The Moment of Lift

by Melinda Gates

  “When she came back to the office, crying, we asked her, ‘Did you stop feeding him?’ and she said, ‘No. Isn’t that what peace means? Besides, I knew at that moment that I could come back to my sisters and we could cry together.’”

  How did the women’s movement succeed in bringing peace while the men’s warring factions could not? Leymah’s story says it all. When the women were wounded, they were able to absorb their pain without passing it on. But when the men were wounded, they needed to make someone pay. That’s what fed the cycle of war.

  I am not saying that women alone have the power of peacemaking and men alone are the cause of war. Absolutely not. I am saying that, in this case, the women were able to absorb their pain without passing it on and the men were not—until they were prevailed upon by the women! When the women found their voice, the men found their power to make peace. Each found the traditional attributes of the other inside themselves. The men were able to do something the women had done—agree not to retaliate—and the women were able to do something the men had done, which is to assert their views about how society should be run. Bringing these two qualities together is what brought peace.

  Many successful social movements are driven by the same combination—strong activism and the ability to take pain without passing it on. Anyone who can combine those two finds a voice with moral force.

  Leymah’s friend who came back to cry with her sisters, and all the women who ever accepted their pain without passing it on, were not just sharing their grief but finding their voice—because their voice is buried underneath their grief. If we can face our pain, we can find our voice. And it is so much easier to face our pain and find our voice together.

  When women are trapped in abuse and isolated from other women, we can’t be a force against violence because we have no voice. But when women gather with one another, include one another, tell our stories to one another, share our grief with one another, we find our voice with one another. We create a new culture—not one that was imposed on us, but one we build with our own voices and values.

  The first time I suspected a link between feeling our grief and finding our voice, I thought, No way. If you need to feel your grief to find your voice, then why do people who can’t take pain without passing it on have such loud voices? Then it dawned on me: There is a big difference between a loud voice and a strong voice. The loud voice of a man who has no inner life and is a stranger to his own grief is never a voice for justice; it’s a voice for self-interest, dominance, or vengeance. Strong male voices for freedom and dignity come from men like Gandhi, King, and Mandela who mastered their pain, gave up on vengeance, and preached forgiveness.

  Nelson Mandela was once asked if he was still angry at his captors after he was released from prison, and he answered yes, he was still angry for a time, but he realized that if he stayed angry, he would still be a prisoner—and he wanted to be free.

  When I think of the men who abuse women and girls, I don’t want to forgive them. It feels like that would be letting them get away with it. And I don’t want to let them get away with anything. I fully support taking all possible steps to protect the innocent, including capturing perpetrators and meting out justice. But justice does not mean vengeance.

  Desmond Tutu, who as chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission kept South Africa from exploding in vengeance in the post-apartheid era, offers this path around revenge: “When I am hurt, when I am in pain, when I am angry with someone for what they have done to me, I know the only way to end these feelings is to accept them.”

  Dorothy Day, the Catholic social activist who used nonviolent action to serve the poor and homeless, said the greatest challenge is “how to bring about a revolution of the heart.” The lesson I’ve learned from women in social movements all over the world is that to bring about a revolution of the heart, you have to let your heart break. Letting your heart break means sinking into the pain that’s underneath the anger. This is how I make sense of the scriptural instruction “Resist not evil.” I don’t take this to mean “Make way for evil in the world.” I think it means “Don’t resist the feeling; accept the suffering.” If you don’t accept the suffering, hurt can turn to hatred. This is what the life of Christ means to me. The high priests wanted to break him. They did everything they could to hurt him and humiliate him. And they failed. His ability to absorb pain was beyond their ability to inflict it, so he could answer their hatred with love.

  This, to me, is the model for all nonviolent social movements, religious based or not. The most radical approach to resistance is acceptance—and acceptance does not mean accepting the world as it is. It means accepting our pain as it is. If we refuse to accept our pain, then we’re just trying to make ourselves feel better—and when our hidden motive is to make ourselves feel better, there is no limit to the damage we can do in the name of justice. Great leaders never combine a call for justice with a cry for vengeance. Leaders who can master their pain have taken self-interest off their agenda, so their voice rings with moral power. They are no longer speaking their truth. They are speaking truth.

  The power of letting your heart break is not just something to admire in others. All of us have to let our hearts break; it’s the price of being present to someone who is suffering. More than a decade ago, I was in South Africa with a highly respected medical doctor from the US. We went to a township near Johannesburg to visit the home of a man who was dying of AIDS. Our host was clearly tired and in pain, but he was graciously telling us his story when the doctor stood up and left. He made excuses, but I knew why he left, and I’m afraid the dying man did, too. The doctor, who had mostly focused on research, couldn’t bear to see the tragic reality of this man’s life. And if you can’t bear the pain of your neighbor’s suffering, then in one way or another, you’re going to push that person to the margins.

  Every society says its outsiders are the problem. But the outsiders are not the problem; the urge to create outsiders is the problem. Overcoming that urge is our greatest challenge and our greatest promise. It will take courage and insight, because the people we push to the margins are the ones who trigger in us the feelings we’re afraid of.

  Isolating others to ease our fears is a deep urge inside all of us. How do we turn it around?

  We Are One

  If there is a point of unity across humanity, it’s that all of us have been outsiders at some time in our lives—even if only as kids on the playground. And none of us liked it. We tasted it just enough to be terrified by it. In spite of that experience, though, many of us don’t have any idea what it feels like to be wholly excluded.

  That’s why I was so taken by a passage in my mom’s favorite book, Life of the Beloved, by Henri Nouwen. Nouwen was a Catholic priest with the mind of a genius and the heart of a saint. He taught at Notre Dame, Harvard, and Yale but lived the last years of his life in a home for people with disabilities, where his ministry included helping a severely disabled member with his morning routine.

  In Life of the Beloved, Nouwen writes: “In my own community, with many severely handicapped men and women, the greatest source of suffering is not the handicap itself, but the accompanying feelings of being useless, worthless, unappreciated, and unloved. It is much easier to accept the inability to speak, walk, or feed oneself than it is to accept the inability to be of special value to another person. We human beings can suffer immense deprivations with great steadfastness, but when we sense that we no longer have anything to offer to anyone, we quickly lose our grip on life.”

  We all want to have something to offer. This is how we belong. It’s how we feel included. So if we want to include everyone, then we have to help everyone develop their talents and use their gifts for the good of the community. That’s what inclusion means—everyone is a contributor. And if they need help to become a contributor, then we should help them, because they are full members in a community that supports everyone.

  When Women Come Together

  Ever
y issue in this book is a door women must walk through, or a wall we must break through, to become full contributors—the right to decide whether and when to have children, to marry or not marry, to seek opportunity, attend a university, control our income, manage our time, pursue our goals, and advance in the workplace—any workplace. For the sake of women trapped in poverty and for women at every level of society who are excluded or intimidated by powerful men, women need to meet, talk, organize, and lead—so we can break down the walls and open the doors for everyone.

  I’ve been involved in women’s groups my whole life, though sometimes I didn’t recognize it until later. My all-girls high school was one large women’s group. In college and graduate school, I sought out the women I admired, especially when there were few of us. As an adult, I nurtured connections with women in every realm of life—professional, personal, spiritual. I have always had many important male friends, and they’ve been indispensable to my happiness. But it’s my women friends I come back to, especially in groups, when I’m facing my fears and need friends to help me through; they’ve walked beside me on every path of growth I took. I believe women’s groups are essential for each of us individually but also for society generally—because progress depends on inclusion, and inclusion begins with women.

  I’m not saying we should include women and girls as opposed to men and boys, but along with them and on behalf of them. This is not about bringing women in and leaving others out. It’s about bringing women in as a way to bring everyone in.

  Women must leave the margins and take our place—not above men or below them, but beside them—at the center of society, adding our voices and making the decisions we are qualified and entitled to make.

  There will be plenty of resistance, but lasting progress will not come from a power struggle; it will come from a moral appeal. As we bring gender bias out from behind its disguises, more and more men and women will see bias where they hadn’t suspected it and will stand against it. That’s how we change the norms that hide the biases we were blind to. We see them, and we end them.

  It’s not easy to transform a culture built on exclusion. It’s hard to cooperate with people who want to dominate. But we don’t have a choice. We can’t just make the insiders into the new outsiders and call it change. We have to include everyone, even those who want to exclude us. It’s the only way to build the world we want to live in. Others have used their power to push people out. We have to use our power to bring people in. We can’t just add one more warring faction. We have to end factions. It’s the only way we become whole.

  Epilogue

  I’ve been saying from the beginning of this book that equality can empower women, and empowered women will change the world. But in the end (and we are at the end), I have to confess that, for me, equality is a milestone; it is not the summit.

  The supreme goal for humanity is not equality but connection. People can be equal but still be isolated—not feeling the bonds that tie them together. Equality without connection misses the whole point. When people are connected, they feel woven into each other. You are part of me and I am part of you. I can’t be happy if you’re sad. I can’t win if you lose. If either of us suffers, we suffer together. This blurs the borders between human beings, and what flows through those porous borders is love.

  Love is what makes us one.

  It ends the urge to push the other out. That is the goal. The goal is not for everyone to be equal. The goal is for everyone to be connected. The goal is for everyone to belong. The goal is for everyone to be loved.

  Love is what lifts us up.

  When we come together, we rise. And in the world we’re building together, everyone rises. No one is exploited because they’re poor or excluded because they’re weak. There is no stigma and no shame and no mark of inferiority because you’re sick, or because you’re old, or because you’re not the “right” race, or because you’re the “wrong” religion, or because you’re a girl or a woman. There is no wrong race or religion or gender. We have shed our false boundaries. We can love without limits. We see ourselves in others. We see ourselves as others.

  That is the moment of lift.

  If I ever see myself as separate or superior, if I try to lift myself up by pulling others down, if I believe people are on a journey I have completed, doing personal work I have mastered, attempting tasks I’ve accomplished—if I have any feeling that I am above them instead of trying to rise with them, then I have isolated myself from them. And I have cut myself off from the moment of lift.

  I told you earlier about Anna, the woman whose family Jenn and I stayed with in Tanzania. She made such an emotional impression on me that I have her picture up on the wall in my home where I see it every day. I told you much of what bonded me to Anna, but I held something back so I could tell it to you now.

  As I trailed her through her day of chores, trying to be a help or at least not a hindrance, Anna and I were talking about our lives, and then she opened up, as women often do, and told me of a crisis in her marriage.

  When Anna and Sanare got married, Anna moved from her part of the country to Sanare’s region, which was drier and demanded more work to farm and find water. Anna’s walk to the well was twelve miles—each way. She adjusted to the extra work, but after the birth of their first child, she just couldn’t bear it anymore. She packed her bags, gathered their child, and sat on their doorstep waiting. When Sanare returned from the fields, he found Anna ready to leave. She told him she was going back to her father’s house to live because life was too hard in his homeland. Sanare was heartbroken and asked what he could do to make her stay. “Go fetch the water,” Anna said, “so I can nurse our son.” So Sanare broke Maasai tradition and walked to the well to get water. Later, he bought a bicycle and biked the distance to the well. The other men mocked him for doing women’s work. They said he was bewitched by his wife. But Sanare was tough. He didn’t budge. He knew his new chore would make his son healthier and make his wife happier, and that was enough for him.

  After a time, some of the other men decided to join Sanare, and when they soon got tired of biking twenty-four miles to fetch water, they brought the community together to build catchment areas to collect rainwater near the village. As I listened to Anna’s story, my heart filled with love for the courage it took for her to stand up to the traditions of her society, and for Sanare to do the same. She took a stand she knew would either destroy her marriage or deepen it, and I felt an inexpressible bond with her. We were in communion, holding our own impromptu women’s group for two. And it occurred to me in a moment of private embarrassment that the rich American lady who was here to help had some gender equity issues of her own she needed to face, had a culture of her own she needed to change. This was not me helping Anna; it was me listening to Anna, and Anna inspiring me. It was two women from different worlds, meeting on the margins, and summoning a moment of lift.

  Acknowledgments

  When I first began working on this book, I knew I wanted to share the stories of the women I’ve met and what I’ve learned from them. I didn’t realize how much more I would learn and grow from the process of writing the book. My debt and gratitude are boundless.

  Charlotte Guyman, Mary Lehman, Emmy Neilson, and Killian Noe, you define friendship for me. Thank you for encouraging me to write this book, for reading and commenting on drafts, and for teaching me the power of women’s support and friendship.

  To the women in my spiritual group, thank you for nurturing my spirituality and helping me deepen my faith. My debt to you all is infinite.

  To my many teachers around the world, especially the women (and men) who welcomed me into their homes and communities, told me of their dreams, and taught me about their lives—thank you from the bottom of my heart. I’m grateful above all to Anna and Sanare, Chrissy and Gawanani, and their children who not only invited me and my children into their homes, but let us stay several nights. No visits have ever taught me more.

  There ar
e a number of women and men I’ve been lucky enough to meet in my life who have taught me truths that will last a lifetime—my teachers at Ursuline Academy, especially Susan Bauer and Monica Cochran; my teachers in faith and action, especially Fr. Richard Rohr and Sister Sudha Varghese; and my mentors and role models in creating change in the world, especially Hans Rosling, Bill Foege, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, Paul Farmer, Molly Melching, Patty Stonesifer, and Tom Tierney. There is no end to what I owe them.

  There is no chance I would ever have been able to do any of this work without the amazing support of caregivers who over the years did more for my family than I can say, helping care for my children and ease my worries when I was at the foundation, on the road and away from home. There is no way to fully express my gratitude.

  Sue Desmond-Hellmann, Mark Suzman, Josh Lozman, Gary Darmstadt, and Larry Cohen have been remarkable colleagues in so many ways. I’m grateful for all they’ve done and thank them for reading drafts of the book and offering their insights.

  I want to thank Leslie Koch for shepherding this project from its inception; George Gavrilis and Ellie Schaack for their research and assistance; and Julie Tate for fact-checking the manuscript.

  My irreplaceable friend and colleague John Sage convinced me that writing this book was a good idea, that I could find the time, and that others might want to hear the lessons I’ve learned from the women and men I’ve met in my work. My gratitude for John’s vision and advice is endless.

  Warren Buffett has been a generous friend in every imaginable way, believing so strongly in women and offering constant encouragement to me as I made the decision to become a public advocate. He is the mentor of a lifetime, and I can never thank him enough.

  I’m indebted to my entire team at Pivotal Ventures, especially Haven Ley, Ray Maas, Catherine St-Laurent, Amy Rainey, Courtney Wade, and Windy Wilkins for reading the book and helping me improve it—and Clare Krupin, who traveled with me to so many places and helped me capture the stories of the women we met.