Episode #4 - Dr. Cindi Love on Optimism, Vibrations & Spiritual Harmony
Derek Horn:
Welcome back to In These Uncertain Times, a podcast about creating and connecting in the midst of uncertainty. I’m your host, Derek Horn.
This week I had the opportunity to speak with someone I consider to be an important figure in my life in both a professional and spiritual context. Over the past several years, I’ve had the privilege of working with Dr. Cindi Love in a volunteer capacity with Out for Undergrad, a non-profit dedicated to helping LGBTQ+ undergraduate students reach their full potential.
Each year, we organize four conferences for students entering the Engineering, Marketing, Tech, and Business sectors and offer programming about how students can embrace their authentic identities in their careers. Historically, O4U Conferences have been held in person in major cities. Funds from our sponsors, who represent the leaders in their respective industries, allow us to cover the costs of travel and lodging to all admitted students, which was a major way of opening opportunity to thousands of students that wouldn’t otherwise access it. In 2020, we’ve had to reconsider our conference model to adapt to the COVID era, and in the process, we’ve unlocked some ways of broadening and deepening our impact as an organization.
Cindi is no stranger to uncertainty, which is well-reflected through her life’s work.
Dr. Cindi Love is the Executive Director of Out for Undergrad (O4U). In recognition of her human rights work, Dr. Love has been the invited guest of two US Presidents and she was a member of the Working Advisory Group to the US Secretary of State on Religion & Foreign Policy from 2013-2018.
She currently serves on the American College Health Association Board. Dr. Love was plenary speaker at the final session of the United Nations UUO Compass Coalition for LGBT Human Rights. Between 1981-1993, Dr. Love was the founder and/or CEO/Chair of eight tech related firms and developer of strategic alliances with Apple, Motorola and the TORO Company. One of her firms was the largest Apple Education Sales Agency in the United States. Her doctorate was completed at Texas Tech with a research emphasis in due process for underrepresented students. She is a prolific writer, having written many articles and several books.
We have a wide ranging conversation about our work with Out for Undergrad, why she’s hopeful about the rising generations, the forces of religion and self-esteem and how they coalesce to allow the rise strongman leaders, how to begin the process of mending our political divide, and how folks can embrace spiritual harmony for their own lives.
I’ll be candid, I’m wrought with anxiety about how the next weeks will play out. While it’s impossible for one person to answer for everything, my conversation with Cindi helped give me some perspective and the motivation to start to build a personal playbook for the next chapter of our society, regardless of the outcome of the election.
I hope it will do the same for you.
Derek Horn
Hi, Cindi, thank you for joining me today. How are you doing?
Cindi Love
I'm fabulous. How are you, Derek?
Derek Horn
I'm doing well. So for our listeners to get started, could you please introduce yourself in your own words?
Cindi Love
I’ve thought about this because people usually introduce themselves as what they do, but I'm going to introduce myself a little more as a human being instead of a human doing.
Derek Horn
I love that.
Cindi Love
I've lived a long time, so that's a lot of doing. But I'm Cindi Love, really close friends call me Dr. Feelgood and the wife of Sue for 40 years, which is my great joy, the mom of Joshua and Hannah, my adult children, and grandmother of Sophie who's four months old.
I've had a remarkable career, someone did my analysis on Wikipedia and actually divided my life into four sections. But again, that's because I'm 65. So there's been a lot of living there. But I started my life as an as an educator, faculty member at a university public school, speech, pathologists diagnostician started, eight companies, sold them the last one to a publicly traded company that afforded me the opportunity to become a human rights activist which I have been now since 1990. And that has also been one of the great joys of my life, is to be engaged in that work both in the US and outside the US, particularly in Africa, around advocacy for LGBTQ+ people and people living and affected by HIV and AIDS. That's me.
Derek Horn
Well, that's a remarkable life you're living and obviously with a career that spans things, from the entrepreneurship, to the corporate leadership, to the education to the nonprofit world, where you are now, what do you think have been the defining themes of your career?
Cindi Love
I really believe that my early training as speech pathologists and diagnostician working with people with head injuries coming out of the Vietnam War, working with children in a major rehabilitation hospital Shriners Hospital, I learned to listen to what is not said, because in many cases, my patients and clients did not have recoverable speech. And I discovered that thematically in my life, most every opportunity that has come to me either to be successful as we describe in a capitalist society, you know, to make enough money to do well for your family and get to go to college, but also to do good in my life, in the lives of other people.
Most of that has come to me because I had that early experience of listening deeply to what is not said, I'm an intuitively trying to understand what another person needed, and how to help them have voice and agency when they couldn't speak. And it's really interesting that that experience with people with head injuries translated into doing much of the same work in human rights advocacy with people who were deeply closeted at risk of death or imprisonment, people who were denied health care, clean water housing, because they had HIV and AIDS. I was very involved in pushing back through the United Nations and the US Department of State on the kill the gays bill in Uganda. And when I think back on it, thematically, I would have never gotten to any of that work. But for my ability to listen, translate, trying to help people find voice in agency because you can't give that to people, they have to have it for themselves. But you can sometimes clear out the walls and barriers.
Derek Horn
One of the reasons why I created this podcast is in response to the ways that we've had to change our ways of life because of COVID. But at its heart, it really is about creating and connecting in the midst of uncertainty, knowing that so much of this year has been framed as quote unquote, uncertain times. Do you think that there's ever been a anything about the pre-COVID era that preceded this time that was "certain" but decidedly isn't now?
Cindi Love
You know, the only thing that certain in the world to me is like that old expression, love and taxes or death and taxes, but I always add love to them. You know, if you're the kind of person who can give and receive love, then you'll have love in your life. That's just the the truth. And so those are the only things that I think we're certain. Having been a conspicuous capitalist, consumer and entrepreneur for much of my life, I used to think it was raised with these values, if you work really hard, and you have a great idea, and you surround yourself with the right people, then you create a successful company, or you can lead a successful team, you'll make money, I have to say, for the most part in my life, that was true.
I don't know that it was certain. But it's true. I think everything that we thought was certain is getting turned upside down, inside out, and we are getting the opportunity to decide, do we really want to be some of those things we were before. And sit, for example, real estate, I'm constantly reading about how things are changing in terms of the asset base of company. So think about companies that were all bricks and mortar and had these huge facilities in New York City right on the corner of the most prestigious Street. And now nobody actually going inside those buildings. And I had this fantasy one day, what if they just converted all of those to urban farms, I'm fascinated by that new concept. So you could feed the entire city with the interior of these facilities and knock the ones down, that aren't functional and create green space again, so then we regain our carbon? What if that were one of the really positive outcomes of this mess?
So I would only challenge us that the uncertainty we're feeling today. It'd be sort of a refiners fire in our lives to figure out what really matters to us. You know, do we want to save the planet? Are we concerned about climate change? Is it really good for people, for them to work 13, 14 hours a day inside a concrete box?
Derek Horn
Right, right. It's interesting, you bring up climate change, because I know that I've heard some comparisons to the way that we've kind of had a stop in our tracks, and readjust our way of doing things for COVID might reflect how we need to change some of our behaviors to meet the urge to stop the worst effects of climate change. I think that definitely will be an interesting thing to play out over the coming years and decades.
Cindi Love
Well, and I think this generation, your generation, the generation to come, you know, you're not obsessed, like we were with the number of square feet that could control as either a corporation or even as a homeowner, you know that how World War Two fascination with I've got to have the home and the picket fence and the garage. You're not twisted up in that. So maybe we have a lot more hope as uncertainty.
Derek Horn
So transitioning to your work, I guess our work, with Out for Undergrad. As an organization until 2020, has revolved around in person conferences for LGBTQ students. So as executive director of O4U, what kinds of decisions did you face when it became clear that COVID was going to drastically change our way of life this year?
Cindi Love
Well, the biggest decision was to not lose opportunity for students. We have multiple stakeholder groups, we have students, sponsors, volunteer organizers, mentors, but we didn't want students because many, many of our students are underrepresented. They represent already LGBTQ+ identities, but then they also represent other diverse demographics, first generation underrepresented populations. They would be the most likely to be harmed by a reduction in recruiting a reduction in job offers internships, so that was the first thing don't lose that opportunity for them.
The second was to convict our sponsors that whatever date they felt like they were in, which was chaos, in their talent acquisition pipeline, that it was still critically important to invest in our population of students. So we didn't have the financial ability to do that. After that what everybody kind of focused on was the fact that we had to go digital, but was the minor chord in the whole orchestra. For who does that it was making sure sponsors stayed vested. And then it was now how do we deliver. And our teams did the most extraordinary job of first thinking about how students will engage. And we had this theme going throughout the whole thing, we have to make sure they still have fun, it has to be intense, because over you is very intense.
And you'll have to be fun. If it's not that it's not O4U. And I think the team's really, really did that. I mean, I had a blast as, usually, I would just like be dropping into sessions, then moving to another session and watching them, you know, so I got a taste of everything. And instead, I found myself in some of the sessions, and I was having so much fun. I was like, I didn't want to go to the next session. It was just very cool.
Derek Horn
Yeah, I definitely think that while I definitely miss the the in-person contact and the the connections you can make there, I think the programming itself, it felt very polished and very produced in a way that was very clean and digestible. And I hope, I hope students thought the same as well.
Cindi Love
I think so. I mean, you'll never replace two to four young people getting to stay in a hotel room together in New York. So right, I'm sorry, that's an experience. When it comes, you'll never replace all the organizers crowding in the back room behind the thing on the floor and the stage and eating their lunches, you know, on their laps and leaning on each other and laughing and telling jokes and talking about their boyfriends or whoever they're there with at this particular time. But, but as close as you could get to that intimacy, I think we achieved.
Derek Horn
So for those who don't know, normally we we will use our sponsor funds to fly out students for the weekend and put them up in hotels, which is really great, because it does allow some students that haven't had those opportunities before, to not only experience big cities for the first time, but for many of them, it's the first time connecting with other LGBTQ students. So that really is a special part of what we do that unfortunately, the COVID era hasn't allowed us.
But when it became clear that we weren't going to be able to convene in person, what do you think were the priority needs for the students in a virtual setting? I know you said that this sense of having fun is top of mind, but was there anything else? And do you think we met those goals?
Cindi Love
Yes, one of the things we had to worry about was our students usually come to us from their university campus, they fly into us from there. So students who aren't out or who are selectively out, which is about 41% of the population overall had that protection, they were flying from school, they weren't leaving their homes where there might be who they're not out to. So one of the things we had to figure out was all these ways for students to come on and be with us, that wouldn't out them to their families. And that was really interesting, because we had to have multiple channels going at the same time.
So we established a Slack channel for all the students. So you know, a student can be sitting on their phone doing the normal parents see them do all the time. But they're actually having this fantastic interaction with all these other young people. And then, of course, they could also join with with full video just like we are they could join with live stream, they could join text chat only just came up with all these options. And then we had them identify ahead of time if they needed privacy. So then we could figure out how to coach our mentors to not accidentally, you know, call out their name or identify them if they were in that privacy setting.
I think that the second thing is mental health issues. We're very aware that students are really stressed out. And understandably so we are all stressed out. And so we provided throughout the full weekend. Dr. Sara Rabinovich was our resident mental health professional. She's a licensed clinical psychologist and just fabulous individual member of the LGBTQ community herself. And so she started off most of the conferences with sort of a meditation mindfulness session in the morning, and then just told students gave them her cell phone number and her email and said, Hey, if you're struggling at any moment, are you feeling a little stressed out or conflicted or anxious or whatever, just give me a call. And so we did that in one of our conferences. We even had a second person, one of our board members, Dr. Thomas Vance. So we had two people on duty. I thought that was super important to acknowledge that not only is it hard to maintain your sense of well being and the circumstances, but it's absolutely okay to ask for support, that's a message we wanted to send.
The next thing is we adjusted the scheduling, O4U conferences are usually very intense. So like, seven in the morning, and you go to 11 at night, and you can barely breathe in between. So we broke that up, we put big spaces in the scheduling. So people could take breaks, snacks, take a walk around the street. And then we intersperse that with a lot of physical activity, that diva dance, we had a cooking show, we actually had a drag show and all these different things that people could just breathe, stop, breathe, do this, then go back and think about do I really want to be a consultant, you know, for the rest of my life or whatever. So those were some of the modifications that that we made.
Derek Horn
So now that we have all four conferences under our belt in this virtual setting, is there anything that you think that we should adopt for the long haul once we've resumed, hopefully in person conferences?
Cindi Love
I hope we'll always have a hybrid part of our conferences now. So I hybrid I mean, you've got a certain number of people physically assembled in a place. In that magical of you sauce of getting to be together and do that. But there are many people around the world who we want to serve, who actually may not be able to access us, we may still have restrictions from many countries, we may still have students who couldn't return to their home campus, because so many other campuses are not allowing site based instruction. Therefore, they're still at home, and they can't tell their parents they want to fly off and go to New York City. I think that population is going to be much larger than we've ever had before.
So with a hybrid experience, imagine this with me for a moment, instead of 350 people gathering in a room in New York City, because maybe our host facility can't even have that many people in a room. And maybe we gather 75 people. And then we could gather 500 for a hybrid perspective. Because we've always been limited by space, we can only see so many people. But I don't know, because we don't know what's going to happen. Why not plan for hybrid, then if we all get to be together in a great big room? Yay. If we don't, we don't keep viewing that as deficit. Saying like, psychologically, it becomes the way we all get to be together. And then if we get to be physically in the same space, that becomes like the icing on the cake. I've even thought, what if in 2021, we still couldn't do it, and we did hybrid for all of our conferences. But then we plan this massive O4U reunion, as soon as the world opens up. And we invite all 5000 alums and all 1000 students that year to a place and so maybe 1000 people show up. But can you imagine the celebration of all those people post COVID?
Derek Horn
That would be incredible. Yeah, I think that I think people are itching for that type of celebration in general. And I think by that time, hopefully we're out of the woods of this. I think that that would be definitely very magical. Yeah.
Cindi Love
Well, as you know, I live on South Padre Island, so we could just take over the whole island.
Derek Horn
That would be pretty great. Is there anything that you've learned about yourself this year that you want to embrace in the post COVID world?
Cindi Love
Well, yes. So I am a perennial optimist. I know you know that about me, as I refuse to be miserable. And it may not be my best strengths, but it's something I developed over a really long period of time. And so something I learned about myself sort of midpoint in COVID was that actually I felt depressed. I didn't realize that I had not created a coping mechanism for depression, other than to think positively and get busy. Those were my two coping mechanisms. Okay? Well, when you're stuck inside the house, I mean, you can only clean it so many times, you can only remodel it so many times. I'm a copious reader. Anyway, you can only read so many books. I'm not so much into television, but I discovered you can only watch so much television.
And out of that awareness, I was like, I'm looking for something constantly to do. So I feel better like to raise my energy. And I have a mindfulness practice. And that's always worked for me just get up every day, do my mindfulness set my tone for the day. But right in the middle of it, I'm just like, I actually feel depressed about this. I'm worried about my family. I'm worried about my co workers. I'm worried about our students, our sponsors, like there was just this little thing, little track running underneath.
I know it sounds like really simplistic thinking, but it's like, I don't want anyone to get sick, I don't want anyone to die. And when the first person I knew, was hospitalized, I had this sort of heart stop, you know, like, wow, and then when that grew, and then the first person died. Not everyone knows, but one of our O4U long-time volunteers lost his dad, in all of it. I was actually aware of that, you know, behind the scenes. I just had to sit down one day and just cry. I decided I'm going to spend my morning crying. And there's this old saying that it's actually from the indigenous people that tears our prayers. So like, whether you believe in, in prayers or higher being or whatever. That was a very cleansing process for me, because I realized I hadn't let myself actually just feel sad. And then I was mad, was like, mad.
And I was particularly angry at our country for not responding well. It was the same anger I had during the AIDS pandemic, in the early days when my brother died of AIDS in 1988. So there was no medicine for him. And nobody cared. If he died. Back then it was just like, he's this gay guy. So what? And I was so angry about that back then. And I discovered in the middle of this pandemic, I was having a moment. Like, I was really sad, then I was really mad. And it was kind of the same thing. And then I thought, Okay, what can I do about any of this? Because I also knew, I had all kinds of young people watching me who needed to feel not only safe, but like there was a future there is hope. There's a reason to get up today. There's something good that we can tap into.
And the O4U community is so incredibly positive. Anyway, that made that easier, but I had I honestly, Derek, I don't remember since my 20s, having a moment where I just had this I am genuinely depressed. I got through it, that I, I really had to sit down with my family and just say, you know, I need to talk this out. And it was weird for them. They were like, we usually talk stuff out with you. And I was like, I know, but we have to reverse roles a little bit. And once I said out loud that I was scared. Once I set out there was mad then that didn't have power. You know, it's like Mary Oliver says, In the thumb of fear lifts were most alive. This is one of those those moments. So that's something I discovered about myself. Once I got through that, I feel pretty much the same. I did discover I didn't have any patience with our government before for it's your responsibility. Now that's like on steroids. Yeah. That you and I share that thought.
Derek Horn
And, yeah, well, thank you for sharing that vulnerability with us. I think that that's something that resonates with me as well. I think that there can be the stream of almost toxic positivity, that can strem through our culture, that almost admonishes people for acknowledging, when they're feeling down or depressed. I've definitely had moments of that myself, like, me and my partner, we've maintained our jobs. In fact, I got promoted at the beginning of this, which was a very strange thing to go through, we've been healthy, our families have been healthy, we've had we have so much to be grateful for. But at the same time, it's like that there are moments where it just sucks like these circumstances are terrible, and it's our way of life, all that stuff. So I think that it is important to name, acknowledge, and process those emotions, otherwise, it's just not healthy at all. ‘
And I think one of the other things as well, that I've really been grappling with, throughout all of this is, and I think this is another result of our very poor leadership on a national level is, we haven't had a collective moment of grieving, or even collective moment of action to say, hey, our leaders might not be doing all that they can right now. It's on us, his citizens, his neighbors, as friends and family to take this in our own hands and try and in take care of this ourselves. It just it really, it really is just such a travesty, how even the simplest things like wearing a mask is then turned into a weapon in the culture war.
Obviously, we're not through it right now. But that's one of the things I'm I'm really interested in seeing how this is written about in the history books is this this moment of being surrounded by so much death, and there's just like so many people that are almost denying it or downplaying it for whatever reasons that suit their agenda. It can be very overwhelming sometimes to process that in real time.
Cindi Love
It is, I think, I would share with you, you know, I grew up as you know, a fundamentalist evangelical Christian in a third most conservative city in America. And so it's like a cult really. And so I actually understand in a very intimate way, the way the brain gets manipulated within that sort of environment to believe particular things. But that whole context, when you're raised in that context, you know, your self esteem is very poor. If you think about the hymns that you sing, you know, a wretch like me, a worm like me, all these, these things that are just forced into you in that environment. And I don't want to say that everything about it's bad that we're also wonderful things about that for me. But what I evolved out of was this understanding that actually, self hatred and fear and fear is the basis of all anger, okay, so if you couple those together, then we have half of our US population right now. Caught in the grip of their own self, hatred, feelings of poor self worth, which that type of religious experience props up, and helps you believe that you are powerful, you belong to something, it I mean, it raises it to the whole level of you know, you're made whole and worthy by a higher being.
And whether you believe any of that or don't believe any of it, you simply need only to look at statistics around depression and suicide with people who are within those communities. That in the absence of breaking all the way out of that community, which means you lose your family, sometimes you lose your job, you lose your affiliation, your feeling a power, shorter breaking out of it, you're sort of stuck in it. When a charismatic leader comes along, whether that our seated president or the perpetrator of the Holocaust, those leaders have a huge opportunity to kind of sweep people up into something that helps them feel powerful and safe. And if you add economic crisis to it, as was the time in World War Two, also word one, people are more vulnerable.
As you know, I still believe that in the end, we have to be able to reach out to one another across that enormous divide. We have to be able to have individuals who can still remain in relationship in spite of all of that crap, we have to have institutions that can manage to navigate it. If we don't, then we just remain a broken vessel, we recover. For me, the one of the hardest things have covered has been maintaining my friendships, relationships with my family of people who are polar opposites of me in terms of how I feel about virtually everything, and a lot of us are going to have to be able to do that. Because whatever happens in the next month or two, we have to find a way to heal. If we can't, he'll find a way to respect one another. Again, we can't fix the climate. We can't fix the economy.
Derek Horn
Yeah, that's something I have struggled with for the past four or five years. But obviously this this past few months have just come to a major head is how do you, especially as an LGBTQ person, and with so many friends and loved ones that are in groups that are targeted by this administration, it really can be difficult to even want to enter that conversation or enter or even offer that forgiveness or understanding of why they arrived at that in the first place. I mean, knowing that we can't give passes to like outright racism or homophobia, transphobia, all the forms of bigotry. How do you think that we can look to start to mend some of those political differences? And hopefully build a better world?
Cindi Love
Right, well, I would start with that. I think it's a lot harder for people who aren't old like I am. Just because we've already lived through these terrible breaking apart periods in the United States during the Civil War, during the Vietnam, or, gosh, even during the Gulf War. We've already literally seeing neighbor pitted against neighbor whole communities pitted against other communities, having lived through the Stonewall era myself, the AIDS pandemic, having been in the closet half of my life, because you couldn't legally marry you couldn't even hold hands on the street where I lived. I mean, they put people in jail, sometimes they do worse things to them where I grew up.But having lived through all that ups, I think it does sort of give context to you can move from one place that seems absolutely horrible, to a better place. Right?
Think about how my brother was treated even in 1988. He was like a piece of trash to our church. It wouldn't allow him in the door. Our minister wouldn't bury him. Doctors wouldn't treat him. Okay. So we had to survive all of that, and then find a way to continue to advocate for changes in policy and in health care. And in research, you know, Ronald Reagan wouldn't say the word gay. So when you think about that, I hope it gives some hope to people who are now going to go through their own stuff, right? Of how do you navigate the distance? One thing I do I separate, a corrupt leader, from the people following the corrupt leader. Because I remember, I grew up in the south, okay. I remember when racism was alive and well, and people were still getting hung up, whether we can accept it or not. Progress had to be made between people have deep differences. For us to get to where we are now. There was violence, were terrible things to get there, but we got there.
I don't know how many people will die in COVID. But it's going to be enough. And it's going to impact particular populations so deeply. That I think you're going to see this rising up of people who've never been active. Look at what's happening with voting. Rising up saying I will not live in a country that treats other human beings in such an abysmal, harmful way. And so that gives me hope. Because we give voice to something there's no agency to have. So I think that's going to happen. I personally, I have such huge help, because I work with 1000 undergraduates every year who are so passionate.
I just finished watching a series of four projects to create clean water around the world, by young people, early 20s. Totally entrepreneurial, just fixing a problem. And you watch that and you think, okay, even if the leader, so again, separating the leader from the masses, Peter is totally corrupt, and has convinced millions of people to do horrible things, right? If we could come away from the Holocaust, if we could come into Truth and Reconciliation commissions in South Africa, and in Canada, around indigenous people, if indigenous people could find a way to actually forgive and move forward with the treatment they had, which I have seen firsthand, in both Canada and South Africa. If mothers in Colombia can forgive the young man who murdered their families, which they have, then it gives me hope that we will find our way through this. It is not going to be easy. It's going to be difficult. But I believe in that, because I've seen it. I've seen it throughout all the generations of my lifetime. And I've now seen it in my work in human rights.
I actually see it at all for you every day, somebody has to hear, take in, decide what to do with a microaggression that occurs against them all the time. I mean, we all do stupid things to one another, harmful things. It's very difficult. I mean, the truth is not all LGBTQ+ people are aligned, right? It's a shocking percentage of LGBTQ+ plus people who vote in a way that I would not vote, right. So when I hear that sometimes I sit there and think I just I can't do this. And then I think I can't be part of a group that treats an individual who identifies as trans in this way. I mean, we have trans trans family member, we have Latinos, Latinas, we have black, we're, I can't do this. This is part of my family and but then I wake up the next day and I say, Okay, so now I've built my little concrete shelter and gathered all my little people in because I can't stand interact with the people who I feel like are vicious. But the truth is we have to leave our concrete shelter, and find a way to be in the world together. Right?
You know, we used to teach, we'll just agree to disagree. But there's a step after that we agree to disagree. And we find a little common patch of grass, where both of us can stand and work on something together, right? We have to find common cause and something to heal. And it's, it's very difficult. But when I was doing all my nonviolent resistance training, they would push us so hard, they say it's fine and good if you can do the first five steps of the 14 steps of nonviolent resistance. But if you can't go to the 14th step, which is the place where you take the hand of the person who most opposed to you or hurt you, or killed your family member, and you find common cause. If you can't do that, you're not really a practitioner of nonviolent resistance. Because you really can't change the hearts and minds of people. Unless you can find common cause.
So you've heard me say, I love the expression, every every wall is a door, every time I get stuck, I put that expression, right, I actually have it sitting where I get dressed every morning. And so every time I get stuck and think, no, I cannot be even be in the same room. This person who believes this, all right, I can't listen to them anymore, or I'm just gonna block them on Facebook has been racking me nuts. I put that in front of me. And force myself. So what is a door into this person's life? Because the truth is, I can't influence them either. Unless I'm willing to be in relationship with them. So it's the hardest work of my life? I've been practicing it all my life. I certainly don't have it master by any means. But we're going to have to do that as a world. Yeah, we might as well just all set ourselves on par be done with it, which is hard to think about. But that's what will climate change anyway?
Derek Horn
Yeah, I stopped myself the other day, and wanted to put up because I like to share a lot of resources in my opinions and things on Facebook and hopes that maybe it'll change somebody's mind. But that's not the other day, right did have to I did want to clarify that. While the current leadership of the country and most much of the Republican Party is just terrible, and doing all these horrible things right now, that I when I when I talk about them as a group, and monitor all the things that they're doing, I don't want that to be a reflection upon every single person that's ever voted for a Republican in their lifetime.
And I think that one of the things that's really important about this period, and I and I don't know how much of an appetite there is, for a lot of people that are currently fighting, and I respect that, because I think that so much right now is life and death. And it can be hard to think about the aftermath. But I do think that there needs to be that kind of path for people to come back and wake up and realize and change their mind. Because I don't know, I think that if I think as a whole, I think we need to normalize this changing of your mind and seeing the light. Otherwise, I think that we're just going to be in this deadlock forever, and we're not gonna be able to get anywhere. Because I mean, no matter what we're going to these people are not going anywhere. So I think that we I think we need to start thinking about how can we get them over and start to build a better world together?
I think it's interesting to hear you talk about the truth and reconciliation of these other populations, like in Germany and in Canada. And I personally think that that's one of the reasons why is a nation the United States is, in so many of our current issues is we never had that moment of truth and reconciliation about the impact of slavery and how that that has formed just about every corner of our society, from the economy, to housing, to education, all that stuff.
I and I think that hearing some of the recent stuff from the administration about how they're want to ban racial bias training and things like that, it it's tricky, because it's like you have this massive portion of the population that doesn't even see is an issue. I think that that. And I think that that's also it's tied to this brand of American individualism, that I, I don't know that that does make me nervous and apprehensive if I'm being completely honest, because I think that even we're seeing so much of that with COVID, where people think, Oh, I'm doing this decision for myself, you do it you want wear a mask, don't wear a mask, that's up to you. But I think that people aren't realizing how interconnected we are as a society, and how much we need to realize that if we want to move forward as a whole unit, because I think that if we continue down this path of every man for himself, we can very easily crumble. What are your thoughts on that?
Cindi Love
Yeah, I absolutely agree. I would also circle back to this other idea, though, when I mentioned earlier, this whole concept of people who have self hatred and and issues that are religiously bound up, so you have to just think about fundamentalism, at its core, says that if you are male, you are the Lord. These are the words the Lord over someone who is not male, doesn't matter who they are. And further reinforced because because patriarchy and and white supremacy or colonization are inextricably linked also. And if you are white, and men, okay? So if you look at that, that's the base belief system, right?
And then imagine the pressure Derek, I'll let you flip you into that seat. Imagine the pressure of feeling like you had to be in charge of the entire planet, and everybody else around you is inadequate, subservient. ill equipped, whatever words you want to put on, not as smart. Alright? Think about inside of you. Unless you're a narcissist. You're having these moments all the time where you're thinking, I don't actually know what to do here. I don't actually answers but I have to because my religion says, I'm the pivot point for everything. Right. So there's that piece, when you think about folks who operate out of that mindset, which I understand extremely well, if you take that away, they sort of collapse. I mean, that's, that's what's holding them up. So I don't know. I
feel like that belief system. And stigma, particularly self stigmatization is at the heart of this whole thing. You know, we elevate it to this part of people making conscious choices about one another, like you were talking about, like I ought to should want to keep you healthy, right. But the truth is, if my whole belief system is around, I'm at the center of the universe, and I have to be here to take care of everybody else, because they're all inadequate. That's that individualism, that whole thing that we have grows up out of that fundamentalist core. So I think one of the great movements that was underway pre covid is your generation young family summit, I'm gonna speak exclusively to heterosexual families right now for a moment, young families with a classic Dad, Mom, to kick configuration. I got to watch that evolution over 20 years, 20 years ago, if that dad had changed the diapers, stayed home from work, cooked a meal took his share of the baby sitting, it would have been laughed out of the room and a fundamentalist community that had already started to shift. You're seeing you know, like the smaller and smaller segment of people demonstrating that women have to be subservient.
Also stuff in the church I grew up in where women were not allowed to speak in front of men. There were a noun deacons in that church, women reading scripture in front of men that was already evolving. I think part of the reason there's been this clamp down, no, no, no, we're going back to the way things were, which is how we got our handmaiden Supreme Court appointee, that's part of that belief system is because the fundamentalist fringe trying to take over the mass market again, got scared to death, that their young people would quit coming to church would quit subscribing to those community values, which was thing. And so this is a reaction, this is like, we have to fix this, we have to fix it now. So they say terrible things. Like, you know, AIDS is a punishment from God and COVID is because people who aren't just like us are on the planet that just make stuff up, to get people to reorient, like turned back toward those values that they feel are central. But I have such hope, because I believe your generation, the generation coming after that had actually already decided they weren't going to be a part of that type of oppressive, exclusionary, brutal society anymore.
And right now, we're a little bit on pause, even though there's great stuff happening everywhere, that we're a little bit on pause while people figure out how to operate in an environment. But personally, I think when you don't put on a mask, you don't wash your hands. You don't socially distance you gather in groups, you sing in your choir and spit all over the person next to you. While that feels and is terrible behavior toward and now to another human being. It's not conscientious. It's also kind of part of that thing. I was talking about horrible self esteem, like you don't care enough about yourself. And I was taught and one of the good values I got was this old scripture that says, Love your neighbor as yourself and love the Lord God with all your heart. I think about that a lot right now. Love your neighbor. So that would be me behaving well with you. But it also says, as yourself, hmm. And I think what's broken right now is that whole community of people, they don't love themselves. And they don't really believe they're loved. They don't believe they're worthy. So what we have to do to fix that this generation next generation, we have to continue to say what LGBTQ people have been saying all along, you are worthy, you are fantastic, just as you are, you're an incredible human being. And it doesn't matter if someone else who is really wrapped up in self hate, projects that onto you,
Derek Horn
I and I think many other people of my generation identify as more agnostic in terms of religion. But I think that I know myself, and I know many other people might be searching for that spiritual fulfillment that they might be getting from a more traditional faith based community. Do you have any advice for people like us to how we could maybe get some of that spiritual fulfillment?
Cindi Love
Well, as you know, I have this mindfulness practice that I cultivated years ago. Because I grew up praying, I wasn't exactly sure who I was praying to are for what but I knew I was supposed to, and I did. But when I cultivated mindfulness practice, I sort of dipped into both Buddhist and Hindu tradition, as well as Jewish mystical tradition, where there's a meditation piece, and all of that. And I discovered that when I meditate, the connection that I feel and this, there's no right language for this, okay?
But the connection that I feel universally, both to Planet nature and to all other living beings has, this is gonna sound very woowoo, but it has this vibration to it. And like, if I can really get into my breath, I can actually feel myself outside my body. Sort of in this, in the old days, it would have called it river of souls, like, just people everywhere, and we're not disconnected. We're not disharmony, harmonists, we're not fighting. We're just there together.
And if I can go far enough with it, I can actually feel us all take a breath together and exhale. That, for me has been the most powerful experience of my life. organized religion never did that. For me. In fact, it was always very confusing, but organized religion, for me has also been a path and an avenue. Like when I was working in South Africa, and in Africa, on HIV and AIDS, the reason I got to go in that country was because I was a licensed religious worker. So I wouldn't give that away for anything, because they've got me in places that other people couldn't go to, to help people. It may feel a little disingenuous, because I don't adhere to all of the tenets of any of those things. But I think if you're seeking to feel, to just use the word spiritual harmony with the universe, and with the people around you, and with yourself even more important, just with yourself, I have found that a mindfulness practice is what gets me there better than anything. I also as you, as you know, I read from every type of spirituality in the world yesterday, I was reading Rumi, again.
Because I, I saw our little dog Buddy on the beach, and his hair was blowing everywhere the wind was blowing. And it reminded me of the whirling dervish movement within the Sufi Islamic tradition, and, you know, that's an ecstatic movement. They just stand out and start whirling like in the wind, and it becomes kind of what I was describing lifting out of your body, you know, experience for them, they still do it and to honor basically a deity, but my guess is when you're whirling around in an ecstasy, you probably don't think much about the deity anymore, you know, it's being in it. So that's the other thing I do. I intentionally read from all spiritual traditions, preferably the ones that are the most opposite to how I was raised. Because there's such wonderful discovery there and you and you find the things you have in common and things that are different.
The next thing that I do is I surround myself with people who are willing to think not only at the contested edge of things, but willing to create a reality, in their minds, at least, of harmony, hmm. So like I can have a conversation with you doesn't matter how pissed off You are the government or anything else, we can still have a conversation. And I know we can go to a space where we're that vibration piece I mentioned, we're in print space, we're imagining a world that is fundamentally different than the one we're living in. And I think as long as you can get yourself to those spaces with just one or two other people you begin to have that sort of spiritual. What are the words for it? Warmth, connection, comfort, the things that, that I think most people think they get from a religious community? But it's very different.
You know, having been a minister, churches are sometimes the most screwed up places on earth. And just it's like the army of the walking wounded. And so that was always a little disenchanting, because you think, oh, everybody shows up here? Because they're, they want to do good, be good. That will actually, that's not true. It's just very difficult. And when you overlay church on top of it, people have all these false assumptions. That who they're supposed to be what they're supposed to be. So I have found a lot more comfort in spiritual community. I don't think you know, you know, I spent three days with Mingyur Rinpoche. And, and I didn't know if I could do it, like, meditate for three days. I just didn't know if that was possible. But it was the most extraordinary experience. The first 20 minutes, I was so resistant and fighting it and I can't do this. And I have to leave this room and I've paid all this money and you know. And then he told us this story. He said, whatever you're seeing in your head right now, is a movie of your own making. There's a monkey on your shoulder. The monkey is you. The monkey is creating the movie. You're seeing, feeling hearing, doing. So if you want to leave, the monkey will let you but it is a movie of your own making. I have never forgotten this. Like every time I'm feeling tension and not feeling spiritually connected to other human beings or whatever. I think what is the movie I'm making up right now? They're bad? I'm good. I'm bad. They're good. They don't want me. I don't want them. What's the movie of my own making?
Derek Horn
It's very profound advice. I do think that being truly alone with yourself and your your thoughts is really one of the scariest things you can do. And I think a lot of people go through their entire lives completely resistant to that. And I think that that all the things we were discussing before, I think a lot of that stems from it.
Cindi Love
So it's layered. I mean, you'd have never even get if you think about it, the only movie they let themselves see is one in which they're perfect, right? But then the hero perfectly perfect. And they're both driven. And they both have a fantastic job and a lovely home and they get to go to Fire Island or whatever your you know, whatever your thing is? That movie is like if you think about levels, that's like a one inch deep, but then you have to spend all your energy to maintain that.
One of the happiest human beings I ever met in my life was laying beside a river in Africa, and had lost both legs and feet. And one arm living in poverty, no home, eight children propped up smiling, talking, chatting, I had this marvelous chat and I said, I'm really struggling. I want you to explain to me your joy. And he said, Every morning, I wake up And see the faces of my children. That was it. It was like, Okay, I wake up every morning, see the faces of my children, but I'm not you. What's, you know, what's the difference? And he saw his whole life as that opportunity. So he didn't let the other stuff crowd in. Sometimes it's what do we let crowd in what you said about being with yourself, then I would add to that And being in love with yourself. Whoever you find there, that's your first lover. You can't love yourself, you can't love anybody else. RuPaul has been telling us that forever, that it's just fundamental to the human experience.
Derek Horn
Yeah, so wrapping things up. I know, we've talked about a lot. And I think we've touched on some of this in your eternal optimism. But when one day, hopefully this period will be over with, when you think about that day, what are you hopeful for?
Cindi Love
I assume you're referring to COVID?
Derek Horn
Yes, yes.
Cindi Love
I don't know that I think of it is over, I think it'll be transformed into something else, because hopefully, oh, retaining the learning, and maybe the love that we achieve during that time and the care for other people that we achieved during that time. I guess I would frame it when we when we move through this to another place, and we lay down our anger, and pick up our willingness to figure out how to heal the planet together.
That's how I'll frame it, I am hoping that I get to see, every single person I wanted to see that I didn't get to see during this period of time, except on video, I hope I get to hug them. I'm a huge hugger. And I'm so missing that sort of physical, you know, connection with people.I long to travel outside the United States, again, because I'm big traveler. And I my life is so enriched meeting people from other places, who don't speak English, who don't hold those same interesting value systems that we have. I am hopeful.
I'm even praying in my traditional context, that we are in a space where we have new leadership in our in our country, that the central organizing principle of that leadership is human dignity. If we can just get there, that that what we're going for, then I'll feel like, we can move forward. So I guess when you describe when we get through this, I that's one of the things I'm hoping for out there. If that's not the case, and we get through this, then, you know, for me, I'm going to spend the next whatever number of years I have, if I get them trying to bring us back to that place. Because that's the one thing I can do. I can keep saying to every person I meet, what matters most to me is that you are respected, and that we together want the best for one another.
We're gonna have to give up a lot in the United States for that to be true for the rest of the world. Can't keep sucking up all the fossil fuel, we can't keep being the people who buy the stuff that other people tear down their forest. In order to get enough money to to live for a day, we will have to change some things dramatically. But maybe the gift of COVID is going to be that we depopulated our urban centers enough for long enough that we can see that there is actually another way to live together.
Derek Horn
Yeah, me too. It is a little, knowing that we have less than a week until this election. It is this weird holding pattern that we're in. I'm trying not to get too wrapped up in. Just trying to wake up, do what I can on the morning, get through the day. I'm doing the podcast has been really great for me to
Cindi Love
Oh you're fabulous.
Derek Horn
oh thank you, keep my eyes on something that isn't my phone, and hopefully get people thinking about other things and other ideas. So it might not be the biggest thing that I'm doing in the grand scheme of things, but it feels like doing something.
Cindi Love
I just think it's so positive because it's it's that public discourse, the the conversation really that people used to have a lot more. Mm hmm. I mean, it's the reason I still listen to NPR. I just I do love hearing to human beings. Krista Tippett interview with John O'Donohue. I could listen to 100 times, just the richness of that. So I think what you're creating here is that kind of moment for people. And I just really commend you and thank you and I'm honored to be included in your process.
Derek Horn
Well, thank you very much for giving us your time and sharing your, your ideas with us. Where can people find you online? And how can they get involved with Out for Undergrad if they want?
Cindi Love
I'm not on TikTok, but I'm on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. And I have a blog. And I haven't been very faithful to it lately. But most everything you'll find me just as Dr. Cindi Love on LinkedIn also.
Derek Horn
I could put those things in the episode description for people to click on.
Cindi Love
Oh, that'd be that'd be great. And it's fine to send me email. My personal email if they do that is the same thing. drcindilove@famlo.org And Out for Undergrad we all use the same conventions, cindi.love@outforundergrad.org How can you get involved in Out for Undergrad?
Okay, so if you are a student in we tend to say in one of our industry sectors marketing, engineering, finance, which is banking, consulting, it's everything. And tech, obviously, we want you to apply. So applications will start for business, I think before the beginning of the the holidays, and the others probably January, February. So that's the first thing as some students ask, Well, I'm not a major in those areas. I'm majoring in sociology or English, it's fine that we have a lot of sociologist and English people who become consultants, they actually met great consultants.
So I think that's the first thing if you are a student and you're on a campus, and you want to help us spread the good news about Oh, for you to other students, you can be a Campus Ambassador. And right now to do that, the best way is to express your interest to Alan Shi, who's our Director of Admissions. And that's allen.shi@outforundergrad.org.
If you work at a company that wants to recruit fabulous LGBTQ plus, and otherwise diverse, high achieving undergrads, then please reach out to us and let us know that you would like to get your company involved. And let us help you figure out how to do that. If you work at a company, you know, they won't sponsor. But you still want to get engaged. We have volunteers who serve with all of our conferences. We need about 100 for each conference, in addition to all the organizers and other folks. So reach out to any of us and say I'm interested in volunteering,
Derek Horn
Our Instagram, which is @outforundergrad is a great place to keep an eye on one of those applications for various volunteer opportunities and things come up.
Cindi Love
Yep. Because there are two running right now. out there. It's a great place to see just to me just snippets of what happens. And we're in the middle of rebuilding our YouTube channel. So we've got a lot of stuff coming up on YouTube, which I think will be also very interesting. We got to record everything this year. Those are sort of the categories. The other thing I was going to mention we we we get all of our money right now from sponsors, for corporations, firms.
I have a little anxiety if I'm being real, that should our current administration prevail, there really will be a regulatory stop to LGBTQ+ related training, diversity and inclusion training, if they have government contracts, which is virtually everybody in the world because a corporation has one. So we may have to figure out ways to support student cost in our hybrid environments for students a little differently. If that if that does happen. We've never actually solicited money from people in any way except sponsorship. But we are going to do Giving Tuesday this year and see if there's interest or resonance in that. I also think a lot of our volunteers participate in these employee giving programs where they match your volunteer hours with a certain amount and that's been good for us, I think we may want to do some crowdfunding. And we've got these incredibly talented students out there who know how to do that. But I do think I say that only to say, because we've never done it. We'll probably experiment a little bit with that this year.
And I would want people to understand why that they're very well, maybe this executive order that's gone in and will go into effect after the election, if the current administration prevails, could actually limit corporations ability to sponsor us. So for me, that's sort of a business operational challenge that I'm working through. The cool thing is hybrid is a lot less expensive. Yeah, if we do that, it helps. But I would love to hear people's ideas, I lay that out there only to say I'm having to think about it. And collective wisdom is a lot smarter than I am by myself. But if you know of foundations, other people who are interested in leadership, for LGBTQ folks, send them our way. So we can chat about the great news of O4U
Derek Horn
Outforundergrad.org is a great place to stay up to date with updates as well. We also have a newsletter, you can sign up for and get updates as well. So definitely a good way to stay in the loop.
So thank you, Cindi, so much. This has been an incredible conversation. And I can't wait to share it because I think that a lot of people are definitely looking for answers to a lot of things that we talked about. And I know that our conversation might not be able to answer every uncertainty for people, but I hope that it might inspire them to maybe change some of their ways of thinking about our current moment as well as their own personal lives even beyond this moment in time. So thank you again.
Cindi Love
Thank you. Take care.