Episode 10 - Stephanie: Part 2

Hello, and welcome to the Quiet Women Podcast. I'm your host, Stephanie Sumner. On this tenth episode, I thought I'd reflect a bit on the journey this podcast has taken me. It's been almost a year since I started down this path. Six months of quiet women being available for download, and seven incredible quiet women who have stepped forward and shared themselves with me and with you. Let me first say how much I've enjoyed doing this podcast. I spoke in the first episode about being jealous of women with hobbies and passions outside of their family or their job because that was me. Sure, I love to travel, but I don't do it enough to consider it a hobby. When asked on any get to know you questionnaire, I'd write down cooking and reading. Two of the most generic hobbies there are. And I don't even read that much anymore because it puts me to sleep. Hopefully, audiobooks count just the same. Anyway, this podcast is now my hobby. It is something I'm passionate about. I love assisting other women find value in a piece of themselves that they thought was worthless. And then seeing how it resonates with so many others. I feel like I've finally discovered my spiritual gift and am manifesting it through this podcast. Okay, let me bring it back down to earth. Having a hobby is obviously a big deal to me. It gives me something else to talk about besides my kids and my job. Gives me another layer to my identity. It makes me feel more interesting and more confident. Let me speak out that confidence piece for a minute. Putting myself out there as I did in the first episode wasn't easy. I put my imperfections on display for any friend, acquaintance, or stranger to judge me by. As someone who is more comfortable keeping to myself behind the scenes, I was legit scared. What if people don't like what I'm doing? What if people think I'm stupid? What if they think I'm out of my element? What if people think I'm a fraud? All of these doubts were going through my head. As strong as I was trying to be by leaning into all of my Brene Brown vulnerability, I still craved validation. With three episodes under my belt, I finally launched the Quiet Women podcast on October 1st, 2020. The first people I shared it with were my immediate family, my husband and my two kids. They knew I was working on it. I had had the microphone set up in my office and alerted everyone when I was recording to keep things as quiet as possible. Neil, put the dogs in the laundry room. I'm gonna be recording. Even so, I was still nervous about sharing it with them. As it turns out, they were as excited for me to launch this as I was. And my kids instantly shared the link with their friends before they even listened to it themselves. The first comment I received was about 30 minutes later from my 20-year-old son saying how proud he was of me after he had listened to my episode. I started crying. He recognized my vulnerability and became my cheerleader. In that instant, I became proud of myself. It was during this launch period that I realized I was dealing with three kinds of vulnerability. The first was with the people I was closest to. Those who I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt loved me for exactly who I am, my family and my very closest friends. I purposely didn't share the idea of this podcast with many people. I think it was my way to keep the bar and the pressure on myself low. You know, what if I couldn't do it? Or I was just really bad at it. I was trying to keep judgment at a minimum. The second kind of vulnerability I felt was with the general public. Specifically all those people in the world that I didn't know. Strangers. What would they think about little old me? Would they even care? Even though this was the largest group by far, it turned out to be the one I cared the least about. I figured if people found my podcast, only the ones who it was truly for would be the ones to listen. Plus, if I didn't know them, their opinion of me didn't matter so much. I discovered the opinion that mattered the most to me was that group of everyone I know. Every person in my social network that spann my childhood schoolmates to everyone in my professional life. For some reason, these people's opinions of me mattered the most. I was back to being the insecure young girl who was afraid to raise her hand in class for fear of getting the answer wrong and being laughed at by all the cool kids. That's why it took me a couple weeks to muster up the courage to announce my project on Facebook and Instagram. But you know what? They didn't laugh. In fact, a lot of them applauded my efforts. Each like I received on that post raised my confidence level a notch. I know we're not supposed to rely on the number of likes we received as validation of our self-worth. But I'm being honest here. Those likes really helped me. The cool kids were seeing me. And saying this whole podcast thing was pretty cool too. And I got more than just likes. I got numerous messages from people I hadn't heard from in years. A handful of people asked my advice for starting their own podcasts. Suddenly I was an expert on a subject I had only known for a few months. And I got fan mail. Yes, fan mail from people who had discovered Quiet Women and were compelled to reach out and tell me how much it resonated with them and how glad they were to have found it. That was honestly a bit mind-boggling. I mean, I'm just me. Nothing special. Just Stephanie. Just like everyone else. But that's the whole premise of this Quiet Women idea. That idea that everyone is special and interesting and has a story worth telling and worth listening to. Even me. Now, I don't want to take the spotlight away from the women who have agreed to join me on this podcast. Really, they are the stars and the reason I am doing this. But there's still a piece of me revealed in each episode. And I'll admit that when I'm editing these things, I consider how my own words are going to be received. My fear of judgment over the years has made me a perfectionist, and if given the chance, I will finesse something over and over to make it better. But because perfection doesn't exist, I am never satisfied with my own work. So one of the commitments I made to myself when starting this podcast was to embrace my own imperfection. That has been life-changing for me. That and the freeing feeling of putting my authentic self on display and discovering acceptance. This Quiet Women podcast has been dare I say therapeutic? Really? It's been like free therapy that I wish I hadn't waited so long to do. I have an entirely new sense of confidence in myself. I'm unafraid to speak my mind. I am who I am. Take me or leave me. As hard as it was to take that first step, I have to say that I am now at one of the happiest points in my life. I'll have to check in with my guests to see what impacts being a part of this podcast has had on them. Maybe that'll be a future episode. Anyway, back to me. When I started this podcast, it was in the thick of COVID and I was between jobs. I had a lot of time on my hands and was grateful to have this to occupy some of it between consulting projects. I committed to doing one episode a month. That was a comfortable cadence. It gave my guests long enough time to get comfortable with the idea, and me enough time to process and edit the interview. I'm no editor, so that part probably takes me longer than it should. I'm now a few months into a new full-time job, one that I love. The thing is, it doesn't leave me with the kind of free time I once had to devote to this podcast. You'd think finding guests would be easy. I mean, there are definitely a lot of quiet women out there, but speaking about ourselves is just not in our nature. So it's been difficult for me to identify those stories from even my own friends. Please, please, please, if you're listening, I'm asking for your help in finding guests. The other thing I've noticed is that my personal network, which has been the source of my guests thus far, is embarrassingly white. I can't tell you how this pains me. I'm on our diversity and inclusion committee at work, and on my church's social justice committee. Representation is important to me. And right now, on this podcast, I'm failing. So I need help with that too. Women of all races and backgrounds, you all deserve to be heard. That's the big reason I'm hitting pause and making this tenth episode the culmination of season one. I need to spend some time identifying guests and their stories and lining things up for season two. If you follow the Quiet Women Podcast on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, you'll be notified of the relaunch. Or sign up on our website, QuietWomenPodcast.com, and I'll notify you by email. Susan, you recently wrote me and said, please never stop. I can't wait for more episodes. They're coming, Susan. They're coming. And if you are a quiet woman with a story to share, or would like to nominate someone to be a guest on this podcast, please reach out to me at QuietWomenPodcast at gmail.com. Until next time, remember, your silence doesn't define you. Your unique and complex life is what has made you into the amazing person you are today. I see you. We all see you. And we are here for you, and we cheer for you.