What happens when we spend so much time focusing on what's broken in the world that we stop imagining what a better future could look like? It's easy to get stuck in dissatisfaction with reality, but envisioning something greater is just as important as acknowledging what's wrong. This conversation with Celeste Davis unpacks her essay, "The Necessary Act of Falling in Love with the World We Haven't Yet Built," and explores why imagining a different future can feel so vulnerable. You’ll hear why reclaiming hope is a necessary part of change, and why women learning to speak up and advocate for the world they actually want to live in is so powerful.
How long have you been putting off the hard conversation? Join Sara live for one hour for her free workshop, SPEAK UP. There’s no replay, so bring the conversation you keep avoiding. You’ll learn the Three Speak Up Skills and figure out what’s keeping you stuck.
Here’s what you’ll uncover in this episode:
Why focusing only on what’s wrong can leave you feeling stuck without a clear path forward
Why imagining a better future and allowing yourself to hope can feel so uncomfortable
The importance of telling better stories instead of jumping straight to plans and solutions
How the world you live in reflects someone else's imagination and what that means for changing societal structures
Why speaking up is a skill that you develop and not a personality trait you were born with
Find Celeste here:
celestemdavis.substack.com/p/the-necessary-act-of-falling-in-love
bookshop.org/p/books/the-book-of-once-mormon-women/d0836e8549f1f9fb?ean=9781560855422
Register for SPEAK UP: sarafisk.coach/voice
Find Sara here:
youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333
Transcript
Sara Bybee Fisk 00:59
Whenever Celeste's email arrives in my inbox, I know it's gonna get some attention because I have such respect for the way that Celeste delivers an idea and then develops it and then gives us something to think about. This is not my first interview with Celeste. Thank you for agreeing to come back. And-
Celeste Davis 01:19
Of course
Sara Bybee Fisk 01:20
... again, it's because this idea that hit my inbox on Sunday, I was just like, "Yes, that is..." I was developing a podcast idea, um, for this week about the similar, very similar idea, and so you graciously agreed to join me. Uh, thank you so much for your time.Is there anything that you want people listening to know about you?
Celeste Davis 01:40
I'm just happy to be here. I always love... I mean, I love meeting minds. I feel like our- we're often, like, mind-melded and very in sync, Sara. And so always a joy to talk to you.You can find me on Substack, Matriarchal Blessing. Every Sunday I write an article that can go into your inbox if you would care to join us to deconstruct patriarchy and hope for a better world together.
Sara Bybee Fisk 02:02
What caught my eye, first of all, was the title of your last essay, and it's titled The Necessary Act of Falling in Love with the World We Haven't Yet Built. Tell me what you were going for with that title.
Celeste Davis 02:21
Um, I liked the phrase falling in love, um, rather than just envisioning or hope because it's such a joy. It's just such a joyful phrase, and it came from a book that I'm reading right now called How to Fall in Love with the Future by Rob Hopkins about climate change, and that's how I start the essay off.It's just, like, I just happened to have read a climate change book that was like, "We are effed." We're super, super effed. Like, we, we screwed it up, and now it's irreversible, and we are literally heading for collapse in all different segments of society. And I read it and I was like, "She is correct. This sucks." And then, it just so, like, coincidentally happened that the next book in my library queue was How to Hope for a Better Future. And so I was, like, on a walk and I just started sobbing 'cause that's how he starts off. He starts off, like, imagining that he can time travel, and he's like, "Let me give you a peek into what I see." And it's like this beautiful... Like, he's like, "I'm hopping into the timeline where humanity did everything we could to reverse the climate crisis." And he talks about just, like, cascading gardens off of sky- skyscrapers and neighbors helping each other rip up their sidewalks to plant pollinator gardens and, like, the diversity of birdsong and smells, and it was so lovely and it was such a contrast to my typical feed, which is so doom and gloom and like, "Here's why we're doomed. Here's why we are gloomy. Here's what's wrong. Here's what's wrong. Here's what's wrong. Here's what's wrong." And this is... And he was just like, "Here's permission to hope." And I was like, "Thank you. I just wanna hope." Like, I didn't know I had permission to hope about climate change. You know? Or, like, just for somebody to, like, offer an alternative to doom and gloom was so welcome and so lovely, and falling in love with hope with, like, a, a lovely future is so necessary and so necessary to change.
Sara Bybee Fisk 04:30
It's such a tough spot. I resonate so much with kind of the tug of war between describing reality and our dissatisfaction with it in a way that is honest and in a way that captures the totality of the problem that we need to solve.
Celeste Davis 04:55
Yes.
Sara Bybee Fisk 04:56
And we tend to get stuck there.
Celeste Davis 05:00
Yes, especially progressives, yes.
Sara Bybee Fisk 05:02
Yes. We do a great job of the laundry list of all the things that are wrong and all the things that, uh, we want to change and why it's wrong and how we got to this place where it's wrong.And I mean, I understand from, like, a brain perspective, that is our brain's attempt to conversely and kind of illogically or ironically keep us safe.
Celeste Davis 05:32
Yes. Mm-hmm. Because we love certainty and we love being right.
Sara Bybee Fisk 05:37
Yeah.
Celeste Davis 05:37
And it's so much easier to be certain and to be right for a things going wrong. Like and then, and then we can be like, "Oh, I was right. I was... See? It didn't work out.See?" And this is true on a micro level and a macro level, like it's true in our lives. It's so vulnerable and it's so risky and sometimes embarrassing to really put yourself out there and go for something that you're trying to change in your life, and you could have a lot of people in your life being like, "You're not gonna make that happen. You're not gonna get that job. You, you're not gonna run that marathon. You're not gonna actually... Can you? Like, mm." And you can think that about yourself, and so it's so much easier to be like, "I can't run a marathon. See? I was right. I can't do it."
Sara Bybee Fisk 06:22
I may have said that to myself a time or two. Yeah. Yeah. It also, the earnestness that you have to be able to tolerate to have a new idea about something. And I mean, I- I'm starting to get that familiar, uh, discomfort in my chest just talking about it because I think for a lot of us, to be seen wanting something, we'd ra- I mean, the face that you're making right now is like, "I would rather just die," because it s- it feels like standing in front of people absolutely naked while they get to pick apart, you know, our actual bodies.And it is, like, yes, it's the vulnerability. Yes, it's the earnestness. But it's also we have to put ourselves out there as somebody who wants something that doesn't exist and that is often something we've never seen before.
Celeste Davis 07:21
It is so vulnerable and so risky. And like case in point, I was, like, writing this essay, and I was so comfortable with the portions of the essay that are like, "Here's why hopeless- how- here's why we're hopeless.Here's why this... Here's why we don't hope. Here's why all the things" like, like, basically, like, the things that, like, why it's wrong or, you know, the neg- the more negative side. I was, like, in my element, and I was like, "It's flowing." And then I got to the portion of my essay where I knew I was going to have to get where I actually present ideas for a better world, and I procrastinated that day after day after day. And I was like, "Oh," it just, like, the, the earnestness. I was-- it was so uncomfortable to be like, "Oh, this is so cheesy, and this is so, like, non-professional or, like, non-academic or, like, non-serious," to be like, "I think boys should cry, and I think we should all know our neighbors." And like, it's so, like, ugh. Um, it is, like, d- like, even grappling with that with myself, with writing an essay about hoping for the future, actually hoping the future was so uncomfortable.
Sara Bybee Fisk 08:27
It is. And I think that's part of the-- another kind of thing that I see happen is that when we do describe the future, we tend to go to the plan. Like, "Okay, if we cut the Department of..." I'm gonna start calling it Department of Defense, guys. I'm sorry. I can't do it.Can't do Department of War. "If we cut their budget this, and if we take this money from here, and if we get billionaires with all of their unearned hoarded money to, you know, be taxed at just the normal rate that all of us, the rest, are taxed at, then we could do Medicare for all." We, we go to statistics and a plan and, like, possible future scenarios, and we skip over the part where we tell better stories.
Celeste Davis 09:15
Totally. Totally, yeah.
Sara Bybee Fisk 09:19
And we skip over the part where we have to talk about the stories that we have lived where we don't have the thing that we want and how vulnerable or... Like, I remember a year that, uh, my husband and I have always been self-employed. We-- our p- insurance premiums shot through the roof, and we just decided to get, like, a disaster plan 'cause we couldn't afford, like, the insurance.And I remember watching my kids run around the deck of a pool that we were swimming at and thinking, "Oh my gosh, stop running, stop running. If you break, fall and break your arm, we're gonna have to pay for that. Guys, guys." And, and so the stories of what it is like to live with lack in a non-kind of accusatory human way that's like, my mother's heart wants my children to be able to run around a pool deck, and if they fall and break their arm, which is very normal, I want my children to be able to go to the doctor, and I want your children to be able to go to the doctor, and I want all children to be able to go to the doctor. So we have to tell the stories of our vulnerable feelings, of what it's like to live without some of the things that we could have to take better care of each other, and then let those stories do a lot of the work I think that right now we're trying to do with statistics and, and plans.
Celeste Davis 10:45
Definitely. And statistics and plans, it leaves out the longing, and it leaves out the envisioning, and it leaves-- which leaves out hope. And without hope, we're not going to change.Like, if we can't see it... We have to be able to see it to, like, work to- to even get to the better plans. It's kind of a precursor. It's like a prerequisite, the vision, the hope, the, like, seeing it, you know? And that's the piece that is cringey or vulnerable, but it's so important. Like, there's this, um, formula for change that, like, these organizational behavioral researchers came up with in the '90s, like, I think Kathryn Dunn Miller is her name. And it's like s- like, humans are so resistant to change, so they were trying to figure out what components, what ingredients we actually need to overcome our resistance to change. And the three things they, the, the, the ingredients were, one, dissatisfaction with the way things are. Two, vision for something better. Three, practical first steps. And if all of those combine, that overcomes our big resistance to change, and we change. And they plug and chugged that formula into all different scenarios. Anyway, but that vision for change, that's necessary. That is important, but it's, again, vulnerable. It's scary. It's hard. It's... We would ra- we're more comfortable preparing for the worst, or it's hard to hope. It's hard to long. It's uncomfortable to long for something that might not happen. It's uncomfortable to even let yourself hope. Let yourself a vision is a vulnerable act, but it is necessary. It is necessary to change. It's just- ... easier to be realistic than it is to, to dream, I think.
Sara Bybee Fisk 12:34
One of my favorite things about your essay, and an idea that I've carried around for a long time, is that this is all made up.
Celeste Davis 12:42
Yeah.
Sara Bybee Fisk 12:43
Like, everything that we are living in now, it is all, it was all made up by someone, and your essay makes the point that we are living today in what someone's imagination created. You know, patriarchy, religion, cultural expectations.Someone imagined things this way, somebody wanted, or a group of somebodies wanted it this way, and so that's what we have today. And so why is that idea such a powerful one to you?
Celeste Davis 13:17
Well, I mean, exactly what you said because this is... If we want to change, we have to realize that someone just like us, just like us with a little human brain, envisioned something and then said, "Hey, this is the thing." And then that person agreed, and then it goes on, and then it's a group, and then it becomes, you know, mandates or rules or laws, and then it becomes the status quo. And, like, it goes along like that. So if we want to change, we have to do that same process of envisioning something, spreading that to other people, gathering people who share our vision, creating that into laws and mandates, and then into that into the status quo. That's how change is made.And so realizing that, like, patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism, these things aren't just inevitable. They aren't just... They were somebody or somebodies being like, "This is how the world should be. This is how it is." So, like, Adrienne Maree Brown in her book Emergent Strategy says, "We are in an imagination battle, and when we don't use our imagination, we are planting gardens in somebody else's imagination. Our dreams are colonized by colonizers." And in the book, Rob Hopkins' book, How to Fall in Love with the Future, he says that, like, there are trillions of dollars invested in colonizing your imagination of the future to agree with the billionaires. Like, the billionaires are very invested in capping your imagination for the future and making it feel inevitable that whatever will take over, AI or, you know, that capitalism, that the billionaires can't be taxed, whatever it is.They're super invested, and literally trillions of dollars of advertising every single day coming at our eyeballs, that's just someone else's imagination. And so realizing, like, they're just like me, right? They're just like us, and the only way to change is to reclaim our imagination, say, "My imagination is just as powerful as yours." Like, I can also do this thing that somebody else did way back in history of gathering people together and saying, "Hey, here's my vision for the future. What's yours? Let's work together. Let's create something new." That can be powerful, but the people in power don't want us doing that and always wanna make it feel like the status quo right now is inevitable, which, again, it was just somebody else's imagination that we all now buy into. And that belief that it's inevitable is so powerful, but it's just an imagining. It doesn't have to be true.
Sara Bybee Fisk 15:44
I saw this play out in a Facebook post that I saw this morning. I have a friend who's moved to Norway. She grew up here. Uh, would have described herself as a libertarian, and she posted the question, you know, "For my American friends, a lot of people in Europe wanna know why are you so afraid of socialism?" And, you know, definitions aside, I think that's one of the, you know, biggest problems is agreeing on our definition, but the comments were full of fears, like the loss of individualism.And I was like, "I didn't know that socialism meant nobody gets to be an individual anymore," right? The loss of property rights, the loss of the ability to achieve the American dream, and every single one of those, I was like, "A billionaire paid for us to hear that. A billionaire paid for us to hear that. A billionaire paid for us to hear that," because, guys, it can be anything we want it to be. If we want a socialism that lets us all be individuals, we can have that. If we want socialism where we get to keep our property rights, where we get to have the ability to achieve the American dream, we... It can be anything we want it to be. And so your point about the money and the lobby and... I mean, it really sucks right now because the billionaires have a lot of money to force their dream on us to, to make, to kind of try to bring us into their imagination while they get to live their parallel lives, right, alongside us. And how do you think that collectively we nurture the imagined future that we want?
Celeste Davis 17:28
Mm. Well, you wanna talk about hope.I mean, look at what happened last week, to your point specifically about the billionaires buying our imaginations, making their vision seem inevitable. Freaking Elon Musk just dumped half a billion dollars into winning this election, and it didn't work, and it didn't work.
Sara Bybee Fisk 17:49
Yeah.
Celeste Davis 17:49
I mean, we were like, "No, we are more powerful," even than your half a billion dollars in advertising money, even with all of your ads assaulting us every day and your, like, vision, like, on a, like, raining down, like, aggressively upon us. Even with that, we were still like, "No, we will bond together, and we are more people than you.We are more votes. You have more money, but we are mightier." Like, we have more people. And it's so true that, like, if we really did collectively join in this fight of the, you know, the bottom versus the top, there's only a- ... all on the top. They're, relatively to the world, there are very few billionaires, and they do have a lot of power. But we are more, and we... I mean, this has been the fight of history, right?
Sara Bybee Fisk 18:42
Yeah.
Celeste Davis 18:42
That finally when, like, so much goes into not having the people at the bottom, whatever that is, racially, sexism, classism, power of the government, whatever. They are so invested in us not banding together and just, like, fighting each other.But whenever, like, a country, a group, a whatever does band together and fight the top, like, it's so powerful because they, the system collapse without their buy-in. So there's, we do have to acknowledge there's a lot of factors that are at play trying to get us to buy into it. Like, literally colonizing our dreams to align with the billionaires' dreams. Like, our dream of, you know, owning a lot of stuff or whatever. Like, that's going on, that is. But as soon as we realize, like, oh, all this falls apart if we stop participating in it. Like, if we all stopped shopping at Amazon, Amazon would go out of business. Like, we have that power. Anyway, it's possible. It's hard, but it is possible.
Sara Bybee Fisk 19:45
When I think about, like, everything that is necessary, we have to imagine it, right? We have to be able to tell better stories about it. And then we have to develop the sturdiness to sustain it, right? We have to keep working through ups and downs and, um, the moments when it doesn't seem like it's gonna work, and the moments where we're tired and giving up seems like maybe the smarter thing to do.How do you think about that part of it? I was really, um, touched by the quote that you included from Krista Tippett about needing grounded bodies and spirits to meet what's hard and rise toward what is beautiful. And to me, that's what she was talking about, right? Like, the yes, we need the vision, and yes, we need to be able to tell the stories about it, but we also need the sturdiness to stick with it.
Celeste Davis 20:41
Definitely. A couple examples are coming to mind. Um, I have been, like, researching what actually moves the needle in terms of gender equality. So I have been studying movements across the world in history where women did gain a lot of rights. Like the Iceland, Icelandic women in 1975, where they all, 90% of the women on that day went on strike. The stay-at-home moms, working moms, all of them. Like, 90% of them, which is a massive number. But to make that happen, when you actually think of the minutiae, that didn't just, like, that wasn't easy, right? That literally took five years of a group of women having a vision. That has be- that had to be first. It had to be f- they had to imagine this. And, and of course it felt impossible. Of course, there are people telling them, "This will not work. There's no way we will get 90% of the women in this country to do this. There's absolutely no way. There's too many divisions. There's rich, poor. There's old, young. There's working, there's not. There's suburban, there's rural. There's, you know, a mill- stay-at-home moms, working mom." There's, like, so many divisions, right? But they, they mailed the letters. They put out ads in the radio. They campaigned. They marketed. They planned for five years. And then on the day, you think about how, like, the stamina of those women having to disappoint their husbands who did not want to take their kids to work because they're, the, the women were not going to be taking care of the kids.They were going to be at the protest. Like, th- there had to have been a million fights that morning, right? There had to be a million women standing on their own and willing to go through that discomfort of change and standing up for what they want and st- and actually doing the work and showing up. And then after that, of course, wasn't, like, a light switch. There was more women. The other example I'm thinking of is, like, oh my gosh, freaking Stacey Abrams in Georgia and her committee of, like... Think of how much dedicated, unglorious day-to-day work that woman and all of her colleagues have put in to get the votes up in Georgia and in the South and get, like, voters registered and just the unglamorous, like, years. And it paid off, and it was amazing, but it wasn't, like, a... It wasn't just hope. It wasn't just vision. It wasn't just like, "That would be cool. I imagine that we're gonna flip Georgia blue." No, it took years. And I'm thinking, too, of, like, Utah, um, getting, even just getting the Republicans out of the super majority. Literally, I watched a TikTok of, like, this guy being like, "Yeah, four years ago, a dedicated committee of people were like, 'How do we get the Republicans out of the super majority?'" And that took years of planning and of campaigning and of unglamorous marketing , and it worked, but it does, like, it's not... And when I say unglamorous, I think we like to think of social change, like the big wars, the big resistance, the big French Revolution, whatever, like the big things that are like, "Look at me, I'm a hero." But it's very unglamorous.
Celeste Davis 23:44
It's, like, the day-to-day emails and sending out letters and conversations and gathering and that kind of stamina. So the vision has to come first, but then there does have to be, like you said, a lot of stamina to see the vision through.It does take a lot of work also.
Sara Bybee Fisk 24:02
I remember watching the movie, I don't remember which streaming ser- uh, service had it, about, um, the work of Phyllis Schlafly-
Celeste Davis 24:10
Mm
Sara Bybee Fisk 24:12
... and thinking, "Oh my God. These people have been working toward what I am living right now for decades."
Celeste Davis 24:22
Oh my gosh.
Sara Bybee Fisk 24:23
Yeah.
Celeste Davis 24:23
Like-
Sara Bybee Fisk 24:24
We're living in their imagination
Celeste Davis 24:25
... that's right. That's right. And so the un- some of the unglamorous work of advocating and talking about what we want for the future, that's kinda where it overlaps with what I do. Because-
Sara Bybee Fisk 24:39
Mm
Celeste Davis 24:39
... if women are going to learn to have hard conversations, I think my big kind of operating principle of the world is this
Sara Bybee Fisk 24:50
The biggest problem we have right now in the world is that not enough women feel safe or confident enough to speak about the relationships and the world that they want to live in.
Celeste Davis 25:03
Ugh. It hurts my heart because it's true.
Sara Bybee Fisk 25:06
Yes. And that if we could get more women talking at the kitchen table about the relationships in the world that they wanna live in, talking with their, first of all, with the, you know, their intimate relationships, with their children, with their husbands, and then with their friends, with their broader family members, and if they felt safe and confident enough to do that-
Celeste Davis 25:31
Mm
Sara Bybee Fisk 25:31
... that would revolutionize more things in a faster period of time than almost anything else we could do.
Celeste Davis 25:41
Amen. Amen. I completely agree with you.And I am con- I'm convinced that, so I have looked into a lot of like, okay, the mo- the most productive decade we've had in our country by far for women's equality was the 1970s. We got so much legislation passed in that decade compared to every other decade, like triples it. You know, we got birth control, like not being able to get fired because of being pregnant, um, Roe versus Wade-
Sara Bybee Fisk 26:15
Bank accounts
Celeste Davis 26:16
... being able to get our own bank accounts, credit cards, mortgages, like just so much. I mean, it just goes on and on and on and on and on.And like when you look at why, there were over, I think it was 200,000 women in this country meeting in consciousness-raising groups, and they pe- women were organized across the country. It's just, and it started with one group. It started with one group of women in New York City, and then they started holding conferences, handing out pamphlets, "Here's how to do your own consciousness-raising group." And it was for exactly what you're talking about, because it doesn't just happen from the top down. It happens from the bottom up, meaning the bottom has to be empowered to know that change is possible, to know that they can stand up for themselves. And it was these conversations of, how do I stand up to my own husband? How do I advocate for what I actually want? But even a precursor to that, knowing you are worthy of that, knowing you're not crazy, you're not a bitch, you're not selfish, you're not too much. And that work happened in those consciousness-raising groups where together they were like, "Oh, the same thing is happening to me. You're not crazy. You're not crazy." And it is gonna suck to stand up for yourself, frankly. Everything we have been, like, trained since we were toddlers to raising our own red flags of not being safe in our own head of like, "Oh, I'm being too loud. Oh, I'm asking for too much. Oh, I'm, I'm displeasing the people. I'm inconveniencing everyone. I'm disappointing everyone." Those are going to be raised, and you can do it anyway. You can, because she did it, and she did it, and she's doing it. That work changed the world. It's so important.
Sara Bybee Fisk 27:50
Uh, when are we starting one? Because- ... because th- the same thing happens in the group coaching programs that I do. I am a participant in the discussion groups that you do, and over and over again, there's so much, "Oh my gosh, the same thing for me. Oh my gosh, I'm going through that as well.I think that too." And what I want to add to that conversation is, hey guys, speaking up is a skill. It's not a personality trait.
Celeste Davis 28:20
Right.
Sara Bybee Fisk 28:20
It's not something you are born with. It's not something that you, uh, um, just either have or don't have.It is a definable skill, and it is a, there are steps to it, and if you follow these steps, you might get tripped up, or we might need to d- develop more sturdiness to get you all the way through. But you gotta learn how to start a conversation. You gotta learn how to stay in it and not make yourself or your message smaller, and you have to learn to handle what happens after.
Celeste Davis 28:50
Amen. And I think going back to the vision, it's having a new vision of yourself. That has to be in there.It has to be like, "Oh, I can see myself standing up for myself," instead of, "I'm just not someone who does that. I'm just not. I'm just like a really sweet... Like, I'm not someone who causes ripples. I'm not, I'm a people pleaser. I just couldn't." You can. I'm so, I'm rooting for you. Like, nothing breaks my heart more, and this happens every single week , than women in their, like, 70s, 80s, 90s even being like, "Well, it's too late for me-
Sara Bybee Fisk 29:22
Yeah
Celeste Davis 29:22
... but I'll send this to my daughters. I'll send this to my granddaughters. Like, I could never say that to my husband, but, like, I'll pass this on. There's hope for the next generation." I'm like, "There's hope for you still." Like, like you said, this is not a personality defect. This is a skill. You're never too old to learn the skill of self-advocacy, and, like, I think just having that vision of that this is, A, really important and, B, possible for all of us, change the world. So important.
Sara Bybee Fisk 29:50
Absolutely. And then I just wanna add one more thing, in that that transformation has to happen for you first. But if it just stops at the individual, then we don't get to collectively arrive at the future that we want.And you address this really well in your essay when you talked about the book The Secret.
Celeste Davis 30:17
Correct. Yes. So The Secret, I mean, it's a similar, uh, it's got its problems.
Sara Bybee Fisk 30:22
Right.
Celeste Davis 30:23
But we don't have to get into those. But what I'm gonna talk about is that, um, it does talk about, like, people's dreams, right?And it's a similar thing to what we're talking about now. Like to be able to change, you need to be able to envision something new for yourself and then live as if that's possible and live as if it's happening-
Sara Bybee Fisk 30:39
Mm
Celeste Davis 30:39
... which is the same message as How to Hope for a Better Future about climate change. Anyway, but the thing that was I found really discouraging about the book The Secret was the impoverishment of the dreams represented by the chapter heads, which was individual wealth, individual romantic partnership, individual health, and individual success. And all of our dr- those are the things that people most long for. Those are people's New Year's resolutions, for instance. Those are people's goals that they set. And it's so individualistic, and I'm like, "Where is the chapter on close-knit neighborhoods? Where is the chapter on rich intergenerational friendships? Where's the chapter on a thriving rainforest, on, you know, a healthy and tender masculinity, on no more war?" Like, where are those dreams? Like, our dreams are so colonized to just focus on the individual and individual success.And again, no judgment. Me too, I also dream of those things, and I also set goals for those things. But when we contrast it with the lack of community dreams, of collective dreams, of how rarely we let ourselves even think, even dream, even long, even hope for something better collectively is really discouraging. It's very on purpose. Again, when we're talking about the billionaires, like, there's a reason for that. That's exactly what they have spent trillions of dollars to do. We can't have gender equality, but I can have new curtains. I'll work for the new curtains right? No judgment, I like new curtains too, but when we never dream in the collective, it really ensures that we never change in the collective. To change we have to dream that we can be better collectively. And I'm so inspired by stories where towns and neighborhoods and villages come together and work for something more beautiful. The book-- I really do recommend the book, How to Hope for a Better Future. I keep... How to Fall in Love with a Better Future. How to Fall in Love with the Future, that's what it's called, Rob Hopkins. Anyway, he has so many stories in this book of little towns, villages around the world like Utrecht, Netherlands, that were like, "We wanna be car-free," like, in 1993, campaigning for that for years, and now they're one of the most car-free cities in the world. Like, things like that I find so inspiring because it's possible, but it's not very common, and I think the reason it's not very common is because we're so busy. All of our dreams are just vortexed into our individual dreams.
Sara Bybee Fisk 33:09
I can have some compassion for that as well because when I'm paying, you know, $40 at the grocery store for grapes, um, some apples, carrots, and some chicken breasts, right? It, it, it does feel like the, the problems fall on us so individually, and I, I really get there's so many people who might be listening to this who are tired of the way-
Celeste Davis 33:36
Definitely
Sara Bybee Fisk 33:36
... that we have seen our collective, you know, rights trampled. I mean, watching ICE agents grab our, our fellow citizens and slam them into the ground and watching the horrors just one right after another so fast that it feels like this unending avalanche.I, I get it.
Celeste Davis 34:00
I know.
Sara Bybee Fisk 34:00
And I think one of the things that we also misunderstand is in the collective imagination for a communal future where we are more interconnected, that is an incredible source of strength and an incredible source of that sturdiness that we are going to need. Because individually it is very hard to maintain that sturdiness, but then you think about what it was like to watch the people in Minnesota respond to those same videos with such community-based organizing and taking care of each other.It was such an incredible display, and it is possible for us too. And so when I talk about women feeling safe and confident to speak up about the relationships that they want and the world that they want, I'm curious, Celeste, what kind of world do you wanna live in?
Celeste Davis 35:01
Mm. Well, I also wanna say, like, I hope we're not overwhelming people by saying like, "Change the world is your job.Create a lobbyist group today. Work your ass off to, like, get all these policies changed. It's up to you, like, working mom of four kids in, like, a whatever." Like, I'm hoping that we-
Sara Bybee Fisk 35:23
Absolutely
Celeste Davis 35:23
... like, like creating hope for, like, not like massive... Like, it's not on you to, like, flip society, but just the, like... I love the, like... I love Adrienne Maree Brown's idea of pleasure activism. Like, it can be pleasurable, and it can be sexy, and it can be fun, and it can be so much as just, like, you being the change you want to see in the world, like, doing that in a way that's, like, enjoyable, and gathering with women because it's fun, and empowering each other because it's sexy and it's awesome and it's enjoyable and it's just more a beaut- a more beautiful way to live. I like thinking about that activism and climate change as well, like, not because, like, we have to and we gotta take on the billionaires, and we gotta fight, fight, fight. But just because it's a more beautiful way to live.It's a more beautiful way to live to live more e- like ecologically minded. It's more beautiful, and that can be enjoyable and fruitful and lovely, and not just like a vortex of our energy and time and zapping our strength. Like, you know, thinking of change in a more positive light. So, okay, my vision for a better future does have a lot to do with gender because I think a lot about gender and gender equality. And you know, I- I have hope for the men. I have hope for the men that they are ca- more capable of change than we currently talk about them as having. And I have hope, and I envision a really rich, lovely, um, way to be a man that is so much more broad and inclusive and lovely than the version they are handed now that says the worst thing in the world for you to be is a girl or like a girl or act like a girl or talk like a girl or laugh like a girl, which cuts them off from half their humanity, from half the, the very normal human traits of vulnerability and tenderness and compassion and collective communalism. And, um, so I have a vision that, you know, through gender equality, we de- we destigmatify the feminine, what we call the feminine. And I'm using air quotes 'cause I do not think that is a biological imperative. But anyway, and we allow that to not be an embarrassing thing for men or women, um, to be caretakers, to be compassionate, to be vulnerable, that that is equally as lovely and admired as any other trait. And I have a big vision for the world to destigmatify-- stigmatify? Is it stigma-
Sara Bybee Fisk 38:10
I think de- de-stigmatize
Celeste Davis 38:12
... de-stigmatize caretaking and to recognize that that's not beneath the men. It's not embarrassing.It's, in fact, the most important jobs in the world to take care of each other. And so I have a vision that we flip the jobs that are currently the most underpaid, which are, you know, caretaking, which is daycare centers and homes for the elderly and nursing and teaching, and those become the highest paid and the most respected and acknowledged as the most important jobs in the world and equally as desirable and, um, for men and for women and for everybody. Trans, non-binary, throw them in there too, everyone. And, um, you know, I have a vision that, that our leadership starts looking a much more gender equal and that also, um, that we have a lot more care for each other, which I think would mean that we do put limits on how much money people can make, that we don't have a class of billionaires owning, you know, 70% of the world's wealth while the lower 50% enjoys so much less, and that we do put a f- a floor below which we don't allow humans to sink, um, and a ceiling above which we don't allow humans to rise. So like that floor of this universal healthcare and housing and affordable food and education and then a ceiling where you don't get to hoard over massive percentages of the world's wealth and destroy complete environments because it makes you richer.
Sara Bybee Fisk 39:51
That's the world I wanna live in. And I so appreciate what you wrote because my, my podcast episode last week was how I noticed myself even before election day, like trying to throttle my hope to try and not feel as disappointed and devastated as I did in, uh, 2024.And so I think the unthrottling of hope and the way that we as humans can use it to build a vision, to tell the stories of what it is like to live in that vision. I'm gonna link to your essay. You tell such beautiful, like, mini vignettes about what it could be like to live in the type of world that you and so many others like you and like me are describing, that I think that's what we, that's what we have to do. And it gets to be fun. Um-
Celeste Davis 40:52
Yes
Sara Bybee Fisk 40:52
... Trusty McMillan Cottom, I'm sure you're familiar with her.
Celeste Davis 40:55
Mm-hmm.
Sara Bybee Fisk 40:56
She's a writer and sociologist. I watched a reel.She's also a romance writer, which I did not know but makes so much sense, because she was asking the question like, "Okay, but is gender equality sexy? Is, is, is Medicare for All, is it sexy? Like, what does it look like when we get back home and we are with the person we love, and is it sexy?" And she's like, "I think we can make it sexy b- if we tell stories about how it actually looks." And so I have really just loved the stories that you tell, the way you develop ideas, and I'm just so grateful that you do that and that you'd be willing to talk about it with me today.
Celeste Davis 41:38
Thank you. And can I say, can I add one more thing that feels top of mind for me right now?
Sara Bybee Fisk 41:42
Abso- no, yes. I was about to say, what else would-
Celeste Davis 41:45
I feel like-
Sara Bybee Fisk 41:45
... anything else you want us to know?
Celeste Davis 41:47
This has been like, just like a recent epiphany that I'm like, it's gonna change the way I write, it's gonna change the way I think, and it has come from studying these women's movements that I've been studying. And I can see that my own feminism, and I can see the feminism of a lot of what I encounter online, is so focused on the unsexy of fighting and of, um, stating again and again and again what's wrong.And I've just been very, like, caught up, like struck by how often feminism centers men and centers the fight against men and centers pointing out every single thing wrong with men. Again, understandable, and I'm not suggesting that we go into fairytale land of like, "Men are so amazing." But I just have been studying these women's movements and I'm like, they are not talking about men, and they are not waiting for the, to convince the men in their lives to support them. They're fucking badasses that are just going out there and getting shit done together, and they're not, like, waiting for permission, and they're not fighting, and they're not, like, convincing, convincing, convincing. They're just It, like, again, it's sexy, it's joyous. I mean, I'm sure obviously it's as well hard and unglamorous, like we said. But I just feel like so much of this kind of gender talk online is so heavy, and it's so laden with like, "Oh, my gosh, the men. Oh, how are we gonna convince... How are we gonna wake up the men? How are we gonna convince them of patriarchy? How do I get my husband to get it? What books can I read? What can I say? Tell me what to say." And I'm like, empower- what if you just took all of that energy that you're trying to convince your husband to open his eyes, and convince the men, and you, zhoop, re-put it in empowering yourself, and, like, working together with other women joyously, fu- having fun together, working for a better world. Where it's not like we're ignoring or condemning the men, but just not centering that fight. Not, like, centering them, like, right here. Like, "We can't move forward until we convince the men." Yes, we can. Women have been doing it for centuries. Like, literally, like, it just sucks so much of our energy if we think that we have to convince all of the men before we can change, to get them to validate how we're changing, to convince them. Like, you know, like, oh my gosh. Anyway.
Sara Bybee Fisk 44:15
I love that.
Celeste Davis 44:16
It's a lot.
Sara Bybee Fisk 44:16
And no, and actually, what you just made me think of is this, like, how cool would it be if we all chose a job or, like, a specialty? And because I- I do think there are some people in the listening audience, you know, yours, mine, where they have friends, I know I do, who didn't vote for the blue team this last time because they have things that they're afraid of, right? They have things that they don't quite understand. They are worried.And if we have an in with a friend, what if we just, what if we made it our job to just start to listen to this friend, and start to help this friend understand maybe some of the things that she is afraid of maybe aren't so scary. We gave her, like, a better, a better vision, a better story, and we did it on a very individual level. And others were like, "I'm not waiting for my husband anymore. If he's not asking me what book he can be reading, maybe he doesn't wanna be reading a book. And so I'm just going to do it myself." And there are people who are gonna write about this. There are people who are going to write stories about it. They're gonna write songs about it. And so wherever... I just have this vision of, like, an, you know, an army of women who take it upon themselves to be part of the creative act of visioning, talking with friends, talking with other people who are interested, in any forum that they have access to, in any way that feels comfortable to them.Because I also know that sometimes we hear a lot of really articulate women... This happens to me all the time. I will go to social media to share an idea, and I'm like, "Everybody already knows that." I'm not saying anything new. I'm not saying anything exciting. And so there's a lot of times when I just don't say it. But what if we all just decided to say what it is that we are capable of saying in the spheres of influence that are available to us in any way that we can, develop some of that sturdiness to keep doing it, because I think everyone has a role to play. I can think of women right now who are gonna say, "Well, not me. You know, I don't, I don't think I could..." It's like the, you know, the 70 and- and 80 and 90-year-olds who are like, "I'll send this to my daughter." It's kinda that same idea. Everyone has a role to play, and I am so excited with the thought right now of all of us just picking one thing to do. And I echo, you know, this isn't trying to put the- the work of that on the 40, you know, year old mom who has four kids, who's a single mom or- or- or working in a way. Like, if you feel like you are up for a job, take it. Pick it. Whatever, whatever you can do. And it's not a job, because if we're gonna channel some adrienne maree brown, the- the pleasure, the joy, the hope, I think, is just gonna last so much longer and feel so much better.
Celeste Davis 47:26
Yeah, and it's like, it's a more beautiful way to live, and it's a more beautiful future. So maybe a little bit less, like, this heavy, like, tasks of like, "Ugh, I gotta do this, gotta do..." like another to-do list, and more just like, "How can I create my life to be a little more beautiful, a little more connected, a little more rich?" And those will have... That will be joyous, and those will have ripple effects. Because it's n- the truth is, like, again, living in other people's imaginations, in the imaginations of the kind of ruling class that have been ruling for a very long time, it's not that beautiful. And it's also not that beautiful, like, to get autoimmune diseases because you are people pleasing. Like, it's not that... Like, you know, there's costs to, um, staying in our gender lane and being accommodating and pleasing, which obviously you talk about all the time. But if you kind of switch to like, "Oh, I gotta be better. Oh, I gotta do all of this stuff. Oh, I am such a lame-o in this," and just be like, "You know what? It would be a little more beautiful if I, if I did, uh, really advocate for my desires. That would be lovely. That would be nice."
Sara Bybee Fisk 48:36
Yeah. Well, thank you again. Um, I've loved this conversation.I will put a link in the chat to your Substack, and specifically to the essay we're talking about. Is there anything else that you want people to know about what you're doing, or s- things that we should be keeping track of?
Celeste Davis 48:54
Well, maybe we both can say we're both in a book-
Sara Bybee Fisk 48:58
Yeah
Celeste Davis 48:58
... that just got published.
Sara Bybee Fisk 48:59
That's true. We can say that.
Celeste Davis 49:02
We can say that.
Sara Bybee Fisk 49:03
Yeah.
Celeste Davis 49:03
It's, uh, called, um, The Book of Once Mormon Women, available now-
Sara Bybee Fisk 49:10
Yes
Celeste Davis 49:10
... wherever you get your books.
Sara Bybee Fisk 49:11
Yes. It is, um, an anthology of essays.I tried really hard to write an essay, and what came out was a poem instead. Um, but about women leaving the Mormon Church, and what that is like. It is available for preorder now, and I'll stick a link to that in the in the show notes as well. Celeste, thank you so much.
Celeste Davis 49:35
My pleasure.
