)
But I definitely have doubt before I enter like a big, say you're going into ballroom and it's 300 people at tables, you know, and I'm like, ah,