Expanding the World Through Women’s Stories: Elizabeth Lesser on Your Messy Brilliance® Show

I’m thrilled to bring you the latest episode of Your Messy Brilliance® Show with Elizabeth Lesser, who is one of the most powerful voices in spirituality and human development today. 

Elizabeth is a passionate teacher of authentic personhood; her books and legacy are all about helping people tap into their essential self. If you’re familiar with her name, you’ll also know Elizabeth is the co-founder of the Omega Institute, a wellness and spirituality center in Rhinebeck, New York, that is recognized internationally for its workshops and conferences in health, wellness, spirituality, creativity, and social change. 

She’s an author of several bestselling books, including Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow and Marrow: Love, Loss & What Matters Most, and her newest book Cassandra Speaks: When Women are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes—which we discuss in depth in this conversation.

Elizabeth openly shares her own journey toward claiming all parts of herself, after leaving huge chunks of her being behind in order to function in a male-dominated world. She wrote Cassandra Speaks during the rise of the #MeToo movement, which also shed light on the recurring story of how women are not believed but are shamed for their truths. In this conversation, we talk about the historical and current trend of being gaslit, and also of gaslighting ourselves. “[Women] have been trained not to trust or believe ourselves,” says Elizabeth.

While Elizabeth believes that women’s impostor syndrome comes from being told that our stories don’t matter—or that our stories are the cause of all bad things—we can learn to reclaim our truth and nurture ourselves and one another.

“It doesn’t matter to me if our caring chip comes from nature or nurture—I want men and women to respect that part of humanity so much that it becomes the most heroic things humans can do, to care for each other and care for the Earth,” she offers. 

I hope you’ll love this conversation as much as I did—and that it will inspire you to begin weaving the new stories the world is waiting for.

You can find Elizabeth’s book, Cassandra Speaks, here.

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Time Stamps: 

2:32 The part of Elizabeth’s story that led her to write her latest book and ask the question: How do we change what power even means? 

5:10 Who is the mythical Greek protagonist Cassandra—and why is her story relevant to women today?

9:50 How women’s knowledge and wisdom has been vilified through the ages, and why it’s imperative to take note of it today

12:00 Elizabeth’s stirring example of the power of women telling brave new endings to our stories

13:30 “We’ve been gaslit from the beginning of time”—and how we can take comfort in the historical sisterhood of women who have not been believed

15:40 How meditation can help women build the kind of internal dignity that doesn’t need to prove itself to the external world

17:50 What it means to reclaim our “dark” stories and the shadow work of cleaning up our own bullshit

20:30: How instinct to “tend and befriend” is strong in women, but the “inner patriarch” can still wreak havoc in our lives and relationships

23:50 There’s no more time for blame, because we have a world to save!

26:12 Oprah’s advice to Elizabeth: “Always bring yourself into the story”

29:00 Why Eve is the Bible’s first grown-up, yet has always been cast as “wrong”—a story that has impacted all women

32:00 How we’ve mixed up “nice” and “kind”—and why women must say our strong truth with a strong backbone and kind heart 

33:33 Why women’s stories matter so much—especially when it comes to changing how we define power and leadership in these chaotic times

35:54 Why “we need to dignify what women know in our bones”

41:18 How we can redefine what it means to be powerful so men and women’s traits are equally respected