Episode 251 (Transcript): What Do You Say?
Episode Transcript
Many thanks to listener Gretchen Blackburn for her work in transcribing this episode!
This episode can be found on any podcast app or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:
SH: What has changed for me now is that I really feel like I do have a responsibility to do something in the world, but it has nothing to do with making a mark.
I really would like to leave a legacy of having done something in the world that lifts other people, that makes other people’s lives easier in even the smallest way than I have felt like my life has been.
CW: Hello, I’m Cynthia Winward.
SH: And I’m Susan Hinkley.
CW: And this is At Last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things, and the title of today’s episode is, What Do You Say?
SH: I’m excited for this one, Cynthia. I’m also a little scared, I’m not gonna lie.
CW: Me too. Let’s go ahead and explain, what do we mean by this title, What Do You Say?
A few months ago I discovered the NPR Wild Card podcast and I have been binging it ever since. So I started sending you episodes as well because we’re pals and I’m like, “Ooh, you might really like this one with the author John Green. I know you like him, I like him. Oh, make sure you listen to Jason Reynolds. You like him, I like him.”
So before you knew it, you had been listening a lot and then you had the fabulous idea of doing this as a way to get even more voices on the pod. And I was like, “Yes, Susan! Brilliant!” Brilliant idea in the middle of winter.
SH: Wish that I had thought of it myself, but thank you NPR for letting us steal all of your great ideas.
CW: Still, it was your idea to morph it for At Last She Said It so… We hear all the time from listeners that their favorite part of the episodes are the voicemails at the end, right? They’re just 90 second voicemails. But boy, women can pack a punch and really tell a story. And then of course we have episodes where the guest takes the entire episode, but your idea was “What if we do something in the middle, like 15 minute interviews?” And that’s where this wild card idea came from.
SH: Right. So if people haven’t listened to the podcast, I mean, first of all, I’d recommend it ‘cause it’s great fun. And I’ve really enjoyed listening to it. But let me explain how the game goes. For people who aren’t familiar with it, we have three decks of cards and they have questions on them.
We got about 30 questions in each category, about 30 cards. And we’ve taken a lot of those questions from the Wildcard podcast. Many of them we have rewritten to put them in a more specific LDS context. And so there are going to be questions in three categories: memories, beliefs, and insights.
And we’re just going to pick a card, throw out the question, and see what women have to say. We’ve been asking women for six years, “What do you know?” And so I thought it might be fun to start asking women, “What do you say?”
CW: What Do You Say? I love it. So we decided you and I would go first, right? This is the scary part.
SH: Right? And this is when I said I’m nervous because I’m not sure I can think of any smart answers. I’m always amazed at how on the Wild Card podcast the conversations that develop are deep and funny and moving and all of those kinds of things. Which is what makes those people famous, right? So this is Susan and Cynthia playing What Do You Say? And it may just be Susan saying, “Uhh, I don’t know…”
CW: Elmer Fudd!
SH: Let’s just see.
CW: Oh boy. Well, I made the document for today and so I went ahead and put that I’m gonna start asking you questions first. Ha ha.
SH: Dang it!
CW: So here we go. I have three cards. We have three sections. Memories, beliefs, and insights. So we’re starting with memories, and I have three cards Susan. Pick one, two, or three.
SH: Two.
CW: Two. As an LDS woman, when is the first time you remember feeling proud of yourself?
SH: Okay. I have to admit, when we were making these decks of cards and I saw that question come across my paper cutter on my desk, I thought “Man, I would not like to be asked that question.”
CW: Are you kidding? This is the one you get.
SH: And this is the one I get. Of course it is. I made that happen, I put that out into the universe and here it is. Okay, first time I remember feeling proud... I absolutely do have an answer to this question now that you ask it! And it is as a 10-year-old girl jumping up on my chair and saying, “I will not be a [00:05:00] baby factory for eternity,” and shaking my fist at the bewildered-looking recently returned missionary who was subbing in our junior Sunday School class that day.
CW: You’ve told that story before, but I want a little more context to the story. Because what on earth was this little return missionary teaching that made you say that? Did he specifically say that?
SH: That’s a great question and I’ve thought about that a lot over time, because I have told this story multiple times on this podcast. What I remember about it is my friends and I had been having conversations on the playground or other times outside of church about polygamy. And about how in the next life women’s roles were going to be to continue to produce all these spirit children.
You have to remember that I would’ve been in fourth, fifth, sixth grade in the mid-1970s. I’m going to guess this was sometime like 1974-1975. Women’s lib was on the rise. It was a big conversation going on in Utah and everywhere else actually. And so we were keenly aware of it as young girls. We would hear things about it at church, things decrying women’s lib at church. It was in the news. I would hear my parents discussing stuff at the dinner table.
All of this was kind of swirling around and so, I don’t know, my friends and I took a stand. I was not the only one who jumped up on my chair that day. I had another friend who did the same with me because we really had decided that there was something about this narrative that was not right, and we were not gonna stand for it.
CW: And you really did stand on your chairs?
SH: We really did, and we really did shake our fists. That actually happened. This is not metaphorical standing on chairs, but I do remember thinking, “Yes! Score one for the women in the room!” As you know, however old I was, maybe a 10-year-old.
It was one of the very first times I can remember really experimenting with my own voice. And as you know, I was pretty outspoken as a young girl and as a teenager. And that’s the place that I pin it all, that I can remember it actually beginning, is that moment. I kind of specialized in saying all kinds of shock value things after that at church. It sort of became my MO. I got nicknamed Draino-Mouth later because I had such a caustic personality.
CW: That should be the thing you’re most proud of.
SH: I mean, I am proud of that, but this is where it started. So that one’s pretty easy for me.
Cynthia, I forgot when we were introducing this game that there are a couple of additional rules. One is that if the person doesn’t want to answer the question, they can take a pass on one question. They can pass on one question, and then the other, is that they can turn it back on the person asking the question. So…
CW: That’s the scary part.
SH: Yeah, that could happen. All right, Cynthia, it’s your turn. I have three questions from memories. Would you like one, two, or three?
CW: One.
SH: Cynthia, what is something about the church community, culture, lifestyle, or doctrine your parents taught you to appreciate?
CW: Okay. What were the choices? Community, lifestyle or doctrine?
SH: Community, culture, lifestyle or doctrine.
CW: Oh, community.
SH: So when we say something about the church, it’s the whole larger experience of being a Latter Day Saint is what we’re talking about.
CW: Well, I’m gonna say that they taught me not with words, but looking back I can see that my parents appreciated the structure of the church.
Both of my parents came from pretty chaotic homes, for different reasons. We’ll just leave it at that for time reasons. And so looking back, I can see my parents were really attracted to a church because it offered them a better way of living. I mean, assuming you obey all the rules and things happen to work out for your family living the Mormon way.
But it’s interesting because I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately how my mom converted from Catholicism when she was 15 and then my dad came from, I don’t know if you would call it a Jack Mormon family, but my grandparents drank coffee and never went to the temple, never wore their garments, nothing like that.
And so [00:10:00] my dad didn’t grow up very LDS-y. And there were, you know, some interesting things going on in his family that made it difficult. And so my parents kind of decided, “We’re gonna do our family differently and we’re gonna do it this way.” And I can really appreciate that, because as someone who likes structure and is a natural-born obedient person, that worked really well for me. So I can really appreciate that they taught me that by the way they lived. Not so much they sat down and had a lesson with me about chaos. Let’s leave behind the chaos and go towards structure, if that makes sense.
SH: Right. Can I ask you a follow up question? Am I allowed to do that in this game?
CW: I guess.
SH: Okay. No, I’m just curious to know if you passed that aspect of church appreciation onto your own kids.
CW: Ooh, did I? You might have to ask them. I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think I ever used the words, just like my parents never used the words. But it takes a village, and I have always loved that about the church.
And I’ve heard you talk about that too, like wherever or as many times as you moved, you had a built-in community when you arrived.
SH: Absolutely. Don’t know if I could have done it otherwise, honestly.
CW: Yeah. I think that’s the best thing about our church is that community. Anyway, now we’re going off ‘cause I’m just ad-libbing now off of all that.
Susan, I’m gonna ask you one more question in memories. So let me get three more cards. One, two or three?
SH: Three.
CW: What’s your form of rebelling as an adult? I don’t even know what you’re gonna say. I wanna know.
SH: Ooh! That’s a terrible question to ask, Cynthia!
CW: I think you wrote it so you can only hate yourself!
SH: Well, I think that the original question, if I recall, was: what was your favorite way of rebelling as a teen?
CW: Yes.
SH: But anyway, I wanted to know how women rebel now. My favorite way of rebelling as an adult… I have a pretty easy answer to that question too. Cynthia, I started a whole podcast where I can rebel as an adult. This entire thing has been an act of rebellion. Not just against the church, but against a lot of the constraints of my life generally. Because we talk about all kinds of things on this podcast that have been hard for us.
CW: Yeah.
SH: You know, I’ve been able to talk about things like getting married young. I’ve been able to explore issues around that. I’m not sure I ever would’ve come to saying those things out loud, but as the conversations have gone on, I have felt empowered to say more and more things.
So if we put that in the context of the first question you asked me, it’s been finding my way back to the same way that I rebelled as a kid. That’s exactly what has happened again, so this must be some deeply ingrained need to rebel in this specific way in my personality.
I don’t know. But it has felt like the most healing thing ever because I had buried that particular form of rebellion in myself for so long. This is true liberation for me. It feels deeply healing and healthy and fun and good and grow-y and all of the good words. That’s what this form of rebellion does for me.
CW: You’re like a rebellion sandwich, right? You started out your life rebelling and you’re ending it rebelling. And in the middle is…
SH: Yeah. A whole lot of biting my tongue.
CW: Cool. A rebellion sandwich. Nice!
SH: Okay, Cynthia. Three cards for you, my friend. Would you like one, two, or three?
CW: Three.
SH: I know how I would answer this, but I wanna hear how you’re gonna answer it. Have you ever felt like you had an enemy at church?
CW: Yes, and it’s almost a bullying-type situation.
SH: Okay.
CW: So my sister and I were born in the same year: 1974. I was born in January. Eleven months later she was born in December. So even though we were in different grades at school, we were in the same class at church, right? ‘Cause church runs on a calendar year.
SH: Right, right.
CW: And so, I don’t know what it was in our ward, but there was a group of girls that decided my sister and I were just not the cool girls. And I remember they would make fun of the way we dressed ‘cause we dressed really similarly ‘cause our mom picked out our clothes - we were 10 years old! [00:15:00] I remember the first time I wore brown pantyhose to church. I was probably 11 at the time. And they started making fun of me. You were way too young to be wearing pantyhose to church. I mean, they were just really mean. And it got to the point where I was dreading seeing one specific girl. I will not say her name even though I will never forget it.
SH: She knows who she is, Cynthia.
CW: Does she? I don’t even know. And what’s crazy is years later when my husband Paul and I were married and we went out to Claim Jumper for our anniversary in California. Claim Jumper - big restaurant there, right? And she was our server.
SH: Okay. Hilarious.The best revenge.
CW: I wanna say I was such a brat I didn’t leave her a tip, but that’s not true.
SH: I was just gonna say, I’m sure you left a tip.
CW: No, we gave her a tip, but also she and one or two of these other girls, they tried adding me on Facebook in the last 15 years as friends. And I was like, “Nope! Too soon.”
SH: Interesting.
CW: Yeah. No, I just couldn’t. I’m sure they’re fine women now. But I’m like,”No, you don’t get to see cute pictures of my kids. Sorry.” I just couldn’t. So I guess they were my enemies. One in particular, but the others... it was like the first presidency of mean girls at church.
But you know what the great part is? Our ward split when I turned 12 or maybe 13, and I never had to see those girls again. I mean, except at stake activities.
SH: Right, right.
CW: So it was really nice. They weren’t in my ward anymore, so, woohoo.
SH: It’s hard because when you’re a kid, especially, (well actually for a lot of adults that we hear from too), the church feels like your whole world, right? I mean, that’s a really personal place to have bullies.
CW: One hundred percent.
SH: That’s owie. I’m sorry that happened to you.
CW: Yeah, it was kind of owie. Okay, Susan, let’s go to beliefs. I’m getting three cards. One, two, or three.
SH: Two.
CW: Have your feelings about God or a divine power changed over time?
SH: I mean, here’s where I feel like we should not be doing this.
CW: I know.
SH: We should not be playing this game because who cares? You’ve been hearing about that for six years from me. Yes, they’ve changed hugely. Everything about them has changed and a big part of that has involved changing how I see myself in relation to God. And that has been the most transformative part I think.
I mean, changing how I see God is huge, but changing how I see myself and my place in that relationship and how God feels about me has really been the transformational part of that journey for me.
CW: Yeah, that’s good. I have no follow-up because we have talked about that endlessly, right?
SH: So much. That was not a fair question. That was like a layup. Thank you for throwing me a layup question, Cynthia.
CW: You are welcome.
SH: I appreciate it. Let’s see. Okay Cynthia, would you like one, two, or three,
CW: Three.
SH: This is such a good question for the day that I’m asking it. In context this is a great question. Ready?
CW: Okay. Now I’m frightened.
SH: No, don’t be frightened. This is a good question. I really wanna know. What is your best defense against despair?
CW: My best defense against despair? Action.
SH: I mean, I think this was a good question because we’re recording this in January. It’s been a particularly hard January
CW: It has been.
SH: And I know that there’s been some despair attached to that for both of us.
CW: Oh, a hundred percent. For me it’s been action. I realized the last week I have not stopped organizing my house. And I’ve cleaned out pantries, I’m getting rid of a freezer in my garage ‘cause I realize I don’t need to store 80 pounds of chicken nuggets anymore, I don’t have kids here, so…
SH: Right.
CW: But I have been organizing nonstop and that’s in place of watching the news. I mean, I watch the headlines. I wanna be an informed citizen, but I feel so much despair at what’s going on that I just have to take action. And that action is: I’m ordering Tupperware containers and labeling them for my oatmeal. And anyway, it makes me feel like I have a little bit of control.
SH: Yeah. So I was just gonna say, this is a control thing. Absolutely. I recognize that deeply in myself. I control the things I can.
CW: I just needed to be insular. I haven’t even listened to podcasts or music. I’m doing it in complete silence, like this meditative purging.
SH: It’s a [00:20:00] practice.
CW: Yeah. It’s been a practice this whole week. I’ve needed that. And the plus side is, now my pantries look good, so there we go.
SH: Love it.
CW: Okay. My turn to ask you a question about belief. One, two or three?
SH: Oh, let’s go three.
CW: I’m dying to know the answer to this! I love this as friends, because we’re friends, but there are plenty of things you and I have never talked about! So here’s the question. Do you think about the legacy you will leave behind?
SH: Okay. You know, things filter down to you as children from your parents. They don’t necessarily mean to teach you, but some of the things that they prioritize or that you sense are important to them or - I dunno, values - those things filter down.
And one of the things that filtered down in my family was you should be famous. The best thing that you could do would be to be famous. And so pretty much everything that the kids in the family did as I perceived it was based on what might be the track to everlasting stardom that we all need and deserve.
CW: What?
SH: I mean, my sister who is eight years older than I am is only now at age 70, beginning to reckon with the idea that perhaps she’s not going to be a Broadway star. This is now really sinking in for her.
CW: Oh my gosh.
SH: I know. It’s ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.
CW: I dunno, this is such a sweet story. I actually love it. Tell me if I’m looking at it wrong, like I am looking at it as your parents thought you guys were so frigging amazing and smart that they were like, “Of course you’ll be famous.” Was it that?
SH: No. No. I think they thought they were so amazing and smart that they should be famous, and I think that they kind of were famous in their own ways, but mostly in their own minds.
My dad had a pretty significant rags-to-riches story in his own life – it was pretty astonishing. I mean, they both have great stories and Cynthia, I really believed that my parents were the most amazing and famous. I think I’ve told you before that my mom once said to me, “You’re famous to me.”
CW: Yes.
SH: Which is something my kids repeat all the time, because we all think it’s so hilarious. Is there anything worse than being famous to your mom? But I tell you this just to preface that yes, I did feel very much for most of my first half of life, let’s call it… (Which for whatever weird reason, my first half of life ended very late. I’m only now beginning to mature and wake up and sort of reckon with some of the problematic patterns and thinking in my first half of life.) But first half of life was very much based on wanting some recognition and respect from people.
And I really did feel like I had a responsibility to do something in the world, not necessarily to benefit the world, but to make a mark.
What has changed for me now is that I really feel like I do have a responsibility to do something in the world, but it has nothing to do with making a mark.
I really would like to leave a legacy of having done something in the world that lifts other people, that makes other people’s lives easier in even the smallest way than I have felt like my life has been. And I even said to my daughter the other day, you know, I had a daughter visiting for a week, we had lots of long walks and talks and cake eating and all those good things. But as she was getting ready to go, we were talking a little bit about the podcast and I said to her, “I really will die happier now as a result of having done this project.”
CW: Wow. Susan.
SH: I feel like I finally did something that has mattered to someone. I feel like you and I hear all the time from women who say, “Thank you for your work and thank you for making things just a tiny bit easier for me.” And that is deeply, deeply meaningful to me and it has absolutely nothing to do with being famous.
CW: Well, I like that the question is worded legacy, right? Because you can almost define legacy however you want, and what I’m hearing from you is altruism.
SH: [00:25:00] Well, for me, the legacy part of it really was putting that book on the shelf that we put out earlier this year.
CW: Yes.
SH: Because I really wanted to be able to put all of this work that we’ve done somewhere that can last and be of value to someone after we’re no longer doing this specific work. It will continue to exist. And so I do feel like that is a legacy and that’s meaningful to me also, from a legacy standpoint, I would like my grandkids to know what I did, who I was, those kinds of things.
CW:Yeah, my grandma wrote a book!
SH: Not that they’re ever gonna read my book, but they’ll at least know my grandma was someone who wrote a book. That’s one thing. About things that she believed deeply and about her experiences. That’s a legacy and that’s meaningful to me. But the idea of what’s important in a legacy has changed dramatically over time for me.
[Break]
SH: All right Cynthia. Got three questions for you here. One, two, or three.
CW: One.
SH: I heard them ask John Green this question the other day, and his answer absolutely delighted me, and now I really want to hear your answer to it because my answer would’ve been a lot like his.
CW: I could not follow John Green!
SH: I just have a feeling that you and I would answer this question really differently. I could totally be wrong, so now I’m dying to know. Okay, Cynthia. How often do you think about death?
CW: Oh my gosh, this is really hard, Susan. I think about it a lot, but not in a morbid way, if that makes sense.
SH: Say more.
CW: I don’t think… well, maybe I need to start this all over. I don’t know. This is a really hard question because I feel like there’s a morbid way to answer it. Every time I get in the car, or if I make a long trip, I think, “Oh, I could die on this trip.” There’s that, and then there’s just the existential question of “I may no longer exist someday, do I believe in an afterlife kind of way of thinking about death?”
So I feel like I need someone to clarify the question.
SH: Interesting. I mean that non-answer is kind of an answer, isn’t it?
CW: Yeah, I guess it is. So maybe I’ll answer it both ways.
First, from a morbid point of view, I am a little bit of a fraidy-cat. And so honestly, when I go on a long trip, I really think about safety, I check the weather. I mean, part of that is just being responsible, right? Especially living in Utah, if I’m gonna be driving through mountain passes, so I think about the safety there so that I don’t end up dying that day. You know, as much control as I have over that.
And then from an existential point of view, I don’t think about death as much, although I will say we did family pictures over Christmas, and I looked at myself and for the first time I was like, “Oh, I look like a grandma now.”
Not in a bad way, but just “Oh, I am looking different now.” And I saw my own mortality staring back at me in Adobe Lightroom as I was editing the photos. So that was a moment. A neutral moment, but it was a moment. It wasn’t good or bad.
SH: It was a moment. It was a reckoning maybe, I guess.
CW: A reckoning, thank you.
SH: I’ve had that moment looking at family photos where I’m like, “Oh, I am Aunt Lily now, in this picture. I’m Aunt Lily. Okay. Yes.” And it’s just this mental shift that sort of has to happen where the way you see yourself… you know the other place I’m noticing it, I’m noticing it with my kids. I’m no longer the center of whatever. So if they’re making plans or they’re having a conversation or they’re doing whatever, they don’t care about me. I’m not the middle. It doesn’t matter.
CW: Yeah, they’re not consulting you.
SH: No, they’re not. And that was a huge shift for me.
They are no longer waiting for me to weigh in on things. And that’s absolutely as it should be. That’s great. But it’s just a different… I’ve moved into a different place.
CW: Yeah. A reckoning. A lot of things to reckon with there.
SH: Yeah. I love that answer. Thank you.
CW: All right, Susan, let’s move to insights for our last category. One, two and three cards, which are you gonna choose?
SH: I am going to choose one because I have not chosen one yet.
CW: Okay. Number one.
SH: I’m not sure I have any insights, however, so let’s just find out.
CW: You can spitball it. Here we go. Is there anything you long for?
SH: Oh, mercy .[00:30:00]
CW: You know how we ask everyone, “What do you know?” We’re always like, “It can be something little, like I love chocolate cake. And it can be the whole grand scheme of things, right?” So I feel like with this question, “Is there anything you long for?” you could take it either way.
SH: Well, okay. I already did in my head.
CW: Oh, good. I wanna hear it.
SH: The first thing that I thought was, I was standing at the grocery store this morning thinking, “What am I gonna bake in the next few days? Am I gonna bake a sour cream lemon pie? Am I going to bake something apple, because something apple sounded good to me, but also last weekend I baked a cake and that cake was so dang good that I have an idea for another cake I wanna try.”
And so obviously what I’m longing for, if I’m doing this on Wednesday morning already projecting ahead a couple of days, I am longing for something that tastes good.
But now I wanna go to the thing behind the thing because why? Why am I so focused on that? And I always am. I’ve lived my entire life in pursuit of my next treat. That’s just the truth of how I live.
CW: Whether it’s Like a Tootsie Pop or a cake, a bagel…
SH: You know what? As a kid, it was a lifesaver out of my mom’s purse. Honestly, it doesn’t matter. It’s whatever the next thing is. I wake up in the morning and think, “How soon can I go and get a fountain Diet Coke?”
Because that’s what I’m longing for when I wake up. And so as I try to examine like, what’s the thing behind the thing, I think I long for relief. All of this for me is self-medication. I do it in a lot of different ways. I do it with routine. There are all kinds of ways, little ways, that I self-medicate.
I’ve known this about myself for many many years. Because as you know, I’ve done a lot of therapy. But I know this about myself. And obviously there’s some itch that will never be scratched. And having felt so much discomfort in my own existence for as long as I can possibly remember, I am longing for relief from that.
And I’m gonna get really honest here for a second. My mother-in-law, sometimes she’s quoting someone else, but she said something that I’ve always thought was so funny, which was, “Oh, to be safely dead.” I know, right? But I had a friend – I think I talked about it maybe in a newsletter –I had a friend who passed away over the holidays this year. I think about her a lot. And just yesterday morning when I was on my way to get my Diet Coke to try to find some relief from everything going on in the world because it’s been so heavy this week–it’s just been so, so heavy to me– I was thinking about my friend Judy, and I thought to myself, “I wonder how Judy is. I wonder how it is not being here.”
CW: Wow, Susan.
SH: And I thought, “You know, it’s probably okay. It’s probably pretty good.” So there is something there. I’ve never quite gotten to it yet in my lifetime. I’m not sure that I will, but there is a longing for something.
That’s one way that I would answer that question. I have other ways that I would answer that question, but that’s what occurs to me this morning just because it’s kind of the arc that I’ve been on in my thoughts the past few days.
CW: Can I ask a follow-up? Not that I’m doubting your self-reflection in your years of therapy, but my follow-up question is how do you know it’s self-medication versus pleasure? How do you know? Because when I think I’m baking a cake, to me it’s just a simple pleasure. I walk by the river. I love the sound of a river. I love smelling roses. I love baking a cake. How do you know it’s not just enjoying life’s goodness? Life’s pleasures versus self-medication?
SH: Because I know myself. I also love baking a cake. But I think part of why I love baking is because it was soothing to me as a child. I would come home from school and I had some hard things in my life as a child and I would bake something. I would literally spend hours and hours pouring through cookbooks as a child. That was a repetitive activity that I enjoyed and that yielded me a sweet treat.
It worked for me on a bunch of different levels. But as I’ve said on the podcast before, I’m an alcoholic for everything but alcohol. I have a hugely addictive personality.
All my siblings do too. You would be astonished if you could get a glance in any of our pantries and see the amount of [00:35:00] candy and other things that live there. We carry around a lot of crutches in the world, my siblings and I do, and things that taste good are definitely one of those crutches. So I just know that about myself. I know how it functions for me, how it feels when I do it.
CW: Of course you do.
SH: And what drives me to do it, so…
CW: Yeah, I was just surprised since you and I both love cake. But it sounds like it’s maybe different reasons and maybe not always. I mean, maybe some days for you the reason is different
SH: Oh man, I just love cake. Don’t get me wrong. I love cake. Because cake is cake and it’s amazing. And who doesn’t love it? But there are people who can live without cake and I can’t live without cake.
CW: Weirdos. That’s who lives without cake.
SH: Right.
CW: Anyway, let’s not talk crazy here!
SH: Oh, all right. Cynthia. One, two or three?
CW: Two.
SH: If you got a do-over for one decision in your life, what would it be?
CW: Oh gosh. I have an answer for this, but it’s hard because then my life wouldn’t be what it is, probably. Like everything doesn’t get to stay the same if you change a major decision.
SH: Right. We’re talking about a butterfly effect.
CW: Exactly. I’ll go ahead and say it. I would have chosen a career. I would have figured out a way that I could have worked full-time, part-time, I would’ve figured out a way to have a career. And I have the kind of husband who would have gladly done that.
He would’ve said, “We will shuffle our lives so that you can have a career and I can have a career and somehow take care of these little babies.” The hard part was we didn’t grow up near family at all.
SH: Right.
CW: And so it’s not like I could have even asked. I had friends who only worked Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the grandma would watch the kids those days. I didn’t have any option like that. And childcare in Utah in the ‘90s and early 2000s was worse than it is now. I mean, it’s bad now. So I don’t know what I would’ve done, but that’s the answer and I’m sticking to it, is that I would’ve had a career.
SH: Can I ask a follow-up question?
CW: Fine, you can, but I may not answer it.
SH: And that’s absolutely fine. You can pass on all of my follow-up questions, even though you can only pass on one card. So my question to you is, I hear you, and also I’m wondering if you can put your finger on it or if you wanna put your finger on it. What is the main reason that’s the decision that you would change? At this point in your life, looking back at it.
CW: Because I made that choice because old men, ahem, prophets of our church told me, “This is what good women choose.”
And I’m so, I was gonna say angry, but I don’t know if that’s the right word. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once I saw that I was making life decisions based on the advice of a man born in 1895, I was like, “What on Earth? He has no idea what my life is like, how dare I hand the reins over to him?”
So, yeah, maybe I am a little angry about that, that I gave somebody so much say over my one precious wild life.
SH: Is there a specific career that you wish you’d had?
CW: Well, I have a degree in financial services, and so I think it would’ve been so amazing to get into stocks and bonds trading, something like that. I mean, that’s what I studied. I could have been a Wall Street girl, Susan. I don’t know. Maybe I would’ve hated it. I don’t know.
SH: You could be a stake auditor now, Cynthia. Wouldn’t that scratch the itch?
CW: Aim high. No, that would not scratch the itch for me, but yes, thank you.
SH: Too funny.
CW: Goodness. Let’s see, is it my turn? How can I not keep track of what we’re doing?
SH: It is.
CW: Okay. It’s insights, right? Insights: one, two, or three,
SH: Two.
CW: What’s a quality you’re drawn to that you don’t possess?
SH: Oh, so easy because you have it, Cynthia.
CW: What?
SH: Oh, the ability to… maybe you’re gonna hate that I so quickly said, “You have this, Cynthia”, the ability to take up space in the world.
CW: Oh, I like that answer.
SH: I mean, I am programmed to be small. You know, the universe created me small, so I’m pretty small, but I wish that I could [00:40:00] be comfortable inhabiting even my full small space. And I’m just not in social situations. I’m really not in anything that I’m doing. For years I sold art and I would sit in my booth and think, “How tiny can I make myself, and could I actually just sit under my own table in the booth so that no one could see me? That would be great. That would be the ideal.”
But that was just dumb because those days of shows were some of the best days, right? It’s where all of your work would come out and be on display and the people who loved my work and followed it would come and visit and would fully appreciate everything that I did. People would take out a magnifying glass and look at stuff. If there was ever a time when I would want to move fully into embracing who I am and this is my work and here’s why I made it, and all those things, you would think it would be that, but it was not.
So it’s just really hard for me, taking up my space, whether that’s on the church pew, in line at the bagel shop, or anywhere else. I’m pretty much the smallest thing in the room, and that’s in my own psyche as well as physically. Both of those things are true.
CW: Interesting.
SH: My daughter and I took a picture the other day at the botanical garden and we were looking at the pictures after. We took a selfie together ‘cause we go every year and we always take a selfie when we’re there, right? So we have this whole series of them and I looked at the selfie and I’m like, half my daughter’s size.
I said to her, “Why do I look like a midget somewhere in the background of this photo?” And she just laughed and she said, “I wonder this every year, I just think, ‘Is she getting smaller? How did my head get so enormous when my mother’s is an invisible speck in the picture.’” And I said to her, “I feel this way with every At Last She Said It photo we take, and it’s not just that Cynthia’s taller than I am. I’m always the tiny person somewhere over on the end of the photo.” This is just who I am, but also it’s who I’m comfortable being. And I wish that I would push that line a little bit harder. I would like to not be quite so small.
CW: Well, and for people who have never seen us together in person, I am abnormally tall. And you are, I don’t wanna say abnormally ‘cause it’s not abnormal.
SH: Well, no, I mean, I’m like 5’3”. It’s not 4’11”, right? I’m 5’3”. Which is not terribly small, but somehow I’m small. I don’t know.
CW: I’m 5”9”. And so even when we stand next to each other, we just have different body builds too.
SH: We’re just different. But we have different personalities too. And so it’s part of all of it for me, you know? It’s body size and everything else. And it has a lot to do with how I see myself, I guess. And how you see yourself.
And basically, I just wanna look in your mirror. I wanna wake up and look in your mirror and think “I’m gonna send a letter to my stake president today and let him know my thoughts about something.” That’s never gonna happen for me, Cynthia! It’s never gonna happen.
CW: You know what’s so funny is years ago when I told you, who knows how many times I’ve written letters to state presidents or called them up and said, “Hey, we need to meet ‘cause I got things to say,” it never dawned on me that isn’t something everybody can do until you were like, “No, Cynthia, no. Like I would never, ever do that.”
SH: Never.
CW: And over the years, woman after woman has written us and said, “I’m like Susan.” And that has been so good for me to really see how our wiring really makes who we are.
SH: Yeah. It absolutely does.
CW: I don’t know any other way to describe it other than I am wired this way. You are wired that way and never the twain shall meet.
SH: Right, right, right. But it doesn’t keep me from wishing sometimes that I could take a walk in the other person’s skin.
[Break]
SH: One, two, or three,
CW: One.
SH: What’s a hard truth you’ve had to learn about yourself?
CW: I’m gonna skip this one.
SH: Really? Oh, interesting! Thank you for not turning it back on me. Okay.
CW: Okay.
SH: Would you like question number two or number three?
CW: Number two.
SH: I could answer this for you.
CW: Oh, good.
SH: Layup question! You traded a hard question for an easy one. Has your idea of what it means to be a good Latter Day Saint changed over time?
CW: Ooh. And how would you answer it for me, Susan? Go for it.
SH: Yes. I would say yes, it has changed. Now you can explain to us how it has changed.
CW: Okay. Actually, read the question one more time. I wanna [00:45:00] hear, there’s one specific word I was thinking of, but I wanna make sure I got it right.
SH: Has your idea of what it means to be a good Latter Day Saint changed over time.
CW: Okay. It was the word good. Yes, absolutely. Obviously. That has changed for all the reasons we’ve talked about for the last six years. But I was thinking the other day as I went to Gospel Doctrine, “Mercy, what is wrong with me? I’m going to Gospel Doctrine.”
SH: You get extra credit.
CW: Well, I mean, the Old Testament is crazy and I love it for all its craziness. And I could go on and on right now about what I’m hoping to get out of the Old Testament. Maybe I will another time.
But I’m sitting in that room hearing people throw out comments and answers, and I am trying so hard to practice what I preach by saying, “I wonder what happened to them in their life to make them see the way they see.” I wonder how their viewpoint, I heard this from Richard Rohr recently; a viewpoint is just that, a view from a point.
SH: Right.
CW: And I’m trying to exercise grace for people that make me wanna pull my hair out. And I’m proud of myself for that. I fail at it probably 50%, okay, 90% of the time. But I feel like to me, that’s how I define a good Latter Day Saint. One of the ways. I mean, I could give you a list, but one of the ways is I am trying to be curious about each person’s view from their point.
And it’s kind of ouchie ‘cause I wanna do the path of least resistance, which is, “You’re crazy! Don’t talk like that!”. Which says so much about me.
SH: That says so much about every person sitting in Gospel Doctrine, doesn’t it?
CW: Well, this is true. It’s just a petri dish of craziness. I’m telling you.
SH: I mean, it kind of is. My question about that as an answer to this question, my follow up for you is - and how does that figure into being a “good” Latter Day Saint, if you see what I mean.
CW: Because I so desperately want to be the kind of person who really practices non-dual thinking, who doesn’t just look at something and say, “This is good, that is bad.” I really want to see the complexity and the non-binary of people’s lives. I really do. I really have that goal. I would love to be that kind of person because at my heart I am a judgy person, as probably most humans are. But I don’t know. I feel like I got an extra dose in line in heaven when they were passing out personality traits or characteristics.
SH: I love that. I love that answer. Can I tell you how I thought you would probably answer that question when I said “I could answer that question for you.” I really did think I knew how you were gonna answer it.
I thought that it was going to be, “I used to think that a good Latter Day Saint followed all of the rules, and now I think that a good Latter Day Saint follows Jesus.”
CW: Well, that’s true too. That’s absolutely true. I could have answered this a lot of different ways. This is just what I happen to be working on right now as I have been attending Old Testament Gospel Doctrine at church.
SH: I absolutely love knowing that. What is your hope that there will be other good Latter Day Saints in the room who are working on the same thing?
CW: Well, isn’t that what we all want? I need to extend grace to people because more than anything I want people to extend grace to me.
SH: Yeah, but I don’t think they all showed up to Gospel Doctrine ‘cause they wanna practice non-dual thinking. I could be wrong about that.
CW: You could be wrong. Who knows? But you’re probably right.
SH: I hope I’m wrong. I’m willing to be wrong on that – and so many other things. This is the beauty of having a podcast. You have to be willing to be wrong about a lot of things. This is what I’ve learned.
CW: And we’re wrong on air for thousands and thousands of people to hear us.
SH: Correct. It’s a good exercise.
CW: Right. Speaking of grace, thank you listeners for all the grace you extend to us, ‘cause I’m sure sometimes we make people wanna pull their hair out, Susan.
SH: Absolutely. Pretty sure that’s true. Oh, Cynthia, thank you for playing What Do You Say? with me today. This was fun.
CW: This was way fun. We should been doing it over diet, sodas and cake. That would’ve made it perfect.
SH: That would’ve been better.
CW: But this is second best..
SH: Would’ve been better, but I’m excited to have listeners show up and play this with us. We’re gonna learn interesting things about a lot of interesting women this season. I’m excited.
CW: Take care, Susan. Thank you.
SH: Thank you.
Voicemail 1: After your Word of Wisdom episode, I was thinking about what it would be like if the Word of Wisdom ever does change and like Cynthia and Susan. I don’t feel like it [00:50:00] would impact my life significantly, but obviously it would be a change in the church’s identity, and I know that it would be a huge deal for a lot of people.
I do think that the justification for making a change is easily found in the scriptures when Peter is commanded to take the gospel to the Gentiles and he’s told “What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.” And I think when I would hear the scripture as part of a lesson as a kid, there would be kind of a sense of like, “Wow, can you believe that they didn’t wanna eat bacon back then?”
But when I think of how people would feel today about coffee suddenly not being a sin, I can see why it was hard for the first century church. My husband was an adult convert to the church, but he hasn’t attended in well over a decade at this point. And I know that his time in the church really impacted him, but I’ve also realized that he just doesn’t get what it’s like to be raised in the church.
Because he’ll say things like, “Well, how can people care so much about X, Y, or Z thing?” And I always say, “Well, it’s because they were raised this way and they were told that this was true their whole lives.” And he just kind of can’t fathom that level of investment. It seems to me like he often thinks, “Wow, can you believe they don’t wanna eat bacon?”
And so I think that whatever our perspective is on any issue, it can be really hard to change our viewpoint or to understand how it would be to have a different one. But I hope that if the Word of Wisdom does change, we’ll be able to absorb the impact of that as a community in a productive way and value all of the different reactions that people will have.
Voicemail 2: Hi ladies. This is about episode 244 - a couple interesting things I want to present. First of all, I always was told that story about Joseph Smith as a boy declining alcohol for the Word of Wisdom, and I remember even as a 12 or 13-year-old asking my mom “Wasn’t that before he even came up with the Word of Wisdom revelation?” and no one could have a good answer.
But my main question I wanna present to you is, I was told by a friend many years ago that the reason that coffee is considered a hot drink is when Brigham Young came out West –as was mentioned in the podcast– he wanted to control the economic situation of Utah. And so, therefore he tried to grow coffee beans in Utah.
And after several years of failed attempts and realizing that Utah wasn’t a place where coffee beans could grow, he decided to define hot drinks as including coffee. I have not ever been able to find a source on that, nor have I ever heard anyone else except for this one friend say that was the reason.
Have any of you ever heard that or any listeners ever heard that in your research into the Word of Wisdom? Great job. Love your podcast. Thanks.
[Break]
SH: Wait, why have I got a blank card here too? Hold on. Sorry about that. What is going on right now? Makes me wonder if my glue sticks have failed.
SH: Yes, that’s what it is! My glue stick has failed.
CW: They’ve all fallen off. Well, you only need one more. It’s good.
SH: I need one more. Okay. We don’t need, you can cut all of that out.
[Break]
SH: Yeah, we’re gonna go, we’re gonna do your last question. This is the last one.
CW: Oh, there’s one, sorry. My gosh. I don’t know where my brain is today. Okay, so I’ll cut that all out. Go for it.
[Break]
CW: Don’t forget, we have a website atlastshesaid it.org. That’s where you can find all of our content. You can contact our team, send us a voicemail, find transcripts, buy our book, subscribe to our substack, or make a tax deductible donation. Paid subscribers, get extra stuff including access to our community chats and also Zoom events with us. Remember, your support keeps the podcast ad-free. Thanks for listening.