Shannon Watts is Fired Up: How to Turn Your Spark Into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age
Show Snapshot:
Tired of living on autopilot while your dreams sit on the back burner? Shannon Watts knows that restlessness. Before founding Moms Demand Action and earning accolades including Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential, Shannon was an overwhelmed mom who broke down in a doctor's office, covered in stress-induced eczema from living a life that no longer worked. In her new book "Fired Up," Shannon shares her transformation from breakdown to fired-up founder of a grassroots movement against gun violence and champion of "summoning the audacity of women." You'll discover how to identify what's truly calling you, push through the fear of being "too late," and give yourself permission to live audaciously at any age. Your midlife restlessness isn't something to fix—it's a fire waiting to ignite. Ready to light that spark, beauties?
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Fired Up: How to Turn Your Spark Into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age
Quotable:
Women are taught to fulfill their obligations and men are taught to follow their desires. And there is a formula for living on fire, and that is really just seeing two things very clearly—what is holding you back and what is calling you?
Transcript:
Shannon Watts 0:00
No one expected me to be a leader, especially at age 41. I was an introvert. I struggled with severe ADHD my entire life. I had a debilitating fear of public speaking. I knew little to nothing about politics, organizing, or gun violence, right? This is not exactly the description of someone who people would point to and say, "Oh, that woman should take on the most powerful, wealthy special interest that's ever existed," and yet that's exactly what happened.
Katie Fogarty 0:28
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. I'm your host, Katie Fogarty. Beauties, because you are human, there is a good chance that at some point in your life you have been living on autopilot. Weeks collapse into one another, then months, entire seasons, sometimes years disappear. Midlife gives us a new vantage point to assess how our life is humming along. Or, as Brené Brown says, midlife is the time when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear, "I'm not screwing around." If the universe is whispering loudly, urgently in your ear, today's show is for you.
We have an incredible guest, one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People, a Forbes 50 Over 50, and Glamour magazine's Woman of the Year. She is a hero of mine for her work as the founder of Moms Demand Action, the nation's largest grassroots organization against gun violence. Yes, we are being joined by the incredible Shannon Watts. But before Shannon earned all these awards and accolades, she was a wife, a mom, a woman who woke up one day and didn't recognize her life. Now, after a decade plus driving meaningful change through Moms Demand Action, Shannon is bringing her energy to new arenas. She joins me today to dive into the pages of her latest book, "Fired Up: How to Turn Your Spark Into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age" - a book, a community, a conversation offering a framework to ignite your life. Welcome, Shannon.
Shannon Watts 2:46
Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled.
Katie Fogarty 2:48
I am very thrilled. I've been following your work avidly for years. You took up the mantle on something that's so important - tackling our epidemic of gun violence. But before you did that, you set off an earthquake in your own life, right? This earthquake, this domino effect, led to your organization, to your advocacy, to your awards, and eventually to the opening chapter of this latest book, "Fired Up." Can you share this backstory tipping point with our listeners?
Shannon Watts 2:46
Yeah, I was in my twenties when my parents divorced. I had just graduated from college, and it was a brutal, brutal divorce. I was asked to take sides. I was an only child, and I think because I was spinning out, I looked to my college boyfriend to become that new family as mine was dissolving. And we married right out of college. I got pregnant three months later. I got pregnant three months after that baby was born. I had three kids by the time I was 30, and I just kind of went on autopilot because what I had to do was take care of my kids and support my family and all the things that I thought were going to happen.
I thought I was going to become an investigative journalist. I thought I would be in an equitable, fulfilling marriage. I thought that my life would be full of things that made me feel alive. And instead, I found myself in my mid-thirties in an emergency room. I was covered head to toe in eczema, and I'm talking about like the kind that prevents you from sleeping, keeps you from concentrating - the suffering becomes your whole focus. And I couldn't cure it. I'd seen a bunch of doctors. Nothing was working. They kept telling me to go to a therapist, and this doctor sort of looked me in the eyes and said, "How much stress are you under?"
And I cracked. I really had a breakdown in his office, and I was able to see very clearly that I was at a crossroads, that I had made a lot of bad choices that I either needed to live with or undo, and I did not want to keep living this way. And what I came to realize, and I've seen play out over and over again, especially through my career and my work with Moms Demand Action, is that women are taught to fulfill their obligations and men are taught to follow their desires. And there is a formula for living on fire, and that is really just seeing two things very clearly: what is holding you back and what is calling you?
Katie Fogarty 4:53
These were such powerful questions when you share them after that story. The book opens so vividly. You walk us through that exact moment, the kindness of that doctor who really wanted to hear you, and that moment of vulnerability which allowed you to truly understand like it needs to look different. So how did this pivotal moment, this crossroads, inspire you to create "Fired Up"?
Shannon Watts 5:20
So I then undid all of the things in my life that were causing me to have eczema, right? This energy of being unhappy and unfulfilled was sort of burning me from the inside out, and I began to journal. That was a big part in the journey for me, which was to write about my feelings. I couldn't confide in my husband, particularly because I wasn't happily married. I couldn't afford a therapist, and so I just began journaling, and that became a roadmap, telling me what I needed to do and where I needed to go. And I needed to end my marriage. Thankfully, we ended up being friends and good co-parents, but that was not a partner I would have picked if I had waited to marry until I was 30. And I left the communications career that I had been in for decades because even though I was good at it, it wasn't what made me feel alive.
And I tried a whole bunch of different things. I tried becoming a yoga teacher, and I started a business that failed, and I did all of these different things. I practiced over and over again until my spark ignited. That was the beginning of Moms Demand Action. And this formula I write about in the book for living on fire is simply marrying your values, your abilities, and your desires. And those three things are unique for everyone, but they're also dependent on the phase of life you're in, right? And so for me, at 41, which was the first time I really felt like I was living the life I wanted to live, it was because I was living those three things out, right? My values, which were to protect my family and community; my abilities, which - I knew how to create a brand and a narrative and messaging that would embolden women; and then my desires, which was to create this badass army of women who would take on the wealthiest, most powerful special interest that ever existed.
Katie Fogarty 7:07
And you did all three of those things, and it's - for me, it was so inspiring because you burst onto my consciousness in the national scene through your advocacy and through your work. And it's very easy - it's like the tip of the iceberg, right? I saw the tip when you burst through, but I had no idea what was going on underneath - all the time, effort, and sort of suffering and evolution that you went through to get to this moment. So I found the book, the opener, so gripping because oftentimes we see the finished product and the success, and we don't see everything that went underneath it.
And we are going to explore all these three elements of your formula - values, ability, desires - help our listeners identify how they might sort of build this framework and use it in their own life. But I want to start by asking maybe one or two more stage-setting questions. Why the word "fire," right? Fire conjures up so many images. It's power, it's destruction. It's very elemental in nature. It implies transformation. So what does it mean to you to live on fire? And I'm curious as to why you chose this particular metaphor for this book.
Shannon Watts 8:12
I was thinking about writing this book. I'd been invited to write this book by Maria Shriver. She reached out to me when I stepped back from Moms Demand Action in 2023 and said, "I have this book imprint, and I really would love for you to write a book." And I said, "Okay, about what?" And she said, "Whatever you've learned." And you're like, "Okay, that's gonna be a long book."
Katie Fogarty 8:40
That is a very big subject.
Shannon Watts 8:42
And so I tried to narrow it down. And I went to my friend Glennon Doyle's house for an overnight visit in July of that year, and she said, "I love you, but this outline you've written is very boring. You are a fiery personality. You are someone who is constantly creating new fires, letting them burn, inviting other women in to light their flame too, and then moving on to the next thing, right? To the next fire." And to me, that resonated so much, and women sort of aren't given permission, as I said earlier, to pursue their desires. And when we give ourselves permission, when we stop asking for approval and start building fires that are authentic to us, that is a way to live fully and audaciously and authentically. That's radical, if not political, right?
And I have met so many women along my journey who have amazing ideas - personal, political, professional. They want to do big things or even the small things that are meaningful to them, and yet they don't feel like they have permission. They don't feel like they have a story, or that someone wants to hear them, or that it will be good enough, or that they deserve it. And so I simply don't want any woman to get to the end of her life and feel like she didn't burn.
Katie Fogarty 10:13
This is such an incredible story. First of all, that is a sleepover that we all wish we had. I mean, who doesn't want Glennon Doyle sort of taking you by the shoulder and saying, "You have fire within you, and you need to be sharing it with others."
Shannon Watts 10:26
Yeah.
Katie Fogarty 10:27
And you talk a lot in your book about what you call "false fires" - things that get in the way of us truly burning, igniting the spark and letting it grow into transformation. And you call false fires things like purpose, achievement, happiness - sort of some of these ideals that society encourages us to chase or to be responsible for, and that we wind up long on responsibility, short on realized desires. You said something that I loved and noted. You say, "Your fire starts where all your shoulds end." And I was like, nodding my head, because that really spoke to me. We often feel like we should do this, we should do that. How do we end our shoulds?
Shannon Watts 11:05
It's so interesting. I think that women are set up for failure, right? We don't live on fire because we were weak. It's because we're wise. We know that the system is set up from keeping us from following our desires. And why is that? Because if women lived in a way where the only question we asked ourselves was, "What do you want?" governments would fail. Systems would topple. Family systems would end, right? So many things as we know it would change in this country and in the world. And so the system is set up to prevent us from living that way, and at some point, we start to believe these false fires that you mentioned are our desire, are our fulfillment.
We're sold this idea, almost like self-care, the commodification of purpose - that we're born to do this one thing, and if we don't figure it out, then our life was not worth living. And I don't want to spend my entire life looking for the one thing I should do. It certainly wasn't - or something to buy. They want you to buy things to buy to help me find my purpose. But my purpose in life wasn't just raising kids. It wasn't just Moms Demand Action. It won't just be this book. I want to continue to do new things until the end of my life. I want to use my wisdom to summon the audacity of other women.
And so when we believe busyness or happiness or purpose or all these things are what we're here for, we're not really looking at who we are, who is our authentic self, what do we bring to the table, and how can we make that difference ourselves? And again, I want women to ask themselves all the time, throughout their entire lives, "What do I want?"
Katie Fogarty 12:49
That's such a powerful question. Shannon, we're heading into a quick break, but when we come back, we are going to talk about this notion of summoning the audacity of other women, and you are going to walk us through your fire formula because that is a great starting point. We'll be back in just a minute.
Katie Fogarty 13:04
Shannon, we're back from the break. When we went into it, you had a call to action. You want to summon the audacity of other women. That's why you're here. We're on board. You've gotten us excited. You have created what you call a "fire formula" that you used in your own life, and you used it to bring this incredible organization to life. You've used it to sort of reimagine your life when you were in your thirties and realizing you needed massive change. And you have interviewed countless women up to incredible things who are using this formula as well. Walk us through the values, the ability, and the desire formula, and how we can put it to work in our own lives.
Shannon Watts 13:40
Yeah, I want to start by saying I'm not a unicorn. There's nothing super special about me that helped me start Moms Demand Action, except that I followed this formula unknowingly at the time. We all have this within us, and it's all unique to who we are. And what was so amazing was when I was leading Moms Demand Action - yes, it was the largest women-led nonprofit in the nation, but it was also - it became the largest real-life laboratory for figuring out what makes women come alive, right? Tens of thousands of volunteers who kind of went through this training and figured out who they were. And what I saw over and over again was this fire triangle, right?
So you learn about this fire triangle, probably when you're in middle school. What does a fire need to live, to be sustained? And that's heat, oxygen, and fuel. And so your personal fire is the same way. It's that triangle, and the elements in your triangle are desire, values, and abilities, right?
So let's start with desires. This is the heat that activates your fire triangle. It's the most powerful element among the three, and it's really your deepest longing. I think it's the part of you that yearns to be seen, that wants to make an impact and be shared with the world. As I said, for me, having grown up in Rochester, New York, and being taught to view activists like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass and even Susan B. Anthony as heroes, that was a desire that I had - was to emulate them.
Values - this is the oxygen that your fire needs, and it really feeds your desires in your fire triangle. And your values are your personal beliefs, your principles. It defines your priorities, the decisions, the actions you take. And you know, if you Google "What's a personal value?" you'll see there's hundreds of them. And you mentioned Brené Brown earlier - she's really dug into this work - and values are different for everyone. For me, it was protecting my family and community, at least when I was 41 years old and had little kids, and this horrific shooting tragedy happened, right? And so your values might change throughout your life, but they're a little bit of the North Star of who you are.
And then your abilities in your fire triangle - these abilities, this is the element that fuels your desires as well, and it is your unique mental or physical gifts, skills, and talents. They can be innate, they might be acquired, but they set you apart from everyone else. And for me, that has always been my ability to communicate and to tell a story and to shape a narrative.
And so when you combine these three elements in just the right way, it helps you start a fire. But if any of the elements are missing or they're removed, just like in real life, a fire won't start or it will go out. And so it is a practice. It's a discipline of combining these three things in just the right way over and over again. And it's alchemy. And it can feel like magic - a very profound or transcendent force that, at least for me, has felt like touching the divine.
Katie Fogarty 16:37
That is such a beautiful image of sort of touching the divine - alchemizing your unique formula and bringing it to life in ways that serve your deepest desires but also make a difference in the world that we live in. Because I feel like that is a very human desire to have impact. When I say impact, I don't mean success necessarily, the way we define it in this sort of capitalistic world, but like to impact your children or your community, your parent, or to feel that your presence on Earth has made a difference to another human, I think, is like a very fundamental and core human desire.
Shannon Watts 17:10
I'm glad you brought this up. Can I just jump in one second? Because I think what you're talking about is legacy, and I talk about this in my book, and we never really ask women about their legacy. I think we see legacy in our society as a huge philanthropic donation, or your name on the side of a building, or Mount Rushmore, or even an obituary in the New York Times. Like legacy feels so lofty and big, but it's exactly what you were just talking about - that you get to the end of your life and you felt you lived a life that was authentic to you, and that sort of lights the way for other people.
And you know, what's interesting is I interviewed over 70 amazing women from all walks of life for this book. And do you know what most of them said when I said, "What are you worried your deathbed regret will be?" Most of them said that they pursued what they loved at the expense of their children. Hmm, isn't that fascinating? Because I've never met a man who believes that or who worries about that, and I'm now 54. I'm on the other side of that chasm, and I traveled so much when I was working at Moms Demand Action, and my kids were all elementary through high school. And do you know that not a single one of them ever says to me, "Mom, I can't believe you didn't go to that soccer game in 2006. I can't believe you didn't go to the fifth showing of my Peter Pan play." What they all say is, "We are so proud of you. We are so grateful that you have something that lights you up, and thank you for setting an example for us to do the same."
Katie Fogarty 18:43
I think that it's sometimes hard for women to understand that. It's funny that you mentioned your parents' divorce. My parents separated when my oldest child was a year old. She's now about to be 25, so 24 years ago they separated, and I remember my mom saying to me, "This is going to come as a big surprise." And I thought, "The only thing I'm surprised about is that you think I'm surprised," because it was clear to me that they were unhappy. And my parents are both delightful people, and they're close to one another now in familiar ways, but not a romantic partnership. And it has been so clear to me my entire life, since that moment, that our greatest gift we can give our children is to be happy and fulfilled in ourselves.
And I think that women sometimes are sold the wrong bill of goods. They - you know, it needs to be like self-sacrifice and do everything. And you - of course, your children want you at different times, but they truly need you to be happy. We all know there's a big difference between want and need, and your children need you to be lit up, to be a whole person, to not burden them with your unhappiness and your lack of fulfillment. And women are not often told that correctly. And so we suffer needlessly, and we often make our children feel bad too, because if they're the center of our universe, they can't go off and be their own center. And in this generation, when our kids go to college, or they leave the house at 18, or whenever they go, we have a whole second half to live, and unless we are always working toward what that will be, I'm sure you've met women like this who are just devastated and kind of can't move forward.
Shannon Watts 20:10
Yep, it's tricky. My youngest is getting ready to graduate. I have a 24, 21, and a 17-year-old, and he's getting ready to graduate and go to college, and I'm happy for him. He's off on a new chapter. I've seen my other kids' experience of that, and there's so much joy, but there is a poignancy to having a chapter end, of course, where you feel like there's sadness. There's certain things I miss about the baby days - not a lot, but some. And I'm happy to hold somebody else's chubby, adorable toddler, and then hand them back over. And there is a poignancy to loss, but we don't want to be left without anything. So I totally hear what you're saying on that.
And for me, it's interesting because I've recorded 220 shows. I have spoken to so many incredible women who are making the most of this chapter, who are reinventing a sense of purpose, fitness, wellness, creativity, just launching new endeavors, businesses, books, et cetera. And I talk to women all the time who are very confident in midlife, right? We've navigated difficult moments. We have a clear sense of what lights us up. Everything is a double-sided coin, and the reality of getting to midlife is we truly have less time left, right? The clock is running out. And I don't mean that to be depressing. I mean it to be a reality - there is less runway in front of us than behind. So a question for you is for women who are thinking, "I want to be lit up. I want to ignite my life in the way that Shannon did, but I'm worried it may be too late." What would you say to somebody who feels that?
Shannon Watts 21:40
Oh, I understand that feeling totally, but it isn't. My book includes so many stories of women at all different ages who are doing amazing things. And I want to be clear, that doesn't mean you're doing things that are extraordinarily ambitious. You might be - you might be starting a business or going back to school or even getting a divorce - but you might also just be finally acting on very ordinary things that are meaningful to you: having a tough conversation, exploring something that you're passionate about, even figuring out what you need to get rid of in your life to live more audaciously. And that's all daring. That's all signs of a life on fire.
And I'll just give you some examples of the stories of women I tell in this book. One woman, Amber Goodwin, right out of college, was rejected from over a dozen law schools, and she thought, "Okay, I guess law school isn't for me." And then when Donald Trump won in 2016, she decided she wanted to try to go back to law school to just have a different trajectory in her career. And at age 40, applied to law school, finally got in, became the president of her law school - the first Black woman president. And then she now spends a lot of her time helping other women of color get into law school.
Another woman, Carol Frick, always wanted to be a writer. She ended up being a phys ed teacher because that paid the bills. She did it for 30 years. She retired and started volunteering in an animal shelter, and at that shelter, she came up with the idea of a book, a novel, about people who fall - a couple who falls in love at an animal shelter. She teaches herself how to write dialogue, how to format a book, how to write. She writes the book. She decides that she deserves to have it published. She doesn't want to self-publish. She sends it to 218 publishers - rejected every time. Finally, the 219th time it gets accepted, she gets a book deal, and she becomes a published author at age 70.
Katie Fogarty 23:31
Shannon, you're going to introduce me to Carol after this conversation is over. Isn't that amazing? 218 rejections? I love it. Talk about resilience and grit. By the way, that happens when you're older. Who knows if Carol ever comes on this show - I'm going to ask her. But if she had had all those numbers of rejections and she was younger, sometimes it stops you in your tracks. I think that having a lot of road underneath you when you start new fires helps give you that resilience that might be missing when you're younger. But I think to your point, also, I've had so many people say to me because I've experienced so much blowback and so much rejection and different things with taking on this very public issue. And a lot of women have said to me two things. One is, "I need a handbook to handle that kind of blowback," including rejection. So that's why I, in large part, wrote this book. Because the other thing is that we hear so much about what women are doing in the world right now - these amazing women, especially podcasts like yours and Julia Louis-Dreyfus and what women are doing in midlife and beyond - but not the how. And this is really the how. How do you not just follow your desires and this formula, but how do you get through the messy middle? Because there's going to be a lot of tough stuff - what I call "extinguishers" that threaten to put that fire out. How do you get from one side to the other?
Katie Fogarty 25:00
Well, let's talk about those fire extinguishers, because that is something that's a reality, right? When you evolve, not everyone's going to evolve with you. Not everyone's going to believe in your ability to do certain things, and some - like to your point, that sort of a patriarchal world that we live in, plus sometimes just the way we've trained our own families, our children, our friends to know and see and view us - can unwittingly put boundaries around us. And let's be totally honest, sometimes we stop ourselves. So how do we deal with some of these different types of things that can extinguish our fire?
Shannon Watts 25:35
So I write specifically about all of the different extinguishers, everything from perfectionism to self-sabotage to fear of failure. And we all have that experience, particularly women, of feeling like unless all the T's are crossed and all the I's are dotted, we can't move forward, and I think that stops a lot of women in their tracks before they even get partially down the road. I talked to a woman in the book who became a bike racer in her thirties and was so good at it, she was put on a team. She was racing in Japan, and she realized she was slowing down and letting her competitors win because she didn't want to face the fear of failure.
I think that's a lot of what it comes down to - guilt and shame. At the end of the day, we are made to feel guilty as women, as mothers, for pursuing what we want or feel ashamed, and they're all kind of extinguishers that can do that. But if we can get our minds around that we can push through those extinguishers, that we can handle them, that we can look to other women like in this book who have done exactly that and how they did it, then we can try it too.
No one expected me to be a leader, especially at age 41. I was an introvert. I struggled with severe ADHD my entire life. I had a debilitating fear of public speaking. I knew little to nothing about politics, organizing, or gun violence, right? This is not exactly the description of someone who people would point to and say, "Oh, that woman should take on the most powerful, wealthy special interest that's ever existed." And yet, that's exactly what happened, right? I had all these imperfections. I was not prepared, and I stepped up. And even though there were all these obstacles that seemed insurmountable - some constructed inside myself, some built by society - I persevered. And it turns out this neurodiverse, reserved, middle-aged mom in the Midwest was exactly the right person for the job.
Some of the women I interview in the book don't have that epiphany until they're in their fifties, sixties, or seventies, and I just think it's worth trying something, and even if we fail, learning from that experience that we can win the next time.
Katie Fogarty 27:32
First of all, I love that you use the word "trying" because I actually grabbed a quote from your book that I want to ask you about. So you literally say, "When I started the process of trying to find this aliveness in my life, I so desperately wanted to see myself as successful. I thought my transformation would only become meaningful when I arrived at its imaginary destination," right? And then you say, "Not only was this thought pattern misguided, it robbed me of the pride and recognition I deserve to give myself for the act of simply trying."
And I flagged this because trying versus succeeding is a hugely underrated quality in our world, right? And anyone who's listening to this, who's a mom or an aunt or a grandmother of young kids, we are always encouraging children to try things, right? We don't expect them to first go out there on the tennis court or the soccer field or to open a book and successfully read it or hit a home run or score a goal. Yet, something happens when we get to adulthood and we feel like trying is not good enough, like we can only do something if we succeed. I so love this. It sounds like you had a lot of opportunity to feel pride for yourself in tackling public speaking fears and putting yourself out there in ways that you could never have seen for yourself. Is there a similar fire starter story that comes to mind when you think about this idea of trying versus succeeding?
Shannon Watts 29:00
Oh yeah. Becca Depolice is one of my favorites in the book. She's from Texas and a mom who became a Moms Demand Action volunteer after her daughter endured a lockdown drill, and she sort of worked her way up in leadership. She, like me, knew very little about politics or the issue of gun safety or even organizing, and eventually became the chapter leader in Texas. And she became so confident in her values, abilities, and desires that she decided to run for office. And she ran twice, and she lost both times.
Katie Fogarty 30:42
That's bruising.
Shannon Watts 30:43
It is, but she said women are expected to step off the stage, and yet you have men like Beto O'Rourke or even Elon Musk who fail in public all the time, and they're sort of rewarded for it, right? They get the next big opportunity. And I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm just saying it's not the same for women. Becca says very specifically that women who fail are expected to disappear from public life - like that it's so shameful that you should hide somewhere - and she refused to do that. She now runs Emerge Texas, which is an organization that trains women to run, and who better to educate women about all of the extinguishers that are going to stand in their way when they run for office, and why they should do it anyway?
Katie Fogarty 31:25
It's such a tricky balance, because when I'm hearing you, I'm thinking about the fact that you're talking about men and women - who are men and women are different for a variety of reasons. We're not going to explore them all today. And you're talking about examples of Elon Musk or Beto O'Rourke, or I'm thinking of all these sort of like tech bro guys who are allowed to fail up - you can fail and keep going - but women have this sort of sense of shame around it. And to me, it could be in part - and I want to have a blanket statement for all women - but women are so much more collaborative in nature. We belong to one another as a group, a community, and so the sense of sort of failing and being cast out might feel more - it's more dislocating, like we want to be in a group, we want to be collaborating. So for that reason, it might be harder. So how do we balance the beauty of women being collaborative versus sort of more solo operators? Because that's a superpower, our ability to work with one another, yet not be afraid of sort of stepping out of the pack and assuming that leadership or that higher visibility role that's required to affect certain change. It's a balance.
Shannon Watts 32:30
It is. I call your community in this book a "bonfire," and I want to be clear that you really can't live on fire unless you have that bonfire, unless you have that community. And I know this personally because of Moms Demand Action. I, again, only child, introvert, never imagined that I would start the largest women-led organization in the nation, and this is where I found my people, right? This is how I was able to come alive myself - was with the support and the nurturing of other women who had different talents that I had. As I said, I was a communicator, but I wasn't an organizer. I wasn't a website developer. I wasn't a lawyer. I wasn't all of these things that other women were and brought their amazing skill sets to the table.
And it is so important to be in community of women who will lift you up when you experience those extinguishers. I couldn't have gotten through Moms Demand Action all those years without this incredibly supportive community of women telling me that I could do it and energizing me and making me feel like that I could be successful. And that is when you take those people with you, right? When you put your flames together, you create this bonfire that lasts with you an eternity, even if the fire doesn't. I've left Moms Demand Action, but I am still so connected with those women who are my go-to as I explore the next chapters of my life. So community, particularly in this time, in this place in our world, is more important than ever. And that's not just activism. It's personal, it's political, and it's professional.
Katie Fogarty 34:20
Absolutely, for any type of change that you want to effect, whether it's sort of systemic, like you were doing, or just within your own life or your own community, it requires the other people to support you and to buy in and to help you advance your cause. So I want to take a minute now to talk about the book, because listeners are lit up - very pun intended - about getting their hands on "Fired Up." And I want to let you know what you can expect from it. It's in five parts. Part one is sort of how to start a fire. What does it mean? Part two is your fire formula - the desires, values, abilities that we just identified and talked about as your triangle - really helps you walk through with exercises and ideas and other examples of these fire starter stories. Then part three is sustaining your fire. Really important, right? Because having the energy to keep going. Protecting your fire is part four. This is when you're dealing with extinguishers - sort of self-doubt, burnout. And then part five is the fire cycle, which is just sort of this conclusion and sort of big picture questions to ask yourself. How would you want a listener to approach this book? Do they read it straight through? Do they do the exercises? What do you want somebody to - how do you want them to dive in? What do you want them to experience? What do you want them to leave with?
Shannon Watts 35:41
I suggest at the beginning that you get a journal, much like I did after that day in the doctor's office. I think it's really important to have that journal to not just do the exercises, but also to capture your feelings and your ideas and what is holding you back and where you want to go. So that's the first thing I suggest. I do think it's important to try the exercises, because you will create your own fire starter team. You will reach out to other people that you're creating this bonfire with to be supportive and to even just tell them you're going to try this. I tell stories in the book about sometimes just saying the thing or practicing the thing is a way to move toward the thing, and so going through the exercises is key. I really want people to be invested in this and see it as a practice and a discipline, something that they'll be doing over and over again.
And then, because community is so important, I'm actually starting something called Fire Starter University. And people who have pre-ordered the book will have been enrolled in this class if they registered their purchase. And so starting September for a whole year, it's this online course where some of the women who I interview in the book will be speakers and guest lecturers, and I will walk through each of the parts you just mentioned and take people through the exercises, and just bring together that community of hundreds of women who will be there to help you take this book and put it into practice in your real life.
Katie Fogarty 37:10
Shannon, I want to skip to the end to ask you about your concluding chapter, "Rebirth." It really almost stands on its own. It encapsulates all the ideas in the book. It's really a manifesto, a call to arms. It's got great stories, great imagery. You share that the first sign of life after a fire in a forest is a wildflower named fireweed, which was something that I'd never heard of, so I Googled it. I learned it grows to nine feet. I learned it has show-stopping flowers, these beautiful purple blooms - people should go Google it - but you also share a wonderful story of a fire starter named Rabbi Brous, who often works with dying congregants, and she learned and realized that people wait to the end of their life to think about fulfillment and meaning, and she really wanted her congregants to think about this at an earlier phase. And so she actually turned over hundreds of index cards to her congregants at one religious session, and the question on it was, "What are you waiting for to do what you want with your life?" And when she got the answers, she wept over them. Can you share with our listeners what she learned and how that story impacted you?
Shannon Watts 38:20
Oh yeah. I mean, Rabbi Brous is just an amazing human, and she had just experienced the death of a friend from cancer, and she handed, as you said, out these index cards. And it's basically asking the question, "What are you waiting to do? What do you want to do with the rest of your life? Why are you waiting? What do you need?" And as you said, she was weeping as she read through these answers, and it was everything from someone to tell them to write the book, to start the band, to tell them they're worthy of love. And she says what made her weep was that she realized they weren't waiting for someone else to say that to them. They were actually waiting to feel it themselves.
And she says we have to give ourselves permission to live as if we could be dead tomorrow. And this is especially challenging for women, because we're taught to put our dreams on the back burner while we take care of everyone else's, right? That just really summarizes the book, because during the first half of our lives, we're often so focused on building our lives with - how do we help others? How do we support others? - and we forget that our time is finite. But as you said, by the time we reach midlife, we have this wisdom to see that we hold the power to burn down everything that no longer serves us and to create these new lives focused on what we want. And so if anyone takes any one thing from this book, I would like it to be that you are allowed, even obligated, to decide how to live your life, and it is never too late.
Katie Fogarty 39:51
I love that. I so agree. And in that chapter, you say, "Not only are you allowed, you're actually obligated to decide how you want to live your life." We need to summon up the courage to live the life that we want and to figure out what lights us up. And reading that chapter reminded me - I had the pleasure of interviewing another wonderful writer, Chip Conley, who is really like an OG in the midlife space. He is very thoughtful. He's as curious as he is wise, which he sometimes refers to when he talks about being a modern elder. But he came on my second podcast, The Midlife Book Club, to talk about his book "Learning to Love Midlife." And in that conversation, he talked about the moral obligation that we have to remain optimistic. And I want to ask you about this because I loved that phrase, and I've Googled it, and I've learned other people have said it and have talked about this moral obligation that we have to remain optimistic. But I think it's really important to think about this carefully, in the world that we're living in at this exact moment in time.
I launched this podcast almost five years ago. In those intervening five years, my 24-year-old daughter has fewer rights than when I began it, and so there are other women in this country that are being impacted by our political climate. We don't necessarily need to get into politics right now, but I think no matter where you stand on the political spectrum, we can see the news headlines. It is a time of great uncertainty. It is a time of great anxiety. We're seeing a lot of suffering in the world and in our own country. And so I know from reading this book and from having this conversation with you that you see your purpose as summoning audacity in women. You have done that. You continue to do that with this book. But how do we summon the audacity, remain optimistic today?
Shannon Watts 41:40
I think the idea of a moral obligation is interesting because what I have seen about hope is, as the activist Mariame Kaba said, it is a practice, it is a discipline, but the opposite of that is cynicism, and cynicism is often an excuse for inaction. It's easier to sit on the sidelines and to say nothing can happen, and then to say, "This is why I'm not doing that," right? But hope is much more courageous. It's much more daring, and it's also incredibly important, not just to the future of our country, but to our own lives, to be hopeful and to believe that we can make a difference, and to try, as we talked about - trying, right? - to try to make a difference. That doesn't mean you'll succeed. You're definitely going to fail when you try anything at some point along the way, but to keep going.
And what I realized was, yes, I'm certainly passionate about gun safety after 11 years as a full-time volunteer. But more than that, I am passionate about summoning the audacity of women, whether that's through my work at Moms Demand Action, whether it's this book, whether it's helping women to run for office, whatever that looks like. That's what's important to me, and we all have to figure out what that is for us, and keep asking ourselves throughout our lives, "What do I want?" And that will help summon not only your audacity, but the audacity of others.
Katie Fogarty 43:08
Shannon, this is such a beautiful note to end on. Thank you for a conversation that makes us feel hopeful about the changes we can make in our own lives and in the power of igniting the spark and identifying what it is we can bring forth to the world. So I really appreciate your time. Before we say goodbye, though, how can our listeners find you, your Substack, and learn more about the book and your Fire Starter program that you're launching in September?
Shannon Watts 43:35
Yes, I'm on most social media @ShannonRWatts. My Substack is "Playing with Fire," and I write about a lot of the themes that are in this book. And then the book is available at firedupbook.com. I'll be going on tour for the next few months, and I can't wait to meet so many of these fire starters in person.
Katie Fogarty 43:55
I'm going to hop in to say that I subscribe to Shannon's Substack, and it is full of all of these inspiring stories, but it's also full of stuff - you had Amy Nobileian, who's been on my show about dating in midlife. You talk about menopause, you talk about a whole range of topics. It is a phenomenal read. Thank you again for being with me, Shannon. I so appreciate it.
Shannon Watts 44:15
Thank you. It was great. I really appreciate the conversation.
Katie Fogarty 44:18
This wraps "A Certain Age," a show for women who are aging without apology, and what a conversation this was. I am truly overwhelmed and spinning. I have admired the work of Shannon Watts for as long as she's been doing it. It was an incredible treat to sit down, spend time with her, dive into the pages of her thoughtful and thought-provoking book. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. If you took something away, if you feel inspired, if you feel fired up, let us know in an Apple Podcast or Spotify review, because reviews help other women find the show. This is a group project, beauties. We are here to collaborate. Let other women know that this phenomenal show exists.
I am giving away a copy of this wonderful book, "Fired Up: How to Turn Your Spark Into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age" over on Instagram, so head to @acertainagepod to enter to win. Special thanks to Mike Mancini, who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time and until then, stay fired up, beauties.