Episode 135 - Staying in Relationships Even with Differences
Sometimes it's hard to imagine how we can stay in relationships where there are huge differences–political, religious, or otherwise. In this conversation with my friend Katherine Golub on her podcast Conflict Decoded, I talk about how I’ve worked with the part of myself that just wants to stay safe–to only talk to people who agree with me and see information that confirms my beliefs–to stay in relationships that matter, even when we don’t share the same views. Here’s what I cover:
How people-pleasing kept me at the church even after my mind and heart had left the building
The moment I realized, “I think we’re wrong about this,” and how terrifying it was to hold that belief
How I used scripture to back up my personal beliefs and was punished for it within the church
The complexity of discerning who to maintain relationships with despite your differences
Why safety must come first when moving toward relationships with people that you disagree with
Find Katherine here:
https://callingsandcourage.com/
https://callingsandcourage.com/podcasts/
https://www.instagram.com/katherinegolub/
Find Sara here:
https://pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations
https://www.instagram.com/sarafiskcoach/
https://www.facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching/
https://www.tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach
https://www.youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333
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Transcript
Sara Bybee Fisk 00:57
My friend, Katherine Golub, interviewed me for her podcast, and we ended up having a really interesting conversation about what it takes to stay in relationships, even when there are differences and disagreements, sometimes very big disagreements and differences. I thought it was a really valuable conversation. It really helped me put into words how I feel a part of my brain that really wants to be safe and only wants to talk to people who agree with me and only wants to see posts and information that confirm my bias and how I have worked with that part of me to stay in some important relationships that matter to me, where we have all kinds of differences, not just political, but religious and others. I wanted to share that conversation with you as well. I would love to hear what you think is valuable from this. You can DM me or you can send me an email hello at sarafisk.coach.
Katherine Golub 01:57
Shortly after the 2016 presidential election, I discovered that my sister had voted for Trump. I had seen so many people on social media talking about unfriending people with opposing viewpoints and even disowning family members. And although I was upset, I didn't want that. I wasn't super close to my sister at that time, as our interests hadn't always been super aligned. But when we spent time together, we got along really well. And I didn't want to throw my sister away over a vote, no matter how upset I was.And I also knew that part of why our country is in the state that it is in is because dominant white American culture is so lacking in deep, meaningful relationships. And so I called my sister without blaming or shaming her. I told her that I was really sad that she'd voted the way that she did, especially because my family has been so affected by immigration policy. And I told her that I wanted to keep our lines of communication open. And I asked if she would be willing to hear requests from me in the future related to voting. Should I ever feel called to reach out again? And she said yes. Several years after that, I facilitated a book group for white folks using Leila Saad's book, Me and White Supremacy. And my biggest takeaway from that book was that to be able to call someone in, we have to call them in the first place. We can't ask people for change or hope for them to respond unless we're in relationship with them. And since then, my sister and I have grown closer. And she recently confirmed that she did not vote for Trump the second or third time around.So with this story in mind, I invited my guests this week, Sara Fisk onto the podcast. For the first four decades of her life, Sara was a devout Mormon. And then a series of realizations called her to change course. Since then, Sara has helped thousands of high achieving women as a master certified life coach to turn people pleasing into personal power, guiding them to stop overextending, find their authentic voices and lead with clarity and authority. Her work weaves together feminist insight, nervous system and somatic tools, and her own lived experience of breaking free from religious good girl rules. I recently met Sara as a guest on her podcast, the Ex Good Girl podcast. And I enjoyed the conversation so much that I invited her to share more of her story of leaving the Mormon church in midlife and navigating her relationships afterward. This episode is more personal storytelling than most. And if you are in relationship with people who see the world very differently than you do, and are trying to figure out whether to maintain relationships, I think that listening to how Sara navigated these questions herself will likely feel supportive.As you listen, I invite you to ask yourself these questions. What needs does this challenging relationship meet for me in my life? And how might I transform this relationship in a way that honors my needs more, in addition to honoring the needs of the other person?
Katherine Golub 05:17
So you were born into a Mormon family. Being part of the Mormon church was a really important part of your life until just a few years ago. Can you share a bit about your journey from being a really devout practicing Mormon to deciding to leave the church and where you are now?
Sara Bybee Fisk 05:36
I grew up very devout. And in fact, I loved everything about being Mormon. I, I mean, and again, that's rose colored, so a lot of rose colored glasses looking back, but by the time that I was a college student, I was going to Brigham Young University. I felt like I finally found my people.I was in this big Mormon bubble and, um, growing up in central California where there were not a lot of Mormons was actually really hard for a lot of reasons. And so I felt like when I hit college, I was just coming into like the golden age of my Mormonism. And I was doing all the Mormon things. I was having all the positions in church that women could have, which were, you know, fairly few, but I could be in charge of other women and children. And I, you know, managed to do that and went on a mission for the church to Bolivia and loved that and came home and met the man who's my husband, Dan. And he had a brother who is gay. And Craig, his brother came out to us before we were getting married. And I think we had at the time, a very typical reaction to him, which was we love you, but that is wrong. We love you, but God says that's a sin. And so we, you know, want to just have this very clear delineation between that. Very typical love the center. I hate the sin type of reaction and language. And then for the next decade and a half, really just kind of set about to figure out how to have a relationship with Craig, because we loved him and wanted that while also dealing with the discomfort or the dissonance of watching him try to first of all, stay in the church as a gay man and seeing how soul crushing that was for him. And then just, I I've often said that my brain is kind of like a crock pot. You're going to get your dinner in eight hours. Right. And so I just began to collect all of these little bits of information about Craig, like if it's a choice, which is what the church was teaching at the time, that it was a choice for him to be gay, like, how could this be a choice? It just didn't make sense to me as I watched his life unfold and as I watched the heartbreak and the real agony that he was going through. And then as I kind of watched other members of the church who I knew were gay, I began to become friends with more members of the church and it just didn't make sense to me anymore. And I remember clearly where I was when I had what I used to call my secret private heresy, which was, I think we're wrong about this. I don't think it's a choice. And unless you've been on the inside of a religious conservative group like Mormonism that has many cult like features of group, think a very centralized authority, it might be hard for your listeners to appreciate what a monumental kind of moment that was for me to have my own private belief that very clearly violated what was being taught by the official church at that time,
Sara Bybee Fisk 09:04
it terrified me. What also terrified me was that I couldn't not believe it. It seemed so plain. It seemed so absolutely true. And so I didn't even tell my husband that I had had that thought because it was so, like I said, just terrifying that I now had this difference of belief that I didn't know what to do about it. I couldn't talk to anybody about it. I certainly couldn't ask my clergy people about it, right? I couldn't, the best thing to do for me was really just to keep it to myself.But that, you know, our amazing brains with the cognitive bias always at work, I just began to subconsciously and consciously collect all of this evidence for why I actually thought this was true. And so it became. to me, like when I look back on it, just this little teeny tiny wedge that got driven into the trunk of the tree of my Mormonism and just began to kind of drive deeper and further and further in. And I began to just see all of these things that just didn't make sense anymore. And it was a very slow process that was accelerated when my husband began to have a lot of doubts about truth claims and the things we had been taught to believe. He found a lot of information online that contradicted that, that also seemed to be true. He often says of his own experience that to him, the internet was to him like the printing press was to the Catholic church. Once you put truth within the equitable reach of everyone, now you can't control it. And so his exit from the church was actually a lot faster than mine. And in the beginning, it cost me to kind of double down a little bit because I had the sense of like, shit, if you're going to leave the church, I've got to stay then because our kids and what will they believe and our family. And so we did this like multi-year kind of seesaw thing where we would talk about things and I would agree or disagree. And I was really willing and able weirdly to give him his space to do what he needed to do because that's not common in high demand religions where people are kind of allowed to have their own experience.But because of some different experiences that had prepared me to do that, we sat our kids down and basically said, listen, dad's got to do what dad has got to do. This is what he feels strongly about. So he will not be attending church anymore. I will still be attending and we're going to go as a family. And guess what? Someday you are all going to have to make the same decision whether or not you want to do this. But for now, as your parents, this is what we decided to do. And so for a period of time, I continued to go and drag my kids because what kid wants to go and dad's going hiking right on a Sunday. And so then we began to do mountain church and lake church and hiking church. And I began to feel the freedom of not having to go and listen to a bunch of things that were making me increasingly uncomfortable every week, a firm with my outward behavior, some things I just wasn't sure I believed anymore.
Sara Bybee Fisk 12:44
And so when COVID came, it just killed off the last little struggling remnants of my attendance, because by that point, my heart and my brain had really left the building. But my body, just because I was deeply a people pleaser at that time still, I just couldn't figure out how to break my entire community all at once. It just felt too scary and too overwhelming.I'm probably one of the few people that was grateful for that aspect of COVID in that it really freed me from that. And now I had an excuse to just be at home all the time. Nobody was going to church anywhere. And I just felt such incredible relief.Let me add one other thing that was incredibly relevant. This whole time that I'm really deeply involved with gay members of the church and loving them and hearing about their stories, our daughter came out in 2016. And I felt physically in my body, if I can just put this picture, the hourglass, an hourglass turned over and sands started dripping through. And I knew there was a time limit on my membership. I didn't know how I would unravel at all, because as I said, I was deeply committed to being a member of the church.It was my life and I loved it. I thought it was what I was going to do for the rest of my life. I had also been very uniquely involved in the pain that the church's teachings about being gay had caused a lot of people that I loved. And now here was my child sitting before me telling me about the crush she had on the girl on her volleyball team. And I just knew that I had to begin to unravel this because it was now going to hurt her.And I used to have a little bit of sadness about, you know, why did it have to be my kid that eventually kind of took me out? Why wasn't other people's pain good enough? I don't have a great answer for that question, frankly. But I know that as mothers, we do a lot of things for our children that we won't do for ourselves. And her coming out and kind of the way my family reacted to that, my parents really kind of lit the fire to get that shit sorted. And that was another hugely contributive event.
Katherine Golub 15:28
Yeah, I can imagine. That cognitive dissonance that you lived with for so many years and that wedge that kept getting driven farther and farther into the tree, it just makes me think of all the other people who are having that experience right now that we have no idea because like you said, it was your own secret private heresy.I haven't had that experience in my life, but I can imagine like that terror of how important the church was to you, how important your community was to you. And so it just makes me think of there, there must be so many people who are currently living with that cognitive dissonance. And it also strikes me how Craig didn't leave you all. Like it sounds like Craig stayed in a relationship with you and you stayed in relationship with your husband. And if those relationships hadn't been maintained, would that wedge have kept getting driven further? Well, it comes up for you.
Sara Bybee Fisk 16:32
I don't think that if we had not maintained our relationship with Craig, we would be in the same place. It's impossible to tell either way. But it was having to bump up against him as a human and his experience over and over and over again, up close. He wasn't often the distance where I could just kind of think my own thoughts about him and other him and demonize him. He was up close to me. And that was a hugely relevant part of my experience there.And the same with my husband. I knew his heart. I knew the kind of man he was. And so I don't think there's a way that we would have ended up here without having to live those two relationships up close.
Katherine Golub 17:18
Yeah. And that it took you the time that it took you to get to the place that you got to. And it's like, who knows what timeline other people need, right? Your daughter came out in 2016 and then you talked about COVID. So there, it was a few years after she came out that you decided to leave. Was there a final straw? Was there like a, okay, I'm just not going back or like that final wedge in the tree, which made it topple over.
Sara Bybee Fisk 17:49
At that point, those last couple years, I was maybe attending once a month, once every other month. I was squarely on the like, we need to check on Sara and see what's wrong with her kind of list. But by then, I had also become more vocal about my feelings about gay people, what I think Jesus taught us about loving, vulnerable, marginalized groups. The church had also changed its teaching from, this is a choice to, we don't know, and we're not going to say either way. It seems pretty obvious to me that it's not a choice. There's really only one other option, but they were not willing to name that. And I think there's a lot of cowardice in that, but they would just call it, we're waiting for God to give us the answer. But in that time, I had started to become a lot more vocal about my personal beliefs, about using scripture to back up my beliefs. And I had begun to be punished for that. And punishment in Mormon land looks like you lose positions of authority, you lose the ability to address the congregation as a whole. You kind of get relegated to jobs within the congregation. No one is paid in a typical Mormon congregation. Everyone is a volunteer. And I had been the president of the women's organization and the president of the children's organization. And the only calling or position where women are allowed to instruct men is a Sunday school teacher. And so I had been a Sunday school teacher and it was in one of those Sunday school lessons about the Good Samaritan that I said, who in our day is this kind of broken bleeding man by the wayside? If you're familiar with the story, there's a guy who gets attacked and his enemy passes by. And instead of just leading him to die, he stops and takes care of him. And so I was asking the question, who is this our compassion and our protection? I was called in to the bishop's office, who is the clergy in charge. And I was told that I would no longer have that calling. And so all of that had been going on for the years before that. Rachel, my daughter had been kicked out of the young women's organization because she was starting to make similar comments of like, I don't understand why women can't have more authority. And so we had begun to be punished and kind of pushed to the margins of our congregation as a family for speaking out about some of these things.And so I was hanging on by a people pleasing thread at that point. Really, I was really concerned about what my parents would think that was the biggest kind of heaviest thing for me. They are still to this day, very, very devout. And I knew that it would crush them. I knew it would crush my grandma who lived with them, who I love very much. And so it wasn't hard. I didn't miss it. I felt such a tremendous sense of relief when COVID came around. But you're right, it took me the time that it took me because there was a lot to unravel.
Sara Bybee Fisk 21:19
I didn't have a relationship with my parents outside of the church. I didn't have a relationship with friends outside of the church.I was a conservative homeschooling mom of five and our entire homeschool community were other Mormon families who had watched my husband leave the church with a lot of suspicion and a lot of questions. And I had really struggled to maintain connection and friendship in the wake of his leaving. And so it really felt like everything was at stake in terms of my community and connections. And I knew that I would take my family with me. I had no doubt. It was also really fraught.
Katherine Golub 22:07
And so what has happened to those relationships? Like I hear you saying that you were afraid of breaking your parents' hearts, that you didn't want to lose all of your friends and your community.What has happened with those relationships since you left?
Sara Bybee Fisk 22:21
I did break my parents' heart, and it was either break theirs or break mine. It was the bravest and the hardest thing I've ever done to sit them down because I wanted them to hear it from me.I wanted to explain to them anything that they wanted to know. I was really begging them to see me as a person and not this caricature of someone who leaves the church because inside of Mormon land, there really is this definite caricature of someone who leaves. They are misguided. They are led astray. They have fallen under Satan's influence. They are apostate. There's all of these words and cautions that are regularly kind of thrown out around trusting them, talking to them, associating with them. Letting them be part of your trusted inner circle of acquaintances. When I sat down with them, I really wanted them to understand that the reason that I felt like I had to leave and not go back was that I could no longer reconcile the Jesus that they taught me to believe in and the Jesus I was seeing at church. I mean, by now, Trump's first presidency had come and gone and I had been up to that point a lifelong Republican. I had never voted for a Democrat. I lovingly call President Obama my favorite president that I never voted for because I was just convinced and convicted by my upbringing that being a Republican was not only what Jesus wanted me to do, but just the politically morally correct thing to do. But by that time, I had broken with the Republican Party as well, and I had done it in kind of a really public way unwittingly, and I had received a ton of backlash from my congregation about that.And so I brought what I thought was this really compelling, curated pile of evidence of like, look, this is the Jesus you taught me to believe in. This is the Jesus that I love and feel so convicted about, and this is what I'm seeing, and I can't make them match anymore. I can't, and that's not my fault. And so if I am wrong, I fully trust that someday, you know, at the pearly gates, I'm going to be like, oh my gosh, wait, what? The Mormons were right, and Jesus will say, I know, but I totally get it. I totally understand why you got confused and we'll be fine. And so my message to my parents was essentially like, can we just believe that Jesus is who he says he is? And he's like, if I'm lost, he's busy saving me. You guys don't have to do it, but if I'm not lost, then can you just see me? And it was kind of a mixed bag reaction. A little bit of yes, a little bit of no, a lot of let's just not talk about it.
Katherine Golub 25:42
And has it remained like that? A little bit of yes, a little bit of no, and a lot of let's not talk about it.
Sara Bybee Fisk 25:47
Yeah, pretty much, I'm the oldest girl. I think for our oldest girls out there, hello, hello. It explains a lot, right? That we have this like compelling desire to be seen and we are often roped into being the one that kind of manages the relationships of others in the family that was very much me.I was the negotiator, kind of the diplomat of the family. And interestingly enough, I wasn't the first to leave. I'm the oldest of six children and everyone and their spouse has left except my youngest brother and his spouse is not active in the way that everyone thinks Mormons should be active. And so my parents had already been dealing with a fair amount of upheaval in their belief system. And I was the manager of it. I was the one orchestrating family get togethers and talks about like, how do you feel about this? And how do you feel about this? I think by the time it was finally me, they were just so heartbroken because I was the super Mormon in the family as well. I was the high achieving, I'm gonna do it all, have all the positions, do all the things. And when it came time to just lay all of that down, their heartbreak, I think was yes, that I was leaving but also that this kind of bridge to the rest of the family was, that was changing as well.But I continued to have lots of conversations about that with them because it really mattered to me that they stay connected and that their grandkids, they have 22 grandchildren, half of which are not straight, that they have kind of an accurate view of their grandkids, which translates really to, I wanted to control how they saw the gay and queer members of our family. I really wanted them to be viewed with love, with compassion, with lack of judgment. And so even after leaving, I continued to have a lot of these conversations where I was really trying to shape their view and it wasn't working. They were not unkind, I wanna be very clear about that. They were not unkind, they tried in their way to be loving but it just became really clear to me that I was spending all of this time and energy and effort trying to shape their view of me, trying to shape their view of my brothers and sisters who had left, of their queer grandkids and they just were not that interested in it or their interests had kind of gone as far as it was gonna go.And in our last conversation, I knew it was our last conversation, they did not. I think they kind of relied on me to regularly kind of bring up the family issues. I just said, I'm realizing in all of our talking, you've never once asked me what it was like for me to leave the church, what it was like for me to lose my worldview, my community, my friends, my ideas of what happened after this life, heaven, right? And I said, you've never asked me about that. And my mom and dad just looked at me in total silence. And I knew then that was the end of these conversations because I had literally like handed them their line, right? Ask me about this, please see me, let me tell you. And they just didn't want to.
Katherine Golub 29:34
I imagine that being really painful and I feel gratitude that you have all of your brothers and sisters with you. And just that like, oh, okay, I'm done having these conversations now. I'm imagining some grief. I'm imagining some relief. I'm imagining.
Sara Bybee Fisk 29:51
both. It was a tremendous amount of relief because I could just plainly see it. This is the end of this type of conversation.And the grief, that's my work to do on my own. And what it allowed me to do is pivot to a different kind of conversation with them about what's on sale at Costco and family events and how's aunt so-and-so doing. And I still find a place to have connection with them, but it's just not about any of the things that we used to talk about, but it's still connection and it's still valuable to me. I had to kind of kill that off in myself because I was really the one driving it, really pushing for it, really wanting it. And now that I've put that down, I think I can appreciate them for the good people that they are and the real heartbreak that this has been for them and really kind of separate our experiences and just let it be what it is.
Katherine Golub 31:07
So that wasn't your last conversation with them ever. That was your last conversation with them about trying to change their minds and see you fully and their grandchildren. And, and I'm curious about your discernment process around who else you maintained relationships with. I want to acknowledge that there are many good reasons not to maintain relationships, right? If the relationships are harming us, if not being able to be fully seen is harming us, if there's so many good reasons to not maintain relationships. So I ask these questions not with an assumption that that is the correct response by any stretch of the imagination. And also me, you hold privileges that Craig, that your queer nieces and nephews and nibblings do not. And there's some responsibility that comes with that privilege. And it's complex how to discern who to maintain relationships with and who not to. And so I'm curious, what has guided you? How have you discerned which friendships to maintain it? Have you maintained friendships? How has that process been for you?
Sara Bybee Fisk 32:19
I appreciate that introduction to this question and I agree. And I have always felt like it is the job of the people who can feel safe in conversation to have the hard conversations. This isn't the work of, for example, my queer nieces, nephews, and nibblings to advocate for themselves this way, unless they want to, right? Some of them do to varying degrees, but most of because that's the vibe they get.I don't have the final answer for this either because a lot of this work is ongoing. I think initially, like I said, grateful for COVID, I didn't have to get together with anybody for a long time. And it really gave me a beautiful space to be very introspective about who I wanted to reestablish connection with. A couple of years before COVID, my kids had all wanted to go back to school. So we had exited that homeschooling community. And that was also just a big fucking relief to not have to keep up the performance of faithfulness to Mormonism that I knew they were looking for from me.While I was privately and secretly struggling with so many different aspects of continuing to go to church, I continued for some time to maintain cordial relationships. And then after kind of COVID, we were getting back together. I remember getting invited to a birthday lunch with all of those moms and feeling really just conflicted about going because I was now wearing clothes that were going to very much signal I was out. Mormons wear a garment as underwear that is long in the legs, long shorts. It used to cover all the way over the shoulders. It's been modified recently, so it doesn't cover quite. But if I show up in short shorts and a tank top, that is almost offensive to them. And I knew that and I thought, I'm wearing this, can I show up this way? And so I decided to go wearing my short shorts and tank top more as like a test of my own discomfort. And I have to say during this time as well, I had become a coach and I had begun to get a lot of training in some therapeutic models and I began to work with people and just really understand my own people pleasing in a completely different way.It's the work that I do now is helping women kind of unraveling this performative people-pleasy codependent dance that we're taught to do. And so I went to the lunch mostly because I wanted to observe my own experience as I was doing that in real time with them. And I wanted to see them. I mean, Katherine, it's hard to also convey how much I loved them and how much they loved me and how much I loved their children and they loved mine. And we had this really just incredibly beautiful working relationship for so many years. And underneath that for me was always a little bit of anxiety that they would find out that I was struggling or that I didn't believe everything quite the same way they did.And when I went to the lunch, I just remember sitting there thinking, what am I doing here? Why am I spending my time and my energy, which are like my two most precious resources to build these relationships? I know who they voted for. I know what they think of me. I know what they think of my husband.
Sara Bybee Fisk 36:25
I know what they think of Rachel. And I at the time was pretty convinced that it was a waste of my time and that I didn't want to be nurturing or really fostering those relationships. I felt a sense of some judgment toward them. I felt a sense of fear about what they believed and how they voted and how I felt like it was affecting me.And by now, Trump's not present anymore. And so a lot of the threat of him and his ideology didn't feel super present, but it still felt very present to me and them. And as I look back, that kind of group tribal part of my brain was really active in making them them and me me like now it was us and them and they were and so after that I didn't put a lot of energy and effort into maintaining relationships they would continue to invite me to things I always had a good reason not to go they would update me about their kids what they were doing and I you know I always enjoyed hearing about that it was also a little bittersweet because their kids were doing some of the things I thought my kids would grow up to do serving a mission is a big Mormon thing I lived in Bolivia for a year and a half and though I'm not super keen on what I did and how I did it the experience of living in another place was hugely transformational to me and it really is just an incredible opportunity to get to know and love other people and I wanted my kids to have that and so their kids were growing up and going on missions and there was some bittersweetness about some of those pieces of news that I would get but by and large I kind of maintained a healthy distance I fostered my own new relationships with people who I could feel really connected to in terms of belief and worldview and I have a really beautiful community of friends who I feel really connected to and then it wasn't I really didn't think it was much of a problem until Trump was elected again and there was something about seeing in their social media posts those who were posting the support and the joy at his reelection that just really was so devastating for me kind of all over again because now it seemed like you voted for someone who told us what he's going to do and that's okay with you like it's very clear what he's going to do and you're saying that that's okay and so I kind of took that information in through my very human cognitive bias tribal think brain and really kind of made a decision that I was not going to put any time and energy into those friendships anymore.
Katherine Golub 39:37
I know that you did talk about one friendship you've maintained, and that's evolving when we talked earlier, and I'm curious if there have been people that you've decided to keep in your life, and if you'd like to share about that.
Sara Bybee Fisk 39:51
Yeah, I think if we would have had this conversation several weeks ago, I might have just been like, yep, sometimes friendships fade and you just don't have anything in common anymore and that's okay. And I think the murder of Charlie Kirk had a huge impact on me because it forced me to look at this friendship through a different lens. And let me say what I mean by that. So in August, I got the text again. Hey, I'd love to take you out for your birthday lunch. And it was from one of the women in this group who I was closest to and I love her. I know her heart. She is one of the most beautiful, loving, caring people walking around on the planet. And if I had heartburn over anyone, it would have been her. But I also just did not want to get together with everyone again. And I assumed that she meant everyone. And so in a moment of just kind of wanting to tell her the truth and not just avoid it like I had before, I responded and I said, hey, I just don't think I want to spend time and energy maintaining friendships with people who just see the world so differently than I do and who want such different things.It just doesn't feel good to me. It doesn't feel right. And thank you, but no, thank you. And she responded with so much compassion and heartbreak. And I realized that I had been assuming a lot of things. I didn't know for sure that she was someone who had voted for Trump. And so I asked her, I said, if you feel comfortable sharing with me who you voted for and why, that would help me here. And she did. And I could clearly see in that moment that we were just afraid of different things. She had in her own mind, really good reasons why she had decided that the unborn were a very vulnerable group to her and protecting unborn children was filled with so much importance for her that it kind of outweighed everything else that mattered to her. She doesn't have anybody who's gay in her life. She is not a member of any kind of marginalized group at all. She's white passing. I'm sure she loves immigrants and she comes from an immigrant family, but it wasn't present to her in the same way that it really was for me in my experience. And so I had to sit with her message and just look at how assumptive I had been about so many things. And I had to grapple with the fact that I had stopped noticing my cognitive bias. I had stopped noticing that desire to just retreat into my bubble where everybody believed the same thing, which by the way, that was being a Mormon. It's just the irony of like, I don't want to have conversations with someone who believes different because it threatens what I believe or it makes me feel uncomfortable in this way. I had to grapple with the fact that was my cult brain that was really showing up hard. And I reached back out and I just said, I want to have a conversation with you about this. I want to stay in conversation because this instinct that I have to just burn the bridge, to retreat into my group, I can see it and I can see what it is doing to me.
Sara Bybee Fisk 43:50
And I'm just one of millions and millions of people who this is happening to in some way or another. And then when Charlie Kirk was murdered, I just thought this is insane. This is insanity that we are witnessing.And the only way to come back to a place of sanity is to figure out how to coexist with people who believe differently than I do and who have different solutions for the problem. But we've got to figure out how to do this in a way that people are not murdered.
Katherine Golub 44:27
earlier when you were talking about the Mormon who leaves and the caricature of that person that we don't trust them, we don't talk to them, we don't associate with them. We could use the same language often for many people, many of us on the left, we're just like, no, I'm not going to be their friend, I'm not going to be in relationship with them.So I'm curious what guidance or words of wisdom or insights you might want to share with folks who are listening who are far more likely to be on the left. Some people might be like, yeah, right, maintain relationship. Other people may be like, hell no, no, I don't want to do that. Or some might be grappling with conflict with someone that they love in their lives or regretting a rift in a relationship. What guidance or insights might you have for folks who are listening who are just weighing all of this right now?
Sara Bybee Fisk 45:25
First of all, it takes safety and an ability to feel safe, to move toward relationships with people that you disagree with. And if you are a member of a group that is attacked or marginalized, I don't think that's your job right now, unless you want it to be, right? Um, so first of all, you get to pick, you get to choose. This is not prescriptive in any way.I think for me, I have my hand on two things. I have my hand on my friend and who I know her to be. And I have my hand on the marginalized groups of people who I feel are in danger, their rights, their dignity, their ability to exist in free and completely human ways, and I have to have my hands on those two things. There are going to be red lines, right? Abolishing gay marriage, masked men, picking up immigrants. I have to be able to stand for and verbalize that those are my red lines in those relationships. If, if I were to say that to my friend and she were to shut me down, then that would indicate to me that this isn't a relationship where both of our ideas can show up and exist in tension together. And so as I have my hands on those two things, I also have to be able to be who I am and say what needs to be said so that I feel authentic, so that I feel like I'm, all of me is really here and seen and heard, not agreed with, because I don't agree with everything she's saying, but I can understand and see and hear why she feels that way, mostly because I used to be that and believe that so deeply, but I think those, those are the elements that matter to me, right, that I have my hand on her and who she is. I have my other hand on the groups that I feel are threatened in really significant, real ways, and that I can show up and say what I need to say.
Katherine Golub 47:40
I think that distinction between being heard and respected and being agreed with is such an important distinction. I really appreciate you separating those two things out.
Sara Bybee Fisk 47:53
I think I could be in relationship with anyone where those things are present and we don't have to agree.
Katherine Golub 47:59
I know the answer to this question, but I imagine since I was asking it, other people may be asking it too, did you end up changing anyone's mind?
Sara Bybee Fisk 48:10
Yes, when you said that was the last of our hard conversations with my parents in my mind, I was like, we had one more. And I went to them during Trump's second presidential run and asked them to both vote for Kamala Harris. My mother did, my father did not, but he did not vote for Trump. And I considered that a win.And then I have a dear friend from college. He was the president of the college Republicans when we were in college together, great man. I know his heart. I love him. And he and I had long text conversations about why I felt like him voting for Kamala Harris was really the only way for him to get his Republican party back. And that if Harris was not elected, that kind of goodbye, right to, to, to the Republicans, I mean, don't we kind of long for those guys again, compared to who we have now, right? That may be another conversation. I will say that I look back to the John McCain's and to some of the Bush's, I guess I won't say all of them. And you know, even Mitt Romney and just think that we need a healthy political system requires healthy debate and opposition where we can really work out our ideas the way that I think we used to do a much better job. And so that was essentially my argument to him. And so he voted for Kamala Harris as well.
Katherine Golub 49:37
I really appreciate that you got him to vote for Kamala Harris. And I appreciate that like, we just had our own little model.Like it would be a fascinating conversation to keep going. We may not end up agreeing and I don't know who am I to argue that McCain wasn't better than Trump. I remember watching the video of him voting for healthcare and the chills and gratitude in that moment.
Sara Bybee Fisk 49:59
Yeah, I have shown the Obama McCain debate to my kids and been like, guys, this is what it used to be like. This is what we used to be able to do.And we need to be able to debate our ideas without violence and to coexist together.
Katherine Golub 50:15
I'm all for debate without violence. And these are hard times and so I'm grateful to get to have this conversation with you, there's about so many women who could benefit from working with you.So can you just share briefly about the work that you do and how people can learn more from you?
Sara Bybee Fisk 50:33
Yes, I teach women how to really find their personal hour and step out of the people pleasing that is fucking that up. And you can find me at Sarafisk.coach. Yes, dot coach is actually a URL and S-A-R-A-F as in fantastic I-S-K dot coach. And on Instagram, I have a podcast called the Good Girl podcast. And that's where I do a lot of talking about what I want to see in the world.
Katherine Golub 51:05
Well, thank you for doing a lot of talking about what you want to see in the world because I also want to see it and I'm grateful for the work that you're doing and getting to have the second conversation with you. So thank you.
