I was like, mom, we gotta figure this out. How about you write a letter to me about your experience of the day I came out to you? Like what was going on for you at the time? What were you feeling? I'll do the same. I'll write a letter to you. Let's exchange those letters. Read them and have a follow up conversation. And my mom, who is amazing, was like, yes, I'll do any, anything, anything to work through this.
And so we wrote the letters and when I read her letter, I. She talked about her fears around my safety, around trying to protect me around what was going on for her. At the time, she was losing her best friend to cancer. She, was dealing with stuff with her mom, and she just, she had a lot going on, and she was terrified for me and how I was gonna be treated. And so she shut down.
And so her shutting down felt like complete rejection to me because now we're, I'm emotionally disconnected from this person. I adore who I need. Who I need to hug me and tell me everything's gonna be okay. And so I, and then I was in turn able to tell her in my letter, Hey, I felt rejected by you and these were my fears at the time, and this was what was going on for me.
And after we read those letters and had a follow up conversation, it shifted our entire relationship because we were able to see each other as people, again, not as. Megan, the gay person or mom, this person who, I feel like rejected me and we were able to start working through things at so much more ease and so much more compassion and empathy for each other, for Hello everybody.
I am here today with Megan Oin and I'm so excited about this conversation because we are going to dive deep into things that are so important for life, for business, for leadership. We're gonna touch on connection and cancel culture and agreeing to disagree. So Megan Oand is a TEDx speaker. She is a three times author human connection consultant. She is won awards.
She's been featured in top magazines like Forbes and worked with big organizations and education departments and colleges and has over 15 years experience helping people find common ground in uncommon. Conversations and if you are a leader or in business or a human connection, communication is one of the most important skills you can have to make your life better. So you are going to want to listen to this episode. Well, I think I've told people. The on paper version of what it is that you do.
Megan, would you like to give us a little bit deeper insight into what it is that you do? Sure. My, origin story really begins in 2004 when I was in graduate school at Mississippi State University, and I. I was walking across campus one day and my phone was just ringing off the hook, and every time I'd pick it up, I'd hear things like, you're disgusting. Don't you know what you're doing is a sin. You make me sick. And I just remember the first thing I thought was, how do they know?
And come to find out, an ex-boyfriend had outed me as gay. Mm. And being from the small town that I was going to school at, which is Mississippi State University, where my family lives, I then had to run home and tell them, because secret spread fast in the south and especially in small towns. And so I sat my mom down. I told her she wept, and my dad asked me if I was gonna go to hell and my older brother. I said I should probably leave Mississippi because I'd be safer somewhere else.
And at the time, this was 21 years ago, it, it was physically unsafe to be here. A friend of mine had been beaten to death at a McDonald's for looking gay, and that day just continued to spiral. I went to see a mentor of mine. Hoping for some kind of support, some kind of, hug or some something to just say you're gonna be okay. And he quotes Bible verses to me and basically says, if you continue to participate in a homosexual lifestyle, you'll burn in hell.
And in that moment, I remember just feeling like. Hey, I'm just a label now to all these people. I'm not the person. Nothing I've done up until this point in my life as an athlete, as a student, as a member of the community matters. Like all they see is this thing that they label as bad, and it was just one of those turning points in my life where I realize. I, I'm pretty alone here and I've gotta figure this out.
Eventually it led me to leaving Mississippi to find a sense of self-worth, to find some confidence to find safety within myself. I was gone for six years. I ended up in Florida and then I ended up in Colorado. And then after about six years, I remember having this vision of needing to return to Mississippi to heal. Because I. Okay. Before we go there, I just want to highlight for everybody, because this is so important.
Now you are gay and some people can relate to that and some people can't, but I know that. Everybody. If you picked up the phone and you heard the words, you are disgusting. You are gonna burn in hell. Now I know. A secret where we think that we're bad or wrong or broken, or a burden or some other thing that is terrible. So if you had that phone call, just think to yourself for a moment. What it is that you would think to yourself, oh God, they know.
And so when we talk about moving through the rest of this conversation, I want you to remember that this is what we're talking about. We're talking about somebody's sexual orientation. We're talking about that thing that you have decided that was bad about you, that you felt like you had to hide. Okay. Sorry, I needed to put that out there. No, thank you for that. I, I appreciate it.
'cause there's such, you know, when I think back to that time, it feels like another lifetime, but there was such shame, and I was just trying to get through that day, trying to survive. And, I think that's why when 2010 rolled around, I, I needed to come here and face it. I needed to come and bring. You know, the confidence and the self-worth that I built throughout those six years to come and heal my relationship with my family and find a way to be in the community that I felt so rejected by.
And so for the past 14, 15 years, I. That's the work I've been doing is working on myself, working on my relationships, working on my connections in the community, having those hard conversations, and doing the work that I do in the world and helping people find common ground. Through difficult conversations. So I tell that story because it really is the catalyst as to why I do the work that I do.
I've always had a passion for this work, but having had the experience that I had is really, made it very personal and very meaningful for me. And so it's, it's the reason why it's so important to me because I've, I've found a way. For me and how it works for me and still being here, still living here and having a family and having a career and having healed relationships with my parents and my family. It's, um, I'm kind of on the other side of it.
So it's, it's, very, it's been a very tumultuous journey. But definitely one I would, I would take again. Yeah, I think that's one of the true marks of somebody who's embodying the Be the Wolf ethos is that there is a bigger reason why you do what you do. I. And in the process you are able to become more and more of yourself, . And you get to bring your gifts through that to the world. What is the bigger vision that you hope to create as a result of the work you're doing?
Just to keep doing the same work I. It's hard work. Like it's this this career, this path that I'm on and that I've chosen is, it's not easy. Like I'm constantly have to look in the mirror. I'm constantly have to push myself to evolve. I'm always put in situations that are very challenging, so it's. I live in an environment where I am different in every way. I'm spiritually different, my sexual inter orientation is, is different how I approach life, how I live my life.
Everything about me does not fit the mold that, southern people like to put people into. And so I every day. Is a challenge to wake up and be my best self. And so I don't think I'll ever not feel that way about being here. And so just continuing the work that I do, continuing to write books, continuing to work with people, continue to be a part of the community, is always gonna be something that's challenging me and pushing me forward.
And that is really one of the deep essential needs as human beings is to keep expanding and to keep growing. And I think when people stop doing that, I. Is when people start to go down this path of hating other people. And I believe that it Well, and through the work I've done with clients and we dig deep through some subconscious stuff and we get down to the nitty gritty, it really almost always boils down to.
I am ashamed of myself because I have betrayed myself and I'm not being and honoring the truth of who I am. And there are certain things you can hide easily, like. If you have a tendency to be nice and that's your true nature, like everybody has that tendency. Some of the times it's real easy to hide that behind a tough persona, but some things are not as easy and they take a, you're trying to hide them. They take a bigger chunk out of us, and because of that, we tend to.
Because we're denying pieces of ourselves, it's really hard to look at other people who are owning the wholeness of themselves or the fullness of themselves or trying to at least. And I think that's kind of the root of a lot of the disagreements. Let's, dig into agreeing to disagree. One of my favorite topics, yeah, my, my TED Talk, it was released in March and the title of it is What to Do when You Disagree with Someone You Love. So, you know, I love this.
And then I have a book called Agreeing to Disagree Is Not Enough, but. The basis of all of that and why I love it so much is because I remember coming when I first came back to Mississippi and like interacting with people. This is before marriage equality, there was still four or five years before marriage equality even happened, In Mississippi. And most conversations, most people I would interact with was like, Megan, I love you, but I disagree with your lifestyle. And it always. Stung.
It just didn't feel right. And so it took me on this path of like really digging into this topic and really trying to understand why do we agree to disagree? Why, why are we making an agreement to agree to disagree and not go deeper and not find out who each other are? And so I started exploring ways of. Being in communication with people who felt that way about me. Like, Hey, I, I love you, but I, I disagree with who you are, essentially.
And finding ways to have meaningful conversations with them by asking open-ended questions, asking them about their fears, connecting with them on a human level, and then watching that relationship evolve over time from being, Hey, I disagree with your lifestyle tip. Hey Megan, you know, you're just like me. I. And we have a lot of the same fears and we see life a lot of the same way, and we have some very similar values.
And just seeing people's eyes open when that was the approach that I took was, was just very rewarding and very healing. For me, because not only was I getting to know someone and their story, they were getting to know me too. And over time those little conversations that were a little bit more meaningful, a little bit more beyond the surface turned into these amazing relationships. And sometimes I don't know if their beliefs changed and it didn't matter because we were connecting.
On a human level, not on a belief level. 'cause those are two very different levels. And so I've just learned over these last 14 or 15 years that if we're going to get beyond agreeing to disagree, we have, we have to be willing to not only be seen, but to see others, like truly see others and give them the space. And so.
Yeah, that's, that's, the, I have a, a passion obviously for this topic, but that's where the root of where this work comes from is just hearing that phrase all the time and trying to navigate my way through it and still have meaningful relationships. I. One of the things that strikes me about this is that to come to that place of deeper understanding where you can connect.
It requires empathy, and I think the average person thinks that they have empathy, but what I've seen with a lot of people is they can put themselves in somebody else's shoes, but only as themselves. So they can't actually understand what it's like to be that person. Like if somebody's in a war torn country and they're a refugee. You can sit there and say, well, I wouldn't need any help because blah, blah, blah, because that's who you think of yourself as.
You have this persona of who that is, but you can't imagine what that would actually be like because you haven't lived in any kind of chaos, or somebody might not have lived in any kind of chaos. Somebody who suffered a lot of trauma might be able to more easily put themselves in those shoes because it's chaos. And what you talk about is digging deeper. Find where that same thing is so that they can kind of put themselves in those shoes. You said at the end of your Ted talk, this question.
Um, or when you're in disagreement with somebody to say this thing to connect deeper. Do you remember what that is? Yeah, it's what are you afraid of? Well, actually it's to approach the conversation with, Hey, this is really important to me and this is what I'm afraid of. So just ride out the gate stating your fears of why you're afraid to go into this conversation with this person. Usually, if you're that afraid, it's someone who means something to you.
It's someone you love and you fear their rejection. So. I found with, with, my parents and with my family, it's like I'm afraid that when I say this thing that you're not gonna see me anymore and you're not gonna be there for me and you're not gonna support me.
And if you can approach it head on that way and just stating your fear, it already humanizes you to the other person where they can then let their guard down and they're not feeling defensive because they know a heavy topic is already coming. And so it just, it puts down the defenses, it puts down the walls. It allows everybody to just soften a little bit so that the conversation can, start off on the right foot and not have to start off defensive and then backtrack.
Like we often do, we just, we get defensive, we react, and then we're like, oh my God, why did I do that? I gotta step away now I gotta come back. And so it's just an opportunity to, to just throw it out there from the beginning and, and be willing to be vulnerable. In that moment that diffuses the tension a little bit. And what's powerful about this from like a subconscious psychological level is that when people are. Literally incapable of understanding something new.
If they're in a contractive emotional state, so if you say something that threatens their reality or the way they view the world, that will automatically put somebody in a defensive state and they will feel potentially powerless, and so therefore they are shut down to any kind of new information that might expand their perspective. But what you said is say, Hey, this is what I'm afraid of you. What you do is you put the other person in a position of quote, power so they feel safe.
And now that they feel safe, they are open to actually hearing another perspective, another conver, like something that will expand their learning or their. Their viewpoint and it's so powerful and it's not easy to say, Hey, this is what I'm afraid of. No, it is not. It's not. It's, I mean, there's nothing easy about it. It's very vulnerable and, I think I've, I've just had this. Need, this, want this desire to find a way.
And I've, I've pushed, I've pushed myself to allow myself to be vulnerable because I've felt like if I don't do this, there's no other way through it. And so it was like, do it or, or. Move. Like you can't, you can't stay here if you can't be vulnerable and, and be who you want to be. Yeah. And that's, that piece of showing who you are, the fears and, like if there's a big piece of us that's so dramatically different than the average person like being gay, that.
That is harder to deny, but when it's these little fears, it's just people's habit to just shut them down and not open up and show that part of themselves because of the fear consequences, Absolutely. Yeah, I wanna talk about cancel culture 'cause I feel like that's a good lead in. But before we do that, can you tell people how to get in touch with you and what it is that, how you work with maybe specific people, specific organizations, what it is that you offer out there?
Yeah, I mean the best place to see all of my work is my website, which is megan oand.com. And, I work with corporations, corporate leaders, executives. I work with colleges. Last week I worked with a group of nurses at a public high school. So, everything I do is about. The courage to connect and helping people navigate that.
Everything that we've talked about so far, admitting those fears, figuring out what your values are versus your beliefs and finding a way I. To connect with people who show up differently than you do in the world. So it doesn't matter all the way from elementary school all the way up to, the C-Suite executive office. We're all human beings. We all have these fears. We all have these issues of, running up against people we disagree with. And so I help.
People navigate that space in finding ways to, to connect in a meaningful way. So I do that through workshops. I do that through keynote speaking and and I do that through consulting depending on how deep people wanna get. So, and then I have three books and then my TED Talk and other talks and all kinds of resources on my website.
So. So basically what I'm hearing is that no matter where you are, what you're doing, you have a resource or a pathway to help them, whether it's the TED Talk, the books, consulting, um, organizations, groups. So you've got your fingers in it all. I do. I do. It's very rewarding. I love, I love the work that I get to do in the world. Yeah, I, I understand. I love what I do too. Okay, so essentially when you came out or when you were outed, there's this sense of getting canceled Mm-hmm.
I think a lot of people, especially after the Me Too movement and whatnot, there's just this cancel culture thing that is so prevalent. Mm-hmm. Can you share your thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, I think first social media makes it very easy to cancel people. We can just unfollow. And it's just so easy to, you see someone that doesn't think the same way you do and you just, eh, I don't wanna see their content anymore. You just throw 'em to the side. So we're becoming numb to.
Yeah. How we're affecting other people. But at the same time, I feel like there's the social media world and then there's the real world that we live in, in our communities. Right, And I don't see the same amount of canceling going on face to face with people in the community. I see people working together. I see people looking for solutions. I see people wanting to find a way, trying to find middle ground, wanting to make things work in their community.
Sp I can speak to here, I think that's very true here. I'm involved in several organizations and a big part of, helping Schools and Boys and Girls Club and all the things that are going on. I see people pulling together in a way that I think is more meaningful than it has been in the past, just because people are so sick of the division. So I think we, we live in two bubbles and they're both impacting. How we're doing, as individuals.
And we need to start paying attention to how we're interacting in both worlds and find a way to bridge, find ourselves, find a way through to bridge, to bridge that gap. And I think it's a very difficult thing to do. So when I talk about canceling, I think it's, I think that a lot of the canceling is going on, on the internet. Not so much face to face.
I think there's a lot of great things happening, but I do think we all really struggle with this concept and this belief that if I do something wrong, if I believe something wrong, if I say something wrong, I'm gonna be canceled. I think everybody has that fear. Yeah, and the, I mean, especially online because people get to hide behind whatever screen name and there's no face-to-face. People very rarely.
Will say the things that they might say to you online to your face, and I think that's a big thing, but I'm curious what you think about this. So I think that the reason we fear being canceled is because of the things that we might lose. Family, money, livelihood, all of those things. Right. But I think if we really boil and dig deep. I think boil down and dig deep that what we're really afraid of is deeper than that. So I'm curious what you think about that. I, I think.
It's this deep need to feel safe, Yeah. secure, and our world is in such, appears to be in such chaos that no one feels like they have a sense of control of anything. Yeah. And one wrong move, one wrong thing said. Our security and our safety is shaken our view of the world. Maybe it's financial. Maybe I, I don't know. I mean, at the end of the day, I really feel like safety is people's number one thing right now because everything feels like it's in such flux.
We don't know what's going on from day to day. There's so much change, there's so much nuance, and so that's what I think. What do you think? I think it's similar. You'd said earlier when you moved away for those six years, you developed this self-worth and this self-confidence and a sense of safety within yourself.
And so I think there are people, like we look at some celebrities who people have tried to cancel, but they're just still there in everybody's face because they just don't care about what everybody else thinks, though they're still doing their own thing and they're still a ton of people hating on them. And so I think that when we. Cultivate that sense of safety and trust in ourself that we can handle whatever happens that A hundred percent becomes impossible to cancel us.
Yes, you could take money away, but yes, I could make monies another way. I doesn't have to like, we don't have to hold on to everything we have and the reality of life. Is that everything is changing all of the time. Every second of the day, everything is changing. So the more we try and hold on and keep things exactly the same, the more we are not necessarily calling in, but open to being canceled and the effects of what people think that is. I totally agree.
Yeah. I mean, it's a matter of perspective. Like if you think you're gonna be canceled, you'll find a way to be canceled. If you think you're gonna be discriminated against, you'll find someone who's discriminated against you. It's just, it's a matter of what you're putting out. I totally agree, and I mean the, the greatest success that I've had being here in the last 15 years is just.
Taking really good care of myself and coming to a place of when things are off, like I'm not doing something for me. I, I am not accepting myself in some form or another, someone I'm having a difficult time. I'm the one that needs to do the work, not someone else. You know, I don't need to point the finger. So I totally agree. At the end of the day, the only way to feel safe, to feel secure in this world at any point. Is to work on yourself.
Self-acceptance, self-worth, and having those attributes. And yeah, it's what shifts everything. It shifts every perspective you have. Yeah, and, and it's so big when you said, if something's going on and I'm having some difficulty with it, I have to look at what's going on with me because your difficulty and your feelings are happening inside of you. So we always say, oh, so and so made me feel this way, but. So and so could have said the same thing to me or you, and we would not feel that way.
So where is the thing? And it's not like so and so might be an asshole. Totally. There may be no denying that, but you know, if it's, it's how that asshole makes you feel that's going on within you. And when we start to deal with that, and that comes into circling back to those fears and s facing those fears, and I just, I think it's so powerful if we're going to try to connect deeper with the people that we love, sharing what we're afraid of. Yeah, I totally agree.
And when we stop and honor those feelings and just acknowledge them, just take that minute. It doesn't, you don't have to cry all day. Like, just honor honor where you are. Honor how an interaction I. Brought up those feelings in you, and then you get to this level of acceptance and then you don't care about the asshole anymore, you, because you honored where you are, then it doesn't matter. Then you're not thinking about them anymore. So that's a good, that's a really good point.
I'm glad you brought that up, because if you're having a hard time with someone, like what is, what is really going on? Like, what are you really feeling? What is this touching that you need to honor and accept so that you can. See this person again, not as the enemy. Yeah. Do you have an example of one of those, one of those relationships where you guys shared the fears? You don't need to name names or anything, but where you shared the fears and you were able to connect deeper because of that?
Yeah. I talk about this one in my TED talk, actually, my mom, because it's. She's the most meaningful relationship. The most, the, my closest friend before I came out. And so we really struggled after I came out. And while I was gone for the six years that I was gone from Mississippi, we, we, struggled like there was an emotional distance and we were bickering and not understanding each other. So when I came back to Mississippi.
There was still that emotional distance and we were having conversations, but we weren't getting anywhere. And I remember just getting to a point and I was like, mom, we gotta figure this out. How about you write a letter to me about your experience of the day I came out to you? Like what was going on for you at the time? What were you feeling? I'll do the same. I'll write a letter to you. Let's exchange those letters. Read them and have a follow up conversation.
And my mom, who is amazing, was like, yes, I'll do any, anything, anything to work through this. And so we wrote the letters and when I read her letter, I. She talked about her fears around my safety, around trying to protect me around what was going on for her. At the time, she was losing her best friend to cancer. She, was dealing with stuff with her mom, and she just, she had a lot going on, and she was terrified for me and how I was gonna be treated. And so she shut down.
And so her shutting down felt like complete rejection to me because now we're, I'm emotionally disconnected from this person. I adore who I need. Who I need to hug me and tell me everything's gonna be okay. And so I, and then I was in turn able to tell her in my letter, Hey, I felt rejected by you and these were my fears at the time, and this was what was going on for me.
And after we read those letters and had a follow up conversation, it shifted our entire relationship because we were able to see each other as people, again, not as. Megan, the gay person or mom, this person who, I feel like rejected me and we were able to start working through things at so much more ease and so much more compassion and empathy for each other, for where we stood because I was pushing her like, you need to accept faster. You need to come along faster.
And it wasn't that, it's just that we, we needed to have that conversation about what was going on underneath the surface. And since then, so this was pro over 10 years ago that we did this. And I mean, we've had plenty of hard conversations since then and everything hasn't been perfect, but we have found how to communicate and it works for us. And I have a 6-year-old daughter now, and my mom is the greatest grandmother in the world, and I'm getting to watch.
It's gonna make me cry, but I'm getting to watch her, be there for me in a different way, and it's really beautiful. So that's the best story for me and the most meaningful story for me, and the most risky thing that I could have done was to ask her to do that. Yeah, and, and that I just, I can't even imagine asking.
My mom's passed and she was not a very nice human being overall, but she, I. I know because, especially because I've worked through so many people with similar issues as my mom, that I have this understanding that I didn't have before of what her perspective might have been. And that kind of goes back to that empathy thing that we talked about earlier, where you gave each other the opportunity to for real step into each other's shoes.
In a way that is hard to do when you are the one feeling hurt Yeah. and feeling all those fears, and again, going back to that place where you, when you're emotionally contracted. Feeling fear, anger, or sadness, any of those things, you're not able to see that other perspective. So doing it in a letter form where you could have control over where you read it, nobody would see you.
All of those things are just so powerful examples of opening the door a little bit so that you can create just a little bit of light coming in through that door and then that. Another step makes a little more light and a little more light, and it gets safer and safer. Yeah. Yeah. And, I actually published those letters in my most recent book. The full letters are there for people to read if they wanna read them.
I tell a very short version 'cause the TED stage only allows so many minutes, , on, on the TED stage, but it's still, it's still the same. It's just, approaching, like you said, approaching it in a way that works for you and finding a way that works for the other person and. Both people being willing I think is really important because the other person isn't always as willing as my mom has been. Like if I asked her today, Hey mom, can we have that conversation again?
She'd be like, yeah, let's do it. Yeah. so I think when the other person is willing to, anything is possible. Yeah, I think that's really huge. And being able to let go if they're not willing and understand that that's about something going on within them. And U usually has nothing to do with you. Pretty much always. Yeah, it's I mean, yeah, I'm sure I could think of some outlandish, like crazy situation where it might where.
But generally speaking, it's again, going back to those feelings are happening inside of the other person, and so we make our decisions based on the feelings that we feel inside of us. We'd like to think that we're so logical and cool and put together, and that we're like, oh, yes. All this research I've done? No, we've usually decided, and we look for the research to justify our decisions. Yeah, we're all emotional beings.
I mean, it's just, it's a part of being human and we, we, I think we have to all accept that, right? It's like, it's a big part of this, this human journey is accepting that we are emotional and we have to constantly acknowledge where we are, and it's you, God. You have to be aware and you have to be willing and all the things. And I think the more willing you are to face and confront your emotions, the deeper your connections will be across the board. Absolutely, totally agree.
So you had just been outed and you're running home to tell your parents. What did you need to know then to move through that in a way that you could move through it now? Oh my gosh, I've never been asked that question so I'm on my way to see my parents. 21 years ago. Yeah. I think what would've been helpful was just knowing that I was gonna be okay. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Knowing the world wasn't gonna end for me. 'cause I really thought it was going to, I mean, it was, that. it was super scary.
That was the longest drive of my life, five minutes from campus. But yeah, I would, I would say it's just like, it's, it's gonna be okay on the other side of this one day I. Yeah. And you know that now? I think probably. I think as we grow up and we move through more challenges, we know that it's going to be okay. So if you knew that, was there something else that you could bring to the table? Did that conversation now that you wouldn't have been able to then? I don't know. Hmm. I don't know.
I really don't. I mean, I was so young. I was 21, like the twenties are, were, were hard and I think they're hard for everybody. And do I wish I could go back and do it again knowing what I know now? No, I don't think so. You know, like it's just, it, it, it was what it was meant to be and I wouldn't be who I am now without all of that. Yeah, I think, I think there's a lot of people who I would consider being the wolf.
Like it's never about regretting, but it is definitely about understanding what we needed to, I. Move through so that we could be our most empowered self. And you have done that in such a beautiful journey, and I'm honored to have this conversation with you and to share you and what you do with my audience and the world. Oh, thank you. You hold such a beautiful space and thank you for the very thoughtful questions and presence and all the things. Thank you.
We'll see you all next time on Be the Wolf.