One of my favorite Rumi poems is:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.

Don’t go back to sleep.

_____________________________________________________

I am not asleep. I am tossing and turning.

I am wrestling with many things, here are two of them.
One is how divided our country is right now. 

The election map made this clear. But while that map looked so very red because of the arcane electoral college, our country has around 334 million people, 244M are eligible to vote, and only around 60% vote. (Yes, that is maddening.) 75.6 million voted for Trump (50.2%) and 72.5 million voted for Harris (48.1%). So that’s a majority, but not some crazy landslide. That’s a divided home.

I grew up in a deeply divorced family, so this feeling of being in a divided home is familiar to me.

I have a very close friend who voted for Trump, and as you all know I am a strong Harris supporter. We still managed to talk a lot during the lead-up to the election. And today. I’m not saying it’s always easy. But there are so many things we agree on. And then there are points where we don’t completely agree, but I try to listen to her perspective. Then there is inevitably a point in every conversation where I can no longer take it, and I jump in and say, “Let’s agree to disagree,” and we change the subject. But mostly I try to focus on our shared beliefs, interests, history and there is so much of that. This person is very important to me. Keep people you love, even if you disagree with them, close. I know that there are those of you here, who agree with me on many things, but may have voted different, and I am glad you are still here.

So there is the field.

Now here is the other thing I can’t stop thinking about.

Women are half the population but make 100% of all humans. Let’s just sit with that fact.

We are like a tree that can completely sustain and reproduce itself, taking carbon dioxide and turning it into fresh oxygen. Perhaps it’s this ultimate superpower of making life in our bodies that so completely threatens men, making them want to control women’s bodies and lives, wage wars, erect tall phallic buildings and ultimately silence us. Not every man, of course. In fact, 44% of the voting men in this country did cast a ballot to elect a woman including my husband and brother. And 44% of voting women didn’t. We need to remember that too.

So many other countries have had women presidents or prime ministers. We always talk about “American exceptionalism” – the way America is unique. But not all our unique qualities are good, and the way we view women leaders is one of them. Is it baked into our country?

In 2016 right before I thought we would have our first woman president, I made a 20 minute film 50/50: The Past, Present and Future of Women + Power that explores these ideas going very deep into the past before patriarchy when women did have power, all the way to today and where we need to go.

My father, Leonard Shlain, wrote a book called Sex, Time and Power that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. In it, he explores the way female sexuality shaped evolution and time. He argues that it’s women who invented our modern understanding of both time and mortality, early in our story as humans, when dying in childbirth at such high rates, made them think deeply about these issues. Saying “yes” to sex could mean dying in childbirth nine months later. This is when they also learned how to say "no" to sex which was when the power struggle began. He wrote: “. . .  the possibility of achieving immortality through children drove men to construct patriarchal cultures that went on to dominate so much of human history.”

Sex, Time and Power argues that once women got control of their bodies with the pill, had fewer children, started doing things in society in addition to being mothers, it made men not feel as needed. Today, young women are outperforming young men in high school and college. Trump’s win has been credited, in part, to young male voters who feel they are falling behind and don’t know how they fit in society anymore, or who think they’re being ignored by today’s women. 

So I have been thinking a lot about that particular book from my father in terms of the why, and of my mother’s PhD dissertation in terms of something I want to do today. As I do every week, this past Saturday I went completely screen-free turning off all the analysis, the op-ed pieces. I went inward so I could hear myself think. The thing that came to me was the subject of my mom's thesis  “Successful Women and their Female Mentors.” There are so many things on the new administration level that feel out of my control, so my impulse is to get very local and strengthen connections I have.

So here was the thing that came to me…and I invite you to join me. Select several younger women in your life, that you already give advice to when you see them, and write to them that you want to formally be their mentor. It is a powerful thing to feel that you have a mentor, and this simple act will help so much. I also want to say that in addition to having incredible female mentors in my life, I feel lucky to have great male mentors. So anyone reading this, are invited to join in this act of support. If there are young people in your life that you can share some of your hard earned wisdom called living, please reach out to them. This could just be a call every couple of months. 

I will also continue to focus on women’s access to abortion. As someone who had an abortion at 24 when I was absolutely not ready to be a mom and not in a stable relationship, I am so grateful I had a safe place to go. Planned Parenthood is the organization I will continue to support. 

Below is an light box artwork I made, Roe v. Wade. I made it after the evisceration of Roe V. Wade when I was thinking about all the women with nowhere to get a safe abortion. These states include Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia.

We have a lot of work to do – to help people in this country and our community...as well as stay connected those we love but may disagree with.

A thousand years ago, Rumi envisioned a place, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing.”   Because while we may be divided, we share the same house. 

Let’s try to focus on that.

There is a field. I’ll meet you there.

Love,

Tiffany

ps. My next full newsletter with recommendations will be going out in early December but until then, several things: I'll be LA this weekend to receive an media award with Goldie Hawn for our film The Teen Brain, which we are honored to receive. There will be a free online screening of the film for Tam Teen Wellness program with many of the experts from the film and a teen joining us on Wednesday, Dec 4th, 7pm. This film was made for teens and the adults who love the. Join us or share with people you think it would be helpful. Info here.

Ken and I will be back in LA to give an art tour of our Getty PST exhibition at the Skirball, Sunday Dec 8th, 6pm, with a screening of our films afterwards; tix here. I will be in conversation with Amy Trachtenberg at CJM's sadly, last day for a while. It will be good to all be together for this. It will be on Sunday, 11:30an Dec 15th. I look forward  being community at any of these events. We've got each other.

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