Podcast

Reena Merchant:

You're listening to the OurVoice podcast, and this is your host, Reena Merchant. Being your authentic self, it sometimes feels so much easier said than done. But what if it doesn't have to be that hard? OurVoice is committed to helping each and every one of us find ourselves and be ourselves.

Reena Merchant:

On this podcast, I have conversations with people who are inspiring me on my personal journey to authenticity, my journey within and without. I hope that these conversations will be helpful to you, too. So let's get started.

Reena Merchant:

Today's topic is voice. I've been fairly open about my own journey in finding my voice. This is really what the inspiration behind OurVoice was. Growing up, I struggled with balancing my own internal needs and desires, with the expectations around me. Amidst all of that, one of the biggest challenges I faced was finding a way to rebalance myself and to find my own authentic voice.

Reena Merchant:

With this being the essence of our voice, it felt very fitting for the first episode of our podcast to be about voice. Our guest today is LaDonna Willems. LaDonna is an Associate Writing Director at Dropbox, and she is a speaker and a writer. A big focus of LaDonna's work is Permission to Speak. Through her work as a writer, and through her own personal journey, LaDonna is an expert on voice.

Reena Merchant:

In this episode, LaDonna and I chat about how we can strengthen our voices. We discuss what voice is and how we can break out of waiting for permission to follow our dreams. We talk about how race, gender, religion, culture, and power dynamics factor into our ability to find our voice, whether it's at work or in our personal lives. We get deep into the core of how we can get more comfortable with knowing that our voices are enough. I hope you enjoy this conversation with LaDonna Willems.

Reena Merchant:

Hi, LaDonna. Thank you so much for being here with us today. I'm really excited to chat.

LaDonna Willems:

Thanks. I am really excited to be here.

Reena Merchant:

Yeah. We met back in the fall. It feels such a long time ago, but we met at Within, which is a women's leadership retreat. You had shared with me a bit about your work at the time, Permission to Speak, and I immediately felt a resonance with you and what you were sharing about your work. We were saying that sometimes you connect with someone, and you immediately feel like you just want them to be in your tribe. I've always felt that with you. So, I'm very excited to chat.

LaDonna Willems:

Thanks. Yeah. That was a great retreat. It does feel like maybe three or four lifetimes ago already.

Reena Merchant:

Yeah, it does. I've been thinking since we spoke then, and I had a chance, too, to read your article that you've written about Permission to Speak. The topic, specifically, voice, really intrigued me because I'm personally really interested in the connection between voice and authenticity. It's something that I've been working on with myself and my own journey. So for me, authenticity has been so much about the connection between the inside and the outside, and first recognizing and loving yourself on the inside, and then determining how that manifests externally. Voice to me has felt like it's a common thread throughout all of that. I wanted to ask you, you are an expert on voice. What does voice mean?

LaDonna Willems:

To me voice is how we express ourselves in all different ways. So, not just our actual voice or words. I think a lot of times people, when they hear voice, they think about "Oh, well, I'm not a speaker, I'm not a writer." But I think voice is an expression of our character and our personality, but also our values, the things that we hold most important. So, if I found that when people begin thinking about voice that way in a more holistic way about, "Oh, it's all the ways that I might express who I am and what I care about," then it takes on a whole new meaning.

Reena Merchant:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You mentioned values. I have been trying to do a lot of thinking around values because so much of it has been about, well, who am I, what are my values? I know you have to start on the inside, but how do we even begin? Where do we start with finding our voice or recognizing our values?

LaDonna Willems:

Yeah. I think you're right in that it's so closely tied to who we are, essentially. In writing Permission to Speak and especially in trying to figure out how to turn what was first an article and then a talk into a workshop for people to really dig deep and find their voice, I realized that a lot of times, when we think about who we are, we skip right over a lot of parts of our identity that have always been there. We like to focus on what we've made of ourselves instead of thinking all the way back to the beginning, like what family was I born into, and where was I born, and what color is my skin, and what gender was I assigned at birth? These things about ourselves that we can't change.

LaDonna Willems:

Sometimes we're fine with that, and sometimes we wish that we could change certain things about those aspects of our identity. But either way, I think, including the unchangeable parts of who we are is really important because it does inform our experience, it informs our values, and it informs the things that we get really passionate about, the things that really light a fire in our bellies. So, when I was creating the workshop, I created a self-audit, where you ask yourself a whole series of questions that begin with, what are the things about myself that I can't change? Then they move into, what have I created for myself? What are the choices that I have made that have made me who I am today? Then it goes on from there. I've had several people tell me that they were surprised when they started writing down bits about their identity that they inherited, that it really made them realize that certain things that they care about very deeply are directly tied to that part of their identity.

Reena Merchant:

That's really interesting. I'm curious to hear your thoughts. How much of this do you think is embedded in our DNA? How much is changeable? How much can our values change, and how does our voice change as well?

LaDonna Willems:

Yeah. I think our voice is very fluid. I think it changes all the time because we change all the time. I think we should change all the time because the... what I like to say is living, just the act of living, if we're doing it right, will change us. You read the things that change you. You meet people who change you. You love people and lose people, and you hurt people and you are hurt by people. All of these things change us. That's how we're supposed to be. We're ever evolving and ever learning.

LaDonna Willems:

So, I think, although there are aspects of our identity that don't change, the things that become most important to us and the things that we really want to use our voice to express do evolve throughout the course of our life. So I think, checking in with ourselves every once in a while to say, "Well, who am I now? How does who I am now inform what I want to say?"

Reena Merchant:

Yeah. Giving ourselves permission to do that. I know sometimes I hold myself to some standard where I'm not allowed to change; or if I change, it's bad; or if I change, I'm not being authentic. So that's really helpful because how do we give ourselves permission there.

LaDonna Willems:

Yeah. I think a lot of times, we tell ourselves a story about who we are that maybe we've grown out of, maybe it used to be who we are, but it's not anymore. But those stories are really comfortable a lot of times, or their stories that someone else has told us about who we are, that we've just accepted and have been examined and torn apart and put back together again. So, I think the question, who am I really or who am I now is always a good question to ask.

Reena Merchant:

Yeah, yeah. I'm wondering, LaDonna, if you're able to share a little bit about your story with us and what fueled your fire to pursue this specific topic in your work. What is Permission to Speak, and just sharing a bit more about that?

LaDonna Willems:

Sure. So, I guess I'll start at the very beginning, which is that I was born into a family that was, still is, religious. So, religion was a huge part of my childhood and my formative years, and a huge part of my identity for many years. Part of that particular culture that I grew up in was very much about the voices of women being silenced in many ways, but it was the men were in charge, and the men were the leaders, the heads of the households, the pastors in the pulpit. I never had anyone tell me women don't matter, but I had people tell me women are supposed to submit, women are supposed to be quiet, and what it meant to be a woman was really to be in service of a man as a wife, or even the acceptable careers for a woman were always like where you could be a teacher, or you could be a pastor's wife, or you could be a missionary's wife, but never anything in really positions of power.

LaDonna Willems:

My mother, actually, is a very strong and independent woman. She had been a nurse for many, many years. So, she did give me a different message that I think was really helpful in getting me to where I'm at today. She always said, "My job as your mother is to raise you to be strong enough to live on your own and to choose the life that you want." So, I took that away in the back of my mind.

LaDonna Willems:

As I grew older, and as often happens, when you go to college and you leave the insular world that you grew up in, then you begin to hear other stories than the ones that you were told growing up. I also rebelled a bit in my choice of college because there were three or four acceptable Bible colleges for people from my church and school to go to. I did not go to any of those colleges. I went to a public university and majored in journalism. So, just because of that choice, my world opened up really fast because I met a whole bunch of diverse people from all different cities and backgrounds and cultures. So, that really began to chip away and open up some cracks in the foundation of how I had been raised and how I saw the world.

LaDonna Willems:

So, my journey, out of that whole world, was very gradual and took many years, but I ended up eventually in San Francisco as a liberal feminist. I've had a really great career versus a journalist and then a copywriter, and now as an editorial director. So, I was pretty shocked about a year ago when I had this epiphany based on a really difficult situation in my life at the time where I had been waiting for this job to work out, so that I can move to Canada, which is a whole another story. But several things happened, and it all fell apart. During that process, I realized that I had been waiting for a man to open the door for me to pursue a dream of mine.

LaDonna Willems:

So, it all started there, but then it was a huge ripple effect because I was like, "Well, why was I waiting for him when I could have opened this door myself?" Then you step back, and I looked at my life and I was like, "Wait, a second. I wait all the time for people in positions of power to give me permission to do something that I already want to do or I already know that I can do." Usually, the people I'm waiting for are men because men are usually the ones in the positions of power.

LaDonna Willems:

So, I was absolutely stunned to be a successful woman in my 40s. This far removed from that very patriarchal upbringing, and realized that it's still there within me. All of those lessons of silence, that submission, are still inside of me, and they were coming out in really unconscious ways that I wasn't even fully aware of. Once I saw them, it was like Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz. The curtain's been pulled back and you can't unsee it anymore.

LaDonna Willems:

So I thought, "Well, if this is true for me, then I'm sure it's true for a lot of other people because not everyone has the same upbringing that I did, but we all have been conditioned by our various cultures and societies to wait for permission in many different ways. So, that was where this all really came from.

Reena Merchant:

Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing your stories so openly and so honestly. I completely agree. I do think that every one of us goes through this. As you said, we all have different contexts and different types of conditioning, but I think we do experience this. So, it's so helpful to hear your story.

Reena Merchant:

When I heard the word “permission”, it got me thinking deeply because, similar to you, I had my own set of experiences, but I also have been struggling my whole life to find my voice and to find a courage to express my voice, externally. I hadn't thought of permission. But when I heard you say it, I thought, "Wow, that's exactly what I've been doing." It's this aspect of seeking external validation. Someone on the outside needing to tell me and indicating to me that it's okay to speak, it's okay to be you. I realize I've been doing that my whole life. I was just wondering, how do we begin to change that wiring because it feels like it's wired within me?

LaDonna Willems:

Oh, so deeply. I feel like it's written in the code of my DNA at this point. I think there are a few things. The first is that it's something that I figured out by doing the writing and the research for this talk and the workshop that I created. That was just realizing the importance of my own voice and understanding that. It's easier, I think, for many of us to see the importance of other people's voices and other people's stories.

LaDonna Willems:

While I was doing this research, I came across a TED Talk by an author from Nigeria name Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She has this talk called The Danger of the Single Story. Everyone should listen to it. It's an amazing talk. She talks about growing up in Nigeria and loving to read, but many of the stories, most of the stories that were available to her were about blond, blue-eyed, white girls eating apples in the snow because all these books and stories from Western culture had filtered over to her.

LaDonna Willems:

So, she said, from a really young age, she liked to write. She would write stories about blonde girls with blue eyes eating apples in the snow as well because that's what she thought a story was supposed to be. It wasn't until she got a little older and actually was given some books by Nigerian authors that she realized that girls like her, girls who looked like her, girls who lived in a place like her home could also write stories about themselves. That changed everything for her. It just made me really think about how, in so many ways in our lives, we're told one story about a group of people or about... we're told this story is the acceptable story, this story is the standard. So, we really internalize that and think, "Well, my story doesn't look like that story. Therefore my story is not welcome. Nobody wants to hear it. I would sound stupid. I'll just keep it to myself." Untangling that I think is a matter of persistence. I still am struggling with it, even in spite of knowing all of these things.

LaDonna Willems:

After I gave this talk for the very first time, it was at a conference in Tel Aviv. The audience was pretty large. It went over really well, and I was feeling really good about it, but several people had come up to me after and said, "You should write a book about this." Of course, I'm a writer and I've always wanted to write a book, but I've always talked myself out of it. So I was sitting with a friend later that day, and I said, "All these people keep telling me I should write a book." She said, "Yeah, you should." I was like, "Yeah, I should."

LaDonna Willems:

Then for the next 50 minutes, I told her all the reasons why I couldn't though. They were all reasons like, "Well, I'm just a white girl from Illinois. I don't have any really dramatic story. I'm not like Tara Westover who wrote Educated, or I'm not like Deborah Feldman who wrote Unorthodox. I don't have a really super dramatic story. So, why would anyone want to read it?" Just went on and on and on about all these reasons why my story didn't matter. She just really calmly and sweetly listened to me. Then when I wore myself out, she said, "You just were up on a stage telling 500 people why their voices matter and why they shouldn't silence themselves, but listen to yourself." I was like, "Oh my god, okay. I guess I have to go write a book."

Reena Merchant:

Yeah. It just blows me away, how this feeling of being confident about what we want to say, a feeling, for example, for me, "Am I enough? Am I qualified?" Years can go by. You do all this work, and it still comes up again and again. So, thank you for, again, sharing so transparently because I think that the more that we are open about these things and we discuss them, I think sometimes there's this feeling that I'm exposing my weakness by exposing the fact that I struggle with am I enough? But I think in sharing this vulnerably with each other, I think it gives others courage. I hope it does.

LaDonna Willems:

Oh, absolutely.

Reena Merchant:

I'm curious if you’ve heard… you must have heard stories through your work about others and how they're growing and developing.

LaDonna Willems:

Yeah. I think that something that I've known for a long time, but I've really come to see the truth of, again, through this work is that the way we connect with each other as humans is through our stories and often through stories of being vulnerable, or being imperfect, or struggling, or not getting something right, failing miserably because we all can relate to that.

LaDonna Willems:

So, I think that when we hear other people's stories of struggle, then it gives us, as you said, it gives us courage to be like, "Oh, I thought that person had it all together, and they don't. So then maybe I'm not so crazy, and I could do this thing." Then, when we tell our own stories and we're able to be vulnerable, we give other people the courage to do the same thing. It becomes this chain reaction.

LaDonna Willems:

I've added to my portfolio and to my professional bio this whole idea of I've really come to believe that the thing that changes the world is stories. It's not arguments, it's not facts, it's not logic. It's one human telling other humans, "Here is my story. Here is how I have struggles, or here is how I see the world." In doing so, you expose someone else to something that maybe they've never heard before, or you make them just uncomfortable enough that they start questioning their own prejudices on things, or you give them inspiration. That's how we, I think, we have always, as a species related to each other is just telling stories. I think that's still probably the most valuable currency that we have. So, when those stories are honest and when those stories are vulnerable, they become so incredibly powerful.

Reena Merchant:

Yeah, I completely agree. It feels that in that honesty and in sharing our own stories, it's almost like we're creating this space then for others to share their stories. It feels like we're able to honor the voices of others by doing that, and that it feels really supportive. It's really beautiful to hear you frame that as stories... It's storytelling.

LaDonna Willems:

It's storytelling. I think one of the really unexpected things or realizations that has come out of those for me is that part of giving yourself permission to speak, and giving yourself permission to use your voice and share your story, it really comes hand in hand with listening to the stories of others. In order to write this talk and the book that I'm working on now and the workshop, I did a lot of reading and listening to other people's stories. The more I do that, the more I open myself up to hear more voices and especially to seek out voices that are not my own, so that I can learn from them and see the world differently and see through their eyes. So it's interesting in this whole kind of mission of telling other people, "Give yourself permission to speak, use your voice," I'm also telling them, "And then shut up and listen to other people, too." They go together. You can't do one without the other.

Reena Merchant:

Yep. That's such a good point. Just chatting a little bit more about this external aspect and this connection with others, I wanted to ask you a little bit more on the topic of external validation. One thing that I always say to myself, external validation shouldn't matter, that shouldn't be what drives me, It should be more about what's within, not without. But it's really hard to be completely immune and independent of rejection and the fear of rejection and shame that comes with that. I was wondering how you have navigated that.

LaDonna Willems:

Yeah. The very first time I gave this talk in that auditorium with 500 people in Tel Aviv, it was the longest version of the talk. I haven't done one that long since then. It was 45 minutes. As a part of that particular talk, I haven't done it again, but I read a poem that I wrote. I had this complete out-of-body experience while doing it of like, "What am I doing up here? What am I doing standing on the stage in Israel in front of a bunch of really talented designers from all over Europe, and I'm reading them a stupid poem that I wrote? I have no business doing this. They all probably think it's dumb." I'm in the moment on the stage, and I just had to shut it down and soldier on. It was probably 10 minutes later in the talk, I had reached the section where I'm just pounding a bunch of feminists' themes home really hard because it's important to me to show people women are the only ones who feel silenced and are marginalized by any means, but that's where I started.

LaDonna Willems:

When I am trying to make the case to people about voices being silenced, I start with women because we're half of the world's population, and I'm a woman. So I start there and then go further. But as I was really hitting my feminist stride, several men throughout the audience, probably five or six got up and left. I had the out-of-body experience again of like, "Oh my god, they hate me, they're angry. This is not what they came to hear." Then, I just told myself, "That's fine. I'm not here for them. If they need to leave"... Maybe they needed to leave because they had to go to the bathroom, I don't know, but I took it as a personal rejection.

LaDonna Willems:

For some of them, it probably was, but I just felt so sure about my larger message. I felt so sure that I was there to tell someone who needed to hear it, that he or she had permission to speak, that they could give themselves that permission, and they could go out and share their story, that my conviction of that and my passion for that overrode that fear that I had in that moment of, "Oh my god, people are leaving. They're actually leaving because they hate this." Really, it wasn't that many people, but I have never forgotten that moment.

LaDonna Willems:

So, in other times when I've had that thought again of, "What am I doing? Why am I putting myself out here like this," I think it hits me at least once. I've probably given the talk, I don't know, a dozen or more times now. At least once, every single time, the little voice in the back of my head is like, "People think this is stupid. They're wondering what the heck you're doing, giving this talk." Then I just shut it down and say, "There is someone here who needs to hear what I have to say." Every time, that's been true. There always is someone who lets me know that that was exactly what they needed to hear that day. So, that gives me the confidence and the encouragement to keep going.

Reena Merchant:

Yeah. That is such a great insight. Thank you. I was thinking, it takes a lot of courage, right? So, for you to get up there and to share your story, so completely and wholly, and then to stay standing up there in spite of what you are perceiving as rejection, that takes courage. I wonder, a lot of times like, is courage all about sharing everything about ourselves. Is that what authenticity is? Or is it okay to keep some things to ourselves?

LaDonna Willems:

Yeah. It's absolutely not about ripping your heart out and holding it up for everyone to see, I think. For one thing, that's exhausting; and for another thing, for some people, that can be too dangerous and have really serious consequences. So, I think it's a matter of who is the audience that you want to speak to. Do you look at that audience and you look at what particular thing you feel strongly needs to be said in that room? Then you stick with that.

LaDonna Willems:

So for me, it goes back to those values and that identity. They were also complex, and were made up of so many things, but we don't share all of those things with all of our audiences. So, I think it's different for every person to look at this is a part of myself that I'm only going to share with one or two people. This is a part of myself that I am going to share at work. This is a part of myself that I can get up on a conference stage and let everyone see. But we all have to answer those questions for ourselves. I think that the bravery and the speaking up, even when you're afraid, comes in when you are sure that this is a thing that needs to be said to this room right now. That helps you know what to hold back and what to give away.

Reena Merchant:

Yeah. Thank you. That makes so much sense. You mentioned the different contexts, then you mentioned work, for example. I have been thinking a lot about work, so I know both of us, we both work in tech and sometimes think about the dynamics at work and the power structures, and how to navigate all of that, and what the expectations are of me at work. I'm wondering what advice you might have for people who struggle with this, specifically, in a work context because it's tricky to navigate all that.

LaDonna Willems:

It is really tricky to navigate all of that. In work settings, I think I had someone asked me one time, "What do you do when the person who's silencing you at work is another woman?" So, there's that kind of situation. Then there's about being the only woman or a person of color or immigrant, or fill in the blank, in the room and feeling very clearly that your voice is being overlooked, or you're being interrupted, or you're not being looked to at all for an opinion. I think that, for me, a lot of it has been not just how I speak up at work, but how I show up at work. By that, I go back to the definition of voice as your character and your personality and the expression of who you are.

LaDonna Willems:

When I came into tech, in particular, I was really nervous because I was coming in as someone with no tech background, a woman in her 40s, a mom. I fit in really well on creative teams and other environments because I have a lot of tattoos and wear big, clumpy boots all the time. I didn't see anyone else like that in tech, initially. So, I was having huge imposter syndrome of, "What the heck am I doing here? Why did they even hire me? I don't fit in here. I don't know how to navigate this world."

LaDonna Willems:

But the advantage of being 40 in that situation was I wasn't going to become a chameleon and try to bend myself into a new shape to fit what was around me. So, I just kept coming to work as myself and lived through the uncomfortableness sometimes of feeling like a complete freak and weirdo. What happened was that over time, as I got to know my teammates better and as I was involved in more projects cross-functionally and met other people, then I began to realize that me showing up as me was really valuable to other people, that they appreciated it, and that they, in their own way, whether they looked like it or not, they also felt like a weirdo. They also dealt with imposter syndrome in one way or another.

LaDonna Willems:

So, it evolved into me speaking up more in meetings and giving this talk and everything, but it didn't start out there. It started out with just saying, "I'm still going to wear the clothes that I love to wear and the boots that I love to wear. I'm still going to talk about the things that I like to talk about, even though it feels strange in this environment."

Reena Merchant:

That's such a great point and such a meaningful story. I think a lot about for those of us in leadership roles, it's so important to us to always want to create the right culture, to create a culture where others can feel comfortable being themselves, expressing their voices, creating a safe, supportive space. What you just shared makes me feel that by doing that, by being ourselves, by showing up as ourselves, that in itself is going such a long way to creating a culture and environment where others can feel safe to do so, too.

LaDonna Willems:

Right. I think there's something about people showing up as their true self, as they are that day, which sometimes means that you let people know like, "I'm having a really rough day today." Again, it gives other people that permission to be like, "Oh, I'm having a terrible day today, too." Suddenly, you have a connection with someone where one did not exist before. I feel in so many ways that, that has been proven true for me over the past couple of years, especially, just taking that leap of faith of I know who I am, and I know what I care about. So, I'm going to go out into the world that way. When you do, the world, not all of the world, but the part of the world that was meant to meet with you, they give it right back to you and they say, "I see what you've got, and let me show you what I've got." It's pretty amazing actually.

Reena Merchant:

It really is, and it's so true. It's in those moments of giving and receiving. It's like this magical connection happens. I find I just need one of those to happen a day. On a good day, I'll have many such moments. But even just one connection like that with someone's... A real authentic connection, and my whole day is just brilliant after that. It just lights you up when you have that connection with someone.

LaDonna Willems:

It really, really does. I wanted to read you something that I pulled up really quickly, if you don't mind. So, when I give this talk, I've started acknowledging to the room that for a lot of people, finding your voice and looking into your identity, and then showing up in the world as your true self can actually be, it can incur actual emotional and physical danger for some people. So, I always want to acknowledge that, especially, as a white woman in the world. To acknowledge my own privilege that it isn't necessarily dangerous for me to do what I'm doing, but for others in the room, it might be.

LaDonna Willems:

So, in the face of that, is it worth it? What do you do, and how do you overcome those very valid fears? So, I always use one of my favorite people and favorite writers of late as an example, and that's Chanel Miller. I don't know if you read the memoir that she published last year, but I highly recommend it. It's called Know My Name. Chanel became infamous as Emily Doe, the woman who was raped by Brock Turner at Stanford University a few years ago. She came out of anonymity, in the safety of anonymity really, and published this memoir. I really love what she said about telling her story. So, I want to read you this quote from her, if you don't mind.

Reena Merchant:

Thank you.

LaDonna Willems:

She says, "You will find society asking you for the happy ending, saying come back when you're better, when what you say can make us feel good, when you have something more uplifting, affirming. This ugliness was something I never asked for. It was dropped on me, and for a long time, I worried that it made me into a sad, unwelcome story that nobody wanted to hear. But when I wrote the ugly and painful parts into a statement, an incredible thing happened. The world did not plug up its ears, it opened itself to me."

LaDonna Willems:

I love that. I think about that all the time that, that is what happens so many times when we are brave enough to share our ugliness, or our misery, or our mistakes, or our fears, or our insecurities. Parts of the world open themselves up to us. Other people open themselves up to us. That is what really makes all of this worthwhile, and makes even the naysayers and the tone police out there and the gas lighters out there, it makes any negative response worth it because there is someone else out there who is going to hear you and open up themselves to you.

Reena Merchant:

Yeah. No, that is incredibly powerful and beautiful. Thank you for sharing. You know, the word ugly. Just that word - really evoked that feeling of we talked about shame earlier, that connection to "Oh, this is an ugly part of me. This is something that I am ashamed of. I can't show anyone." As you said, if we can, granted there is sometimes danger, and we need to be aware of that, but if it's safe and if we can find the courage to let that out, to bring it to the light, then as you said, even if it could help one person, that we've done something wonderful for the collective.

LaDonna Willems:

There is something about the act of sharing your shame or the ugly bits of you, that bring you out of the darkness and into some light as well, somehow alchemizes your own pain or your own sadness or shame, and turns it into something different. That's just something that's so profound and really, really important to me about this whole topic.

Reena Merchant:

Yes, absolutely agree. I was wondering, LaDonna, I wanted to ask you. I have thought a lot about, when am I going to get there? When is the journey over? It's this constant evolution. There was a point in my life when I did think, I really did think there was going to be an endpoint, and I would set targets and goals. I've realized it seems like the journey is going to continue forever, but I wanted to get your perspective. In your eyes, what is the destination? Where is there?

LaDonna Willems:

Yeah. Well, that is a really lovely question. As someone who comes from a really religious background, where the answers were always there, they were in the Bible, they were in... It was always black and white. I very clearly remember, especially in my early teen years, the comfort and security of knowing for sure, whatever it was. Coming from that, I now live my life in full comfort and joy in the mystery of life and in discovery and in asking questions, and asking questions that lead to more questions, that lead to more questions, that lead to even more questions.

LaDonna Willems:

So, to me, I feel that the journey of learning about others, about ourselves is the whole point. If we're always learning and asking more questions, and being curious, and always finding, discovering new things about ourselves, discovering that we can change even when we're 85 years old, that is what makes life worth living. It's that old cliché about it's not the destination, it's the journey. I mean things become clichés because there's an element of truth in them many times. So, for me, I hope never to arrive because if I do, then I will have become stagnant and stale. I don't know. I don't want to be that person. I always want to be open and learning and being willing to admit that I was wrong and being willing to learn something from someone new.

LaDonna Willems:

That is part of the really great thing about being a mom. My daughter is nine years old. Learning from your own child is an amazing experience, and one that I didn't ever really consider when I decided to have her. So, that's part of it, too. We're never too old to learn something new. We're never done.

Reena Merchant:

Yes, I completely agree. On the topic of the journey of LaDonna's life, what is next for you? You're doing so many amazing things. I know there's the article, you've been doing workshops on Permission to Speak. You're writing a book. What is next? If people want to stay connected with you and your message and your work, what is the best way to do that?

LaDonna Willems:

Yeah. So, I am not on Twitter. That's a whole other podcast. But I am on Instagram at @wordsbyladonna. So, they can find me there. The most immediate next thing is really... I'm really, really excited about it. I have been working with some friends at Dropbox on a Personal Voice Workbook. That, essentially, takes all the elements of the workshop that I do, that is typically about a two-and-a-half-hour to three-hour-workshop. It turns it into a workbook that you will be able to download for free from Dropbox.design. You also will be able to order a really, really gorgeous physical workbook, if you like. It will take you through a lot of the stuff we've talked about today, and a lot of exercises designed to help you figure out pieces of your identity and your values, and then translate that into so what does my voice look like and how can I use it?

LaDonna Willems:

The workbook will be out May 11. People will be able to download it from Dropbox.design, I will also post about it on @wordsbyladonna. So, that's the next big, exciting thing. Now is the best time, right? We're all just stuck in our homes, staring at ourselves in the mirror. So, I'm really excited to be able to give this workbook to people at this particular time in the world.

Reena Merchant:

Yeah, it sounds like such an absolute gift. I can't wait. I will definitely be getting my hands on one of those workbooks. I also wanted to thank you. You shared a wonderful list of things to read, as suggested reading for those of us who also want to go deeper into the subject. So, I'll be sure to share that as well with others. I just wanted to thank you, again, LaDonna. I could chat with you truly forever. I am so thankful to you for making the time. Just the time you've taken in sharing your message and your story, it's helped me, and it will definitely be magical for others. Thank you.

LaDonna Willems:

Thank you for doing this with me, as I could talk about it forever and ever, too.

Reena Merchant:

I really enjoyed this conversation with LaDonna. Being able to speak with someone who has such deep, empathy, courage, strength and grace, it's just phenomenal. I learned so much in hearing her share her stories about her own journey. I hope you found it helpful, too. If you're interested in staying connected and learning about new episodes that we post, please subscribe to the podcast, and please give us a rating if you enjoyed this because it really helps us in being able to get more meaningful and hopefully, helpful material out to all of you. Keep finding yourself, keep being yourself. I am sending you so much love. Talk to you soon.