I'm Shonda Rhymes and we're bringing Dominant Stories, created by Shawn land Audio in partnership with the Dove Self Stam Project. How you speak to yourself matters, how you speak to other people matter, and how you think about other people, what you disrespect in other people. I think it's worth it for us to first investigate like that touches someone in the place that the thing that you really care
about touches you. Hey, I'm Jess Meaner and this is Dominant Stories, the podcast that helps us reclaim and rewrite the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, about our bodies, our beauty, our creativity, and our identities. So. I don't know about you, but when I was growing up, I wanted to be so many things. I annually wanted to be a lizard trainer. I don't know why I thought that was a real job, But most of the time
I fantasize about being a famous actor. I mean, I was a kid who loved performing, and I was a kid in the eighties so obsessed with TV and the people that I saw on TV. I wanted to be just like them. Whever that was Nancy McKeon on the Facts of Life or Molly Ringwald and the Breakfast Club and if you're not a gen X or go and google those folks immediately. But um, you know, I don't know if my desire to be famous was so much about fame itself, but about the popularity that I thought
fame would bring me. I mean, hi, I was a girl at the last name of Wiener. I was like relentlessly picked on in school, and I thought that somehow fame would inoculate me from feeling some of those things, right, But I found myself as the years have gone on.
I had a lot of dominant stories about fame and success and they would kind of sound like, you know, when I'm successful, then people are going to love me, which is why I'm always so fascinated to talk to folks who did have a chance to live out my childhood dream and become famous at a young age. What does that do to their dominant stories? And it's funny because all of us now could be famous. You know, there are so many more ways to be famous than
just being an actor. Social media has really democratized the platform to reach an audience. So how do we live our lives authentically while others are looking and that's what we're gonna talk about on today's show. I am so thrilled to have Debbie Ryan joining me. You might know Debbie from her hit show Jesse on the Disney Channel, or from her series Insatiable, or maybe her new thriller film called Night Teeth. I've known Debbie since she was fifteen,
and I have watched her career grow. I've watched her grow, and now she has a platform of over thirty five million folks who follow her online. And she is still so intentional about balancing being vulnerable and human while protecting herself, especially living her life out loud. She has so many gems to offer this conversation. I cannot wait to dig in. Oh and don't forget to let me know if you thank by subscribing and writing a review wherever you're listening,
by super duper appreciate it. So, Debbie, I was trying to do the math on how long we've known each other. Did we meet when you were like fifteen? Maybe? Yeah, it would have been fifteen or sixteen, yeah, which is crazy because I was coming in. I was doing some coaching for the cast at the Disney Channel and we met and I was so struck. I was struck by a lot of things about you. But I remember, even at that age, the convos that we had felt like
they automatically went deep. You were very like old soul in a young body. Did you do you feel like that? Yeah? I was actually sort of reflecting on so many of the moments that we've had and now we have a friendship. Before that, we would just run into each other, and every time I see you, I would be like, oh,
real one. And I remember there was maybe a panel for young women, and maybe we were in the green room and I just started interrogating you, and I remember us having conversations about representation in the dream gap, and I remember being like, I can't imagine if I grew up with dolls that we're wheel cheer users, or how do we go? Or that just looked like what the world looks like. You always ask really good questions when
you talk about interrogating me. But I remember the curiosity that you have about systems and stories and like where we're forming those in our own minds and our own experiences. And you know, this show is about dominant stories, the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, and if left unchecked, they can become this sort of like seven maybe negative dialogue.
And I was curious about because you've been in this industry, the entertainment industry for a long time, started out as as a young kid, and you're growing up in it, do you remember having a dominant story, like was there a debt tape running through your head that you remember
thinking a lot about. I would say a specific story that I've had is and really sort of worked on not continuing to perpetuate my mind is that what something has been put out there and then sort of distilled and saturated and reframed and reflected back to you as something that you said or believed or identified that it's
prescriptive suddenly. And it was tricky for me to not see someone hold a fun house mirror version of the thing that I once said or that they thought that I was, and use that as a template of where I not only who I am, but also how I have to be stuck. Yes, you know, the feeling that you can't change or evolve because media exists and it's
a time stamp. And especially when I started out, I started out doing traditional interviews, and you would sit down with a reporter from Tiger Beat magazine or whatever, and you would say something and three months later it would come back to you or come out in a magazine,
and there was sort of a distinct time stamp. I keep thinking about you as a young person, and lots of young people who have a dream a desire to be in the performing arts, to be in the entertainment space, and it does require like these like kind of two separate personas. Right, there's like the you you are being as an average twelve thirteen year old human being going through all of the requisite growings up right, and then there's like that adult layer that comes into plan. I
only say adult because it feels more mature. Right, Shaking hands with people you don't know, learning how to connect with strangers, like wanting to put your best foot forward. You know, that's a tremendous pressure. Did you have You have you thought about that with a little bit of space now from that time, I think so, yeah. You know at the time, I would go onto a red carpet or something and someone would go, it's a lot of pressure what you do, And I was like, no,
that's what I go. That was what I know. And certainly, looking back, the ability to shoulder pressure does not take away from the weight of the pressure, right, And because it was what I knew how to do the way that my peers and friends were knowing how to do their homework, their extracurriculars, deal with things at home, have chores, have a weekend job, like I had my own sort of category of pressures that I was dealing with in tandem.
And I feel fortunate because when I started, I started when there were magazines in the beginning of musings of gossip blogs about celebrities, Ocean Up Jared, and that was starting, and it still felt there was like a respectful line. And then as I continued to do this thing, media changed. I became more of the lead and more sort of visible, and it felt gradual for me. But certainly I think
reconciling both of those things is challenging. I remember seeing or sort of noticing early on, this dynamic of people
in Hollywood being so attracted to youth and innocence. And if we can see someone experience something for the first time, acrush, a heartbreak, an argument with their mom, feeling alone, the sort of less experience they have the heart of these things will hit and and then to continue to work in that world, you have to learn boundaries, or you get more cynical, or things become less special, or you learn how to prota heck to yourself, and that shine
goes away a little bit, and then people get discarded because suddenly the thing that made them special was taken used, ran out. And I just sort of remember speaking with my mom alat about it in this perspective that she had, and it felt like it was always important for me to remain open and truthful in my human experience, to protect things like Wonder, to protect believing the best in people, no matter how many people show me that people can be so terrible, like not using that to look at
every person. And in the protecting of that, it almost feels like the more that you learn how to protect your boundaries, you can actually feel safe to protect Wonder. You can be open because you know where your line is and you know what's protected. So that juxtaposition is
certain have been tricky. The thought that you just shared about youth, I think is really important because I think that's a huge dominant story for young people in our industry, which is like when you're the fresh new thing, when you're the fresh face when you're the new this when you know it's the unfortunate narrative we've heard about even like the Disney lineup of folks who go through like the Disney system, so to speak, and who are on
Disney shows. And and then when you want to graduate and you do graduate and you're in this like more of an adult life and you're growing up, Like it's hard sometimes for people to let people grow, and I think internally, like if you're getting a lot of validation on the newness in your life, when you grow and you change, that can be really hard to kind of say, well, people still be interested in me if I'm not serving
that fantasy for you. It's both in tandem. I think when you see child prodigies of any sort of field, it's so impressive both that they're young but that they're doing the grown up thing. And so the more that you do the grown up thing, and then you just catch up to the age at which other people your age are still doing that thing, and you're no longer sort of a novelty because you're young. The way in which maybe you've felt ahead can be rattling now that
you are. The playing field has been leveled. But then the other areas that other people have been able to round out at they've maybe had college experiences that they've sort of worked through, dynamics with their families or whatever. But we live in a culture that glamorizes and romanticizes youth. We live in a culture that from a consumer perspective,
that is one of the tools that people use. And I think what's been so cool about the last five or ten years, especially as it relates to femin feminine and like female presenting people. You know, it's you're both too young to be taken seriously and also not taken seriously if you're not young enough to be sort of aligned with this traditional beauty standard to get in the door.
And it's this strange double edged sword that I think that we I've been really enjoying as I've been moving through my twenties, watching women breakthrough in their fifties and their sixties and like just absolutely crush it and watching people be celebrated in their evolution, watching Olivia Coleman, watching Angela Bassett, watching people only get better and better and not be sort of held by this tabloid standard of like are they doing an appropriate thing for their age,
and it's like, we're doing the thing. Let us do the thing. We're just settling into our rights. Allow us to do it. We're doing it for thirty less income on average, Like for us do it. Yeah. When I was thinking about this convo with you today, I was thinking about the obvious challenge that I think a lot of people listening to this might be curious about being a young woman in Hollywood in entertainment, which is all about like the appearance pressure, right, especially around like dominant
stories of like am I pretty enough? Like you know, am I the right? Wait for this kind of you know experience, Like there's so many people who inform those stories. Do you remember figuring out how to navigate those? Like could you share a little bit about like how do you traverse that minefield as a young person? It's tricky. And I will say that my perspective is from an actor, right, and it's from a person who has seen more photos
of myself than any person should ever have seen. I was talking with my dear friend Sam Landsky the other day, but we were just talking and he was like, are like parents parents, parents parents? Like for how many generations have we had mirrors? And then cameras. It's not our business what we look like. I don't think that we ever should have been this surrounded with our own reflection. And I just think to myself, how normalized it's been.
And there was a bit of time where I was going through strange just orphy and I didn't know how to figure it out, and I was like, O, great, it's not my business what I look like. I will have like a car reflection mirror to make sure I don't have anything on my face, but other than that, and I did not have any mirrors in my house.
I sort of like covered the ones in the bathroom, and I went through moving through my day not checking in with what I look like, because I realized I was getting caught in the mirror and picking things apart and realizing that for me, my job is to be an actor. My job is to be a person. It's not to be sort of a professional pretty person. That's not our job. Our job is to be the best
version of ourselves possible. And then a really healthy and fun relationship with style, with hair and makeup can come from emphasizing those things which first exist in you. M How do we reconcile the way, social media, even for actors, has become this additional job, right. I remember talking to ends on Broadway who were having less and less success in getting Broadway shows because they were plucking TV actors
and film actors to be on Broadway. Because a lot of this became a game about audience, right, and how much audience are you bringing to something? And then social media, I think for performers became this like extra job of cultivating in between. So how do you reconcile the pressure to keep the appearance up on social the audience engaged and interested, because that's become a new like a new element of the business, don't you think I do? Yeah?
And if you figure it out, let me know. Final answer. My friend Aaron Long, who's also an actor, he's like Instagram, it's a toy. It's fun to play with. It's not your job. It's just a toy. And that is really helpful for me to remember whenever I sort of get wound up in it. And also having been seen a specific way, there's like this thing about being typecast, and I certainly have experienced that, and it can be really tricky to say you've seen me this way, but that
was filmed eight years ago. So can I show you other ways that you could see me and who I really am? And so it can be very easy for us to create moments for social media, to create moments to sort of use social media as a medium and
as a platform. And I know people who do that so effectively, so elegantly, And for me, I think I found that social media works best when it's just a way of highlighting or sharing something that already exists organically, and if I'm not creating moments for it, if I'm not sort of living and dying by it. But it's just like if people haven't ever seen me do a lot of stunts or they didn't realize I did a lot of stunts, but it was physical comedy and a sitcom for so long, And I do a lot of
fight training, but no one's seen me that way. Great, Then if I'm doing some fight training, I'll throw something up on Instagram showing people with me fight training, And if that gives you a more well rounded picture of who I am, then that's great. And again, I think this goes back to the dominant story of like are we stagnant? Are we allowed to evolve? And I think
it's like, yes, telegraph it as it happens organically. Well, that's what I'm hearing in this that I think is a great takeaway for everybody, quite frankly, which is like what is your intentionality and using the platform that you're on. Right,
So you're talking about creating sharing. I love the idea of sharing to your sharing parts of your life but that are authentically very That's a great model to think about, right, Like pull from your life organically share what you will for that are different parts of you, but not to manufacture an image you think you're supposed to be. And to know that if you're sharing what's organically happening in your life, it's never going to be as impressive as
people who do it professionally. My Instagram will never be as perfect as impressive as someone who does Instagram as a job, because they are thoughtful about it, they're educated, they spend time thinking about it and doing it. So I cannot hold myself to a standard of you know, you can't go to karaoke and like have a good time if you're trying to put on the show at
the Staples Center. That people have spent a lot of time putting together like I know what it is and know what it is to you, and it does not have to be your value. Most most of those people, that's not what their real life looks like. And that's also where the changing and the challenging of the dominant stories come in, is that when you recognize that we're all going through very similar evolution pieces everything that you've said thus far in our conversation about like can I change,
can I grow? Can I be allowed to do that even when I've got a public audience. I mean, I think you've said this before, and I think it's really worth mentioning again that you do get captured in time, you know, when we produce things online for content. So people who might be seeing you now on a show like Jesse, which was you know, eight years ago, that's new to them and they're thinking about Debbie in that context. But here's Debbie now, this whole other, evolving, growing, maturing person.
And so that's part of the downside I would say of like living our lives as publicly as we do, is that you're right whenever anybody gets connected to you. What do you always say, like, context is a luxury, Yeah, it is things can be so quickly decontextualized, and it can just be challenging to make sure that things represent
what your intention is and what your voices. And something I've been really focusing on is making sure that the things that I put out there, I'm trying to run it through a filter of like Heidi Gardner, who's currently a CAUSSE member on SNL, who I think is so funny and so cool. One time I heard her say, we were doing press with this movie Life of the Party, and she was talking about before she says anything, before she speaks, she likes to ask herself, is it kind?
Is it truthful? And is it necessary? And those three things. It was the first time I had heard that. And I think joy is necessary. I think laughter is kind. And so it's just funny. It's funny, but along as it also checks those boxes, you know, And then there's only so much we can do. And this is why the more that we hold space for ourselves to constantly grow and evolve, I think, the more that we can remember that everyone else around us is also doing that.
Someone that you love, someone you admire, someone a version of you that you really liked. Like anything is subject to sort of find more truth and evolve. Hey, y'all, don't go anywhere. This conversation is getting so good. Hey, we're back. You're ready to conquer your dominance stories. I know you are here. We go. I think a lot because I educate, as you know, a lot of young
people on these topics. We do a lot of workshops around media literacy and helping to kind of deconstruct some of the images that we're getting, especially as young people who might not have these lived experience yet to contextualize in the way that we're talking about. And I wanted to dig a little bit deeper into like what you said before about comparison is the thief of joy, the
comparison trap of all of this scrolling. Because you you said something in a project that you were doing for Darling magazine and for Area, And I want to play a clip of this when we're talking about the compare and despair cycle that social media can instigate. So I want to I want to take a listen to that. I want to play that for you real quick. The idea of comparison is something that I think became so new with social media and stuff. I didn't notice it
until I got a zanga or in my space. God, like, these girls are beautiful and like every thing looks circular on them, and they're glowy, and they're like just splayed out on like someone's yacht, which is like shiny things everywhere, and we're like told that this is like success and this is beauty, and it is, but there's also like forty other versions of it. M it's funny to hear me realizing and working through it for the first time. It's true, and you know, I think that it also.
I was asking someone the other day how things change in trends, and we were talking and what women find beautiful versus what men find beautiful and sort of which comes first the invention of a new beauty trend or media pushing it or products being sold to perpetuate it.
And a friend was sharing the sort of origin. They study a lot of like relations about women, femininity, and sex, and they were saying that slut shaming is something that actually was really pushed and brought about and furthered by women, which is like something I think we maybe historically associate with men, but it's something that women tend to really drive the idea of us sort of gate keeping and like controlling supply and demand and being like what it
means to be a woman and your value of a woman has to look like what I value as a woman. And I think the times that so many of us as people find something in a quality and another person that we don't like, it's usually not about that person.
It's just about what you maybe are unable to provide for yourself or unable to protect in yourself, and the ability to find the value in someone else's path looking different is the ability to grow into something that might be really fulfilling for you, or to just hold value and respect for something that is not your journey but that someone else is doing so beautifully in a way
that you could admire and learn from. And I think that one of the biggest sort of points of confusion I think for especially for women are female presenting people, is this sort of vintage concept of having it all. I'm very validated by being a person in relation to my partner, and that can be a tricky thing and reconciling both. You know, there's just so many mixed messages first about womanhood and value and how it's been so
strongly tied historically to someone else into a family. Then if spaces have opened up and conversations around in women and our rights, and you know, they're letting us vote now. I don't know if you've heard. That's really cool. They're running us to politics for now. Anyway, this could go wrong, But it also it almost feels like there's sort of
a that pressure to do it all. You can work now, but also you still must be an engage parent, you still have to get dinner on the table, and that I think perpetuates this judgment, particularly I've noticed by women of women who do choose to follow a more traditional path. I just think it's one of the places that's so undervalued, Like it makes it hard for us to allow ourselves to feel proud of excelling in one or two areas, to commit to one or two things and to run that.
And my perspective over the last few years has broadened so much in regards to how challenging and how admirable and ultimately badass it is to take inventory of your home life and create a really beautiful and safe space there, to be a person committed to your partner, investing in communication, investing in building something together to hold space for love, to be a mother, to untangle generational tendencies or traumas, or antiquated ways of communicating unhealthy value systems, to set
your family up. That's so much work. It's so hard, and I feel like in the collective voice of feminism, it's still is maybe underrepresented or undervalued, or sort of approached with a snarky voice. And I just think that how you speak to yourself matters, how you speak to other people matter, and how you think about other people, what you disrespect in other people, what you undervalue or
think is settling. I think it's worth it for us to first investigate like that touches someone in the place that the thing that you really care about touches you, and it doesn't have to look the same. And the more that we can begin to hold space for that, the less hard we can be on ourselves for what we're doing or not doing, and the more linearly we
can follow our path without following comparison. Yeah, when you talk about the judgment that we have about the way a woman or a person might structure their life and their values and their interests, I think a lot of that is our internalized sexism patriarchical beliefs, racism, Like I think we've internalized so much that we are a commune to be running around with dominant stories that have been
left unchecked. And partly what I'm passionate about is us, much like we're doing in this conversation, just like opening the box, examining a bit like where did that come from? Why do I feel that way? How does that serve me? Because that's at the core of everything we've been talking about, Like you're creating what I call like the designing of a good life, right, a life that you love on your own terms, and that even figuring out like what
are those terms? What do I care about? Is it okay for me to be ambitious for one part of my life and then change focus and care about family and another How do those live side by side? Like we've kind of boiled those down into little magazine articles or listicals or kind of you know, memes on the internet.
But a lot of this is the true reckoning of our lives, right, is how do I move through the world, developing who I am, not being stuck in dominant stories about what I can or can't be, and then how
do I give myself grace in space to grow. What I've heard you say is when we start to practice that, we're gonna have a much better odds of giving that grace in space to somebody else, whether we know them or not, whether you're you know, Debbie Ryan, the performer I'm scrolling through on Instagram, or whether you're Debbie Ryan, my friend who I'm watching blossom develop and grow into this like incredible human, which is true, by the way, But like, I feel like that is the real work
of the work, and it's not easy to do that work. It's not easy to unpack that stuff. No, it's not, and I think at first requires the courage to again challenge the stories because there are things that we do not want to believe about ourselves. We don't want to believe that we've internalized misogyny as women. The meme of a girl who's like, I'm not like other girls. I'm a cool girl. I'm not like other girls. I've drink
beer and I don't wear makeup. Like for us to take down or disrespect other women, that is perpetuating the male gaze, because that's just about being seen as cool to do it and correct and that's like inherently twisted. It's not us versus them, And I think that how much more should we do that for other women and other other people? I think in general, challenging what the stories are, challenging, what the what culture is set up to reward? Agreed, we're all trying to do it. We're
all trying to do a version of it. Wow, I thought that it looked like this. I grew up thinking this was it, This was my value. It came from doing this. It came from being this thing and holding space to be like, we'll look at this other person doing this thing that I could never imagine finding value from or finding identity in, and they're killing it and
it's so impressive. That's what I liked about what you said in that clip that we played, because when you talked about like there's you know, forty different versions of success, I feel like why that spoke to me is because I've been unpacking, repacking and unpacking again, like all of my belief systems around my worth equals my work, which I think a lot of people listening could probably relate to. In whatever career you're in or whatever field you're in.
But when you start to unpack those and you start to say, well, then what what would my value be based on? What do I care about? What's valuable to me? I think that's a conversation. We can't start young enough. This is such a great learning tool about a self tenderness, a self compassion, and a self like an independence that isn't looking for the external world to bless our value or our loveability. Yeah, I mean, no one is in island.
And I think if we're all sort of equally navigating a culture that has some sort of toxic and dangerous and confusing viewpoints, we also get to be intentional with the voice that we put back into that culture. And that's from public facing an actor, or that's anyone with
a platform. We all are public facing. We all have platforms, and there's so much that we're all putting in and if it's not productive, it could be just perpetuating the broken things, but also the concept of reframing idea of productivity. You know this whole story that our workers are worth and that well, can I even do this hobby? Can
I afford the time to do this thing? But there's a much more productive use of my time, and there's a much more productive use of my money, and I'm saving and saving and everything I'm doing is working and grinding, and I believe in that sort of as the rule,
so that there can be exceptions to that rule. I think the exception is that anything that you do, an extracurricular hobby, time with a friend, time unplugged, setting a boundary, not being on your phone for ten hours, keeping a gratitude journal, meditation, doing a silly play day, anything that you do that you have a hard time justifying in
relation to a productivity mindset. I think it's important to remember that to protect the art, you have to protect the artist, and that you can only show up better for your obligations, for your relationship, for the people in your life, for your future version of yourself if you are first well rounded and grounded and healthy, and anything you do that reinforces your self esteem and your soul only makes you better and it is worth it. Amen.
And here's what inspires me about what you're just saying there when you said to protect the art is to protect the artist as well. And I was thinking about your incredible husband as an artist. You're an artist, you have a family of artists, like we love and no artists. And I'm also thinking about how tender it is when
you put your art out into the world. The protection that we need to create, right because anybody, whether you're a writer, a speaker, a singer, you know, an actor, dance or anybody athlete, anybody who puts their art into the world, it's so tender to receive critique. It's so
tendered to receive feedback on that. And I would be remiss if I didn't introduce into this conversation, like how do you navigate against like trolls and unsolicited feedback and everybody's got an opinion, and like everybody is so quick to judge, and the way we've set up our systems too. You know, we're talking about establishing all this grace and space, but the reality is we can literally fire off a terrible comment to somebody we know or don't know with
a blink of an eye, Right. Yeah. I think ultimately, if I put something out there and it's not for you, that's cool. If you feel compelled to go online and trash talk it, I'm probably not going to see that because I just I don't spend tons of time on social media, and when I do I'm that's not what I'm looking for. So maybe that made you feel better
by saying that didn't really do anything to me. Definitely didn't do anything about the fact that it's already been made and that it's someone else's favorite thing and someone else's thing that they like, And if you're trolling, then you know that's on you. That has nothing to do with me. I've done what I've done and anything that we put out there, as long as you can really stand beside your intentions in doing it and you investigate it to begin with, like you cannot look backwards a
second guess yourself. You have to just first make sure that it's right, is it kind, is it truthful? Is it necessary? And then do it, release it and move on to the next thing. I think that's the theme of a big part of our combo today has been intentionality, whether it was what you were putting out on social media,
how you were sharing your life. But now, even as an artist, and I don't know if a lot of the folks know this about you, but when you were doing Jesse, you became a director and you were actually the youngest female director of episodic television as well as the youngest female actively engage in a multi camera community at the d g A, which just stands for the
Director's Guild of America. It's no small feat, and it's worth mentioning because I wanted you to talk a little bit about what it means to be more in control of your image or the story in that role than being in front of the camera. What does that serve differently for you as a as a human being and
as an artist and storyteller. I think over the last for me, it's felt like five years the conversation has evolved so gorgeously to be really thoughtful in trying to diversify not only the stories that are being told, but the people that are telling the stories and the opportunities
that those people get. And I've read a thousand scripts about a girl and she's someone's something, daughter, sister, friend, cheer leading captain, girlfriend, first crush, dream girl, crazy girl, next door, whatever, and I've seen how those are written. You know, there's there's a thing that happens when someone tells a story that they know very well, and then there's a thing that happens that someone tells a story that feels to be public domain and it's sort of
their approximation of this generation of the same thing. And being in the d g A and being in the multi camera meetings and the Director's Guild, being certainly the youngest person, certainly one of the few women, and being given a seat at the table, being invited into those spaces.
You know, like, certainly there are people who were like, go, she's here because use an actor, And it's like, I mean here because I've studied this and because I've shadowed at length, and also being an actor got me the opportunity to shadow, like not being sort of ignorant about what got me in the spaces, but also taking accountability for what I've done with those opportunities and for young women.
When I think about, and we talk about this all the time, how affected we are by the stories and media, by how we see other girls, how we see women, how women talk about other women in movies. What kind of woman is seen to be desirable and worth loving, and what kind of woman is seemed to be unlovable or the friend and deemed to be the support person.
These things can perpetuate themselves, or we can create like a beautiful architecture of a world that looks like not only what I know it to be, but also what I like for Yeah, and I've been fortunate to be in those spaces and have people take a chance on me. And there's certainly times where you developed the character and I developed this project. We were taking around and pitching it and people were like, well, why why do we care about these women? And I was like, there are protagonists.
I don't know what to tell you. Why do you care about anyone who's the lead of anything? Like, you know, if it's John Wick, it's because he got out of the game and his wife died in the But like, people are worth caring about, even if they don't look
like your typical hero. I find those questions come up mostly then, Yeah, that and you know, quite frankly, I've also been in things where you know, my role existed to make the man a hero, and now we know why we care about the dynamic is because it allows the man to grow and rise to the occasion and impress the girl. And that is a thing that exists in real life. Certainly, men motivated by love or by
beauty or by whatever can rise to an occasion. But I think that's first thought, and I think that's lazy, And I don't think that that's putting anything in the world that we're missing. When you're in those rooms, Debbie, I hear this incredible confidence and conviction and self possession which I know you and I know to be true
about you. And and I'm also curious if somebody is listening and saying like, Okay, I'm the first in my room of coders, right, or I'm in this room of you know, executives, and and I'm one of the only dominant stories are bound to come up, right, We're bound to have a thought of what am I doing here? Am I an impostor are they going to find out I'm a fraud? Like do you have like a is there anything you've discovered that helps you quiet that story and tell yourself another? I mean, I will say that
the credits don't transfer. You can be very good at taking up space in one area of your life and very easily shrinking another. It happens to me where I'll be like, and let me know when the script has a personality and the woman exists for a reason, click, and then I'll walk into a room and be like, I'm so oh, I'm so sorry. I spoke like I should be seen and not heard. Why that, um, I would say, in terms of taking up space, first look
around a room and look at why you're there. The things that I feel usually like I shouldn't speak because I'm different than everyone in this way. That typically is your gift. That's what you're bringing to that room that
someone else isn't bringing. So while it can get very twisted in our brains and say, but that's why you're unqualified to speak, that's why you should not say anything that actually is Like everything that you've gone through and your family and your life and your messaging, the art you consume, the things that you are sort of emotionally allergic to, all of those things has built such a unique, beautiful mosaic of who you are. And it's no one else in any room that you're in will have that.
But if there's something that continuously feels bad and makes you feel unqualified or small and does not value you and has you questioned your own value, I promise you you can do without that. Yeah, get out of there. Yeah, all right, you know the drill at that time. I'll be back before you know it. Yeah, I hope you're enjoying this as much as I am. All right, let's dig back in. What is a story that you're actively working through right now in your life as an adult?
Like we talked about the ones in the beginning as a kid, But what story is Debbi kind of working through now. I think a story that I'm trying to shift is that as important as it is to show up for other people, it is that important or more
important to show up for myself. It's just about turning that knowledge into a priority list and a value system with my time and to know that not only is it enough to show up for myself and for my primary relationship and my family, but also it's the kinder thing to every obligation or every relation up in my life for me to show up as the best version of myself, and to do that, I have to first show up for myself. Yeah. I mean, it's just as
you were talking. I was just all I hear when you're saying that it is a sort of like well rounded approach to being a human that you're allowing yourself to be fulfilled by multiple avenues. If joy is a value that you most hold on to dearly, then of course you know we want to live into that. We want to live into that in our relationships and our work and our self a relationship to ourselves too. And I and I think what we've uncovered today a lot
is the platform that we might express ourselves on. That's a medium, that's a way to connect. But the why you're connecting and understanding who you are is really most important. And you're just a gem. Thanks so much for having me into this conversation. I just think solful for us all to remember that we're always growing. We have the opportunity to constantly evolve. Age is no long longer you know,
you are only ripening, You're only getting better. And something that I've noticed sort of coming out of pandemic probably with everyone that can relate to this to some degree, but particularly the people that I'm having a lot of intimate conversations with women or people in their sort of early twenties to mid thirties. The biggest thing is we've sort of put our heads down, got out of high school, we went really hard in one direction, developed a thing,
and then sort of grew another thing. Secondarily, and that can be style, that can be your home environment, that can be your career that could be your family, that could be kids, that could be you know, your dynamics with your family or whatever. Doing those things and going through those things, that feels as though we've all now lifted our heads up and said, oh no, what about these other things? And these other people next to me are so much farther along in this thing, and it's
too late for me to start in this thing. Or I don't know about this, so this is just not what I'm going to be good at. Those are all lies. Those are all lies designed by just culture and negative forces to keep you small, like they don't want you to thrive, they don't want you to spread your wings, like it's an act of rebellion for us to take
up the space that is ours. And the more that you stand where you are, and the more that you take ownership over what you can do, the more you'll realize most of the limits are not put on you. They're just perpetuated by us because we're so used to it. My dog used to put him in the cage when he was a baby, and like a crate so that he could sleep, and we would close the door and
after several nights of pawing at the door. He would go in there and we close the door and he would sleep, and then he would wait for us to open the door in the morning. And after a certain amount of time, we didn't even close the door, but he didn't even try. He didn't even push the door because he was so used to knowing. He tried a couple of times, and he said, well, this door is always closed, and I should just wait for someone to
let me out. And I think so often I find we do that to ourselves, even if it's been closed before. Try today. That is bringing the metaphor all the way home. Baby, that was we did one, did one. But it's so true because those dominant stories are lies and they thrive on secrecy and shame, which is also why I like to speak them out loud, so that people can hear they're not alone in them, they can challenge them, change them.
It's evolution and it's a revolution. That's right, That's right. Yeah, Shame. I think shame is the biggest hindrance that we have. It's something that I spent a lot of time because I have generalized anxiety. I spent a lot of time waking up just mortified that I existed in a body and spoke in general like being perceived and being a person. Plagues may often and I think to myself, if I was born into a haunted locket or an old baby bell as one often, maybe then I would have been free.
But I was born this way and this time, in this moment for a reason, and so I got to just disentangle from that, allow myself to be perceived, not be held back by embarrassment, change, just move forward and know you could change your story. Beautiful Mike Drop, I love I love her. I love that combo. I hope you enjoy that as well. So I'm gonna give you
kind of like my three takeaways. But I'm thinking about just coming out of this convo with Debbie, and I think number one, what I'm really ruminating on is her idea. But like social media works best when it's just a way of kind of highlighting or sharing something in your life that already exists organically. You know, it's about doing it with intention, but it's also about like letting your life need is what I took away from it, not trying to make your life look like somebody else's. Love
that thought. I also want to remind us that we are the CEOs of our own media empires. All of us with platforms, whether we're famous or not, have an opportunity to be responsible in what we post and what we share and to make sure that we're not contributing to any toxicity or negativity out there. And then I think personally, a huge takeaway that applies is creating grace and space for ourselves and for others, you know, just knowing that we are human beings and process we're going
to change. Social media's just a snapshot of a single moment of our lives, and giving us the grace and space to grow, to change those dominant stories, to move away from those stories. That permission for ourselves is important, and certainly permission for the people that we admire and
love and follow online. And then I think there was some great cractical action stuffs that Debbie rattled off that I wrote down, which was like making sure that we're maintaining our personal boundaries, not oversharing, on plugging from social media when we need to, and certainly things like keeping a gratitude journal, being consistent in any kind of meditation you might be doing, just taking time offline so that you're fulfilled and balanced, and then I think you'll bring
that into your online relationships as well. And if you're a parent, educator, or a mentor out there for young kids, and this conversation has inspired you to want to have more of a dialogue with young people in your life about the impacts of social media and how to help them build a positive relationship with it. Our partners at
Dove have an incredible resource for that. You can find it at dove dot com Backslash the Selfie Talk, And if you're interested in exploring more about your dominant stories and how you can challenge them and change them, I teach workshops on this stuff, so you can always sign up at Jess Weiner dot com. You can follow me on Instagram and I'm Jess Weiner. I really loved the community that we're creating. I love the stories you're sharing
and the questions you're asking. So if you want to tell us about your dominant stories that you're rewriting and working on, you can email us at podcast at dominant stories dot com or leave us a voicemail at two one three two five nine three zero three three And don't stress, I'm gonna put all that in the show. Notes. Next week on the show, we're gonna be talking about
what happens when your body feels like the enemy. We're gonna be talking with poet and speaker as your In Twinet, who will be sharing about her life with ms a common neurological condition. Assur is a commission slam poet who forms magazine once called the Maya Angelou of the millennial generation, and her diagnosis of ms AT for late twenties both disrupted her life and gave her a new appreciation and
relationship to her body and body image. This is going to be a fantastic conversation as your is hilarious, so honest, so raw. Until then, thank you so much for listening, and please don't forget to write a review. It's super duper duper helps us out and remember always learning, always growing. Dominant Stories with Jess Winer is a production of Shonda
land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.