Governor Gretchen Whitmer

Do you think that we as people are able to love unconditionally?

You know, my husband and I have that debate. Who always tells me I'm his soulmate. He's a romantic and I am less of a romantic.

I learn a lot from my dog and from my child, yes I mean, and from my boyfriend too, who he does seem to love me unconditionally. I seem to have a lot more conditions.

Maybe maybe it's a female thing too.

Maybe it is a female thing.

Hello, I'm mini driver. I've always loved Proust's questionnaire. It was originally in nineteenth century parlor game where players would ask each other thirty five questions aimed at revealing the other player's true nature.

In asking different.

People the same set of questions, you can make observations about which truths appear to be universal. And it made me wonder, what if these questions were just the jumping off point, what greater depths would be revealed if I asked these questions as conversation starters. So I adapted Pru's questionnaire and I wrote my own seven questions that I personally think are pertinent to a person's story. They are when and where were you happiest. What is the quality

Love for you?

What question would you most like answered, What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most? What would be your last meal? And can you tell me something in your life that's grown out of a personal disaster? And I've gathered a group of really remarkable people, ones that I am honored and humbled to have had the chance to engage with. You may not hear their answers to

Would you tell me where and when you were happiest?

I love the question because I reflected, you know, on various points in my life. When I think, one of the hardest times in my life was when I was pregnant with my first daughter, but also taking care of my mom at the end of her life, and my mom was dying of brain cancer. She was only fifty nine at the time, and I was pregnant and brought this new little girl into the world, who I named

Hard time trimes.

I felt really at peace and very happy during those early years of my daughter's life.

Oh my gosh, and your mom met your baby daughter, she did?

You know, you always hear those stories about people that defy odds or live longer because they have something to look forward to. And I was always a little skeptical, but I saw it in my mom. She was given four to six months to live and lived for over eighteen months and saw the birth of her first grandchild, who became her namesake. And I think it was good healthcare, was good attitude, supportive family, but also something to look forward to.

It's incredible, actually our intention, Like look at that, intending to prolong our life because we want to do something, we forget to believe. We forget to believe in the power of our intention and the idea of setting our course. Like I love that your mum set the coordinates. What I am going to meet my granddaughter, and I love the idea that death was no match for that, for that intention.

That real estate between your two ears, my father always says, is the most valuable right, because what you think, your intention that drives so much of what your reality.

Is, it really does.

But you, I think so often we get swayed by we get swayed by what is circumstantial. So we get swayed by the day we wake up it's raining, the gas has been turned off, and we've broken up with our partner, and we align ourselves with the awfulness of that as opposed to the thing that solves for all of that, which is what is inside. I wish they taught it in school. I wish that the idea of intention setting and aligning yourself with the best possible outcome

It's a discipline. It feels like a profound spiritual practice.

It is a practice.

And I think, you know, one of the things that I've come to realize and really appreciate is we all have control.

It feels like so much is out of our control and so.

Much is but we all have control about what we take in from the world, in what we put out into the world. And I'm always my girls, And even on the hardest days, I sit down and I rate three good things that happened, or three things for which I'm grateful. And so some days it's my dogs and a glass of wine and the Great British Baking Show. But I find something for which I'm grateful.

I have the same three.

I have the same three, the same tree list.

That's a good list right there.

And what would you counter with, you know, in those moments where it feels because let's face it, it can feel tidal when things that are outside of our control, whether it's politics or what we see going on globally or whatever is going on personally, in our lives when it feels tidal. Do you really feel that sitting down and counting your making a gratitude list in that moment, is that really can stave off the tide of fear or negative thinking.

I do.

I really believe that that practice has helped me navigate some of the hardest, most unimaginable things I could have ever fathomed. I'm an ordinary person, but I serve in a really extraordinary rule, and it's an extraordinary time in

I mean, oh my gosh, If you're doing that from the point of governance, that makes ess Actually, I find that incredibly positive because you're a human being tasked.

With a big job. But I like the.

Idea that you can keep things grossroots in a way to manage those big things.

That's really useful.

What question would you most like answered?

Well, I think you know at fifty three years old and with my mother who died at fifty nine. I do think what happens after this life, That's a question I would love to know the answer to, and I never will and I would you have to be at peace with that, because there's I will never know for sure until it happens. But I think that's one that is always kind of in the background of my head.

How do I appreciate.

The moment I'm in now and stay in the moment and recognize I won't ever get the answer to that question.

I mean, I think that's I think what's interesting is there's an answer in what you just said that.

I wonder if we knew, would.

We allow ourselves to be as present in this life, if we were so busy focused on or going, oh, it doesn't matter what I do now, because I'm going to my immortality and all these.

Good things are going to happen there.

I wonder if that's maybe that's part of it, that we wouldn't be as present if we were so certain.

One of the quotes, I think it is Carl Sagan but said we all began to stardust, and we will all go back to stardust. One day something to that effect, and we're all connected and we existed in some form always, and that gives me some peace. But I'm searching. I'm a searcher.

Yeah, I mean me too. I guess it's knowing. It wouldn't look it probably doesn't look like this. Like when I think about my mum or my dad, both of who've died, I can feel them so specifically, but I can't see them.

Obviously, I can't hug them, but.

I feel them in the same in that same way. That's not a memory of love. It feels way more present than that. So I quite like the mystery. I quite like the mystery because mystery and gender's faith, and perhaps that's the most that we can have as humans, because we just have no idea why we are here, what the meaning is. Love seems to be the biggest one I could ever point to. Yeah, but I like that Carl Sagan quote, You're right, we're dust.

It's so funny.

It can sound pejorative, you're dust, and then it can also sound incredibly positive, your stardust star dust.

I like that.

Can you tell me something in your life that has grown out of a personal disaster?

I wrote a book recently, and you know, part of the reason I wrote it is people would often ask, with all the threats I've gotten and all of the crises I've had to lead through, why do I want to keep doing this? Why do I still feel optimistic? And I thought, I'm going to give people reasons why they should feel optimistic and things that I've learned in my life that have helped.

Me navigate this.

And one of the things that people responded most kind of strongly too, was in the book I talk about listening and the power of listening and why more people need to cultivate that strength. I think it's a superpower. I'd like to understand from the men who were involved in a plot to kidnap and kill me, I would like to understand why. I would actually like to meet with one of them and ask them why and understand

I haven't done it yet.

I'd like to do, but there's still all sorts of appeals, so I can't do it yet, But one day i'd like to. I'd like to see if I can understand something or learn something.

I think that is an astonishing way to approach what is unfathomable for all of us. I think that will be an amazing book, and I really hope that you write it and examine those ideas. But God, I'm so sorry that happened to you. It's a poetry thing, but I am assuming that you will turn it into something else down the line. Yeah.

Yeah.

A therapist once said to me, we're all a ball of clay, and sometimes things are taken away from us. It's not our fault. Something's taken away. And when a ball of clay is hollowed out, it becomes a cup, a vessel, and it has purpose. And so I think that's maybe a piece of wisdom that someone gave to me that has helped me find value even in really tough, unfair stuff that happens.

That's such a good way of putting it personally in like, for you, how do you know when something that has been lost or removed or is painful.

Is something that needs to be let go of? And how do you know when it.

Is something that can be turned into something else?

I don't know, dang it, I really did think.

I think it reveals itself, you know, Minnie.

I often think about as I'm a survivor of sexual assault when I was in college and I had not.

Talked about it publicly for decades. I'd shared it with a few partners over the.

Years, but I had never spoken about it publicly. And we were having a very difficult debate in the Michigan legislature and I had revealed that I'd been raped in college during the debate. I had not planned to do it, And in the aftermath of it, I needed to call my dad on the way home from work because I knew it would be in the news and I wanted him to hear from me instead of on the news.

I think that's extraordinary, and that is quite literally the I'm assuming earning something terrible into something good. But also I think those things take time to marinate. They take time for us to be able to articulate in a way that will be heard. Because particularly around this, but particularly we look at women who have not been believed for so long, around sexual assault of rape kits sitting

Thank you.

So, can you tell me what person, place, or experience most altered your life.

I think the time that I was taking care of my mom at the end of her life and my daughter at the beginning of hers. You know, they say that the five most stressful events that ever happen in a course of a lifetime are moving your home, starting a new job, the birth of a loved one, the death of a loved one, and a new marriage. And I did all five of those things the span of a year and a half when I was newly elected state representative in Michigan, caring for my mom at the

Too, which was crazy.

But it was that period of time that was, without question that the heaviest and hardest, but also really made me who I am today. I don't have patience for bs. I want to get things done, and I had to find an insurance company at that time and figure out how to keep nursing my daughter and prepare for work, and it was a really difficult time in my life,

It was that period of time for me.

Wow, Wow. I mean, I don't know how you did it.

Truly, I don't know how you did one of those things, because I've been through a few of them, and britt to have been simultaneous is extraordinary. Did you find that, I think women often become a centrifuge in certainly like within a family and when things are happening incredibly focused and organized. Did you find that people showed up to really help that once you knew what it was you.

Had to do.

You had to be there for your mother, you had to be there for your baby daughter, you had to move your home, and you had to govern ten million people. Did you find that people came into your sphere to really support and help you.

Absolutely? I am really fortunate.

I've got wonderful friends and extended family and a team around me that I couldn't have done any of it without a lot of people having chipped in and been a part of it.

And it's interesting too.

I think it reaffirms why it's so important that we have diverse groups of.

People in decision making places.

A lot of my male counterparts, my brother, didn't have the same lived experience I did, even though he was alive at the same time, and so when there is a woman at the table, when there's a debate around healthcare or childcare, it's so important because it's not just about women, but we have a different experience taking care.

Of our dads or our brothers or our sons.

It helps everyone, and I think that, for me is one of the most important takeaways from all those hardships, is that we need diversity around tables to make better decisions. Companies see better bottom lines, governments see better outcomes. And that's I think a really important lesson from all of that too, that I've always always tried to keep focus on.

Oh, I couldn't agree with you more. I'm very interested Why if you and I can sit here and acknowledge that and demonstrably one can see that it is true across the board, from corporations and within politics, why is it so hard for it to be reflected. Why is it so hard to be come not just policy politically, but social policy. Why why when it so clearly betters everything. Do you think there is a resistance to that kind of diversity?

I mean there have been unscrupulous I think motives for people that have tried to suggest that when you have that kind of empowerment. It means someone gets left out that like if you champion you know, greater diversity here, it means it comes at the cost of another, And that's not true at all.

In fact, everyone benefits from it.

But I do think that there are people with their own agendas who try to make the case that some people get excluded and they've benefited personally from that. But it's a fallacy and I think it's a lesson.

We're going to learn the hard way. Unfortunately, right now.

I was going to say, it sure feels like the amount of times one I've heard different versions of what you've just said, and it was completely and utterly like it was like speaking into the wind.

Do you think that that's that? Really?

That?

Really? Is it?

That people will sadly learn the hard way. They'll learn through losing healthcare, they'll learn through the spread of diseases, they'll learn through their social security essentially through their pocketbook, and through their health are the only ways that those lessons might be learned.

I don't savor the thought, but I think that's probably true. I know that there are some who have voice, well, this is what the people have asked for, and now they're going to have to feel it right that I don't. I don't like that philosophy. It feels so cynical and kind of cruel. Yeah, but I do think that we will see the ramifications of that, and maybe maybe that'll help us get back to a place where people understand that.

Yeah, I mean, I'm in complete agreement. It's been one of the hardest things to understand of why a fear led response to that, or the idea that if inclusion means exclusion somewhere else, it's a really strange social math that I guess. I hope there's a there's I hope there's another way that that can be explained, that it could be explained with love, so that we could all evolve together, because the idea is not it seems to me, this continuing division, but rather for all boats to rise

I don't understand, But.

You use the right word. You said, fear, and that that is what it's all about. Fear is a powerful motivator, and it doesn't heal anything though.

The only thing that can heal is love. So you've mentioned both.

Words and I think that's really wise and a lot of truth to it.

But fear motivates.

People to pull away from one another, and love brings us together.

It also feels that love itself has been redefined and divided in a way, the idea of what is loved and how does one heal that in this weird like because it feels like we're in a kind of post truth reality where all of the guardrails around fact and truth have been dismantled. Therefore, love itself is sort of up for grabs, Whereas I feel like it used to be something that we all agreed on what love felt like, and now it feels like it's been co opted for

I do, I absolutely do. I couldn't. I couldn't do this work.

I wouldn't want to do this work if I didn't really believe that in my core. I'm sober about how difficult it is and showing up, continuing to make the choice to show up. I understand the inclination to want to turn away, which a lot of people are feeling right now because it does feel so heavy and overwhelming and how do you fix all the misinformation in the world, Like it's just huge and hard and heavy. But I also have found in my own life pulling away is the worst thing I can do. I feel worse.

I need to be in it, And I'm encouraging people not to not to look away, but to say what can I do today? And each of us can play a role in that without a doubt, and important.

Role absolutely.

What relationship, real or fictionalized defines love for you?

You know, I love my kids more than anything on the planet, my daughters, who I think have taught me so much. And I think that acceptance that comes that unconditional love. I never knew what it meant until I had children, And so I think that is the ideal scenario for what a relationship should look like, is complete acceptance and without condition.

Do you think that's possible outside of children, because like we quite literally made them and in a way fashion that when they're little, when they're tiny, we are like these good creatures who fashion sort of what they do and think, like do you think that it's really possible outside of an animal, because I would put dogs in the same category of unconditional love. Do you think that that we as people are able to to love unconditionally?

I don't know. You know, my husband and I have that debate. He always tells me I'm his soulmate. He's a romantic and I'm less of a romantic. And it's a well, but it's it's it's not unconditional unless it's your child. Adult relationship is different, but I think it can be. I just think it's it's not innate.

Yeah, maybe that's it. It's something that you have to work at. Yes, yeah, I wonder about that. I think maybe it's just it's worth it's worth thinking about and working on. I learn a lot from my dog and from my child, yes, I mean, and from my boyfriend too, who he does seem to love me unconditionally. I seem to have a lot more conditions. Maybe maybe it's a fee too, Maybe it is a female thing. What would be your last meal?

Well, it would be it would make no sense. It's not like it all goes together. But I would want my grandma Esther's rolls. She used to make them from scratch, and I looked forward to it every Thanksgiving and Christmas. My father's homemade ice cream delicious. We used to hand creak it as a kid, and then, of course we've gotten much better, easier ice cream makers over the years, but he makes phenomenal ice cream.

So yeah, it would be a totally curb meal.

Let me get this straight. It would be rolls and ice cream. I love it. I absolutely love it. Do you know we used to do this thing.

It was at someone else's house. It wasn't my mother, but they would put cream in a jar and through the whole of this night, this jar would go around. Everyone would like, jiggle this jar, and jiggle this jar, and jiggle as jar, and all.

The kids would do it.

Everyone would riggle the jar, and by the end of the evening it.

Had turned into butter.

And that was the most delicious thing that I have ever eaten. Although it felt like I was hungry again by the end because I'd burnt so many calories with the jiggling of the jar. But there's something about homemade food that is epic. Do you know how to make both of those things?

Out of interest?

Can you make those rolls and can you make that ice cream?

We've been working on the rolls.

My sister has perfected it thankfully, and yes, my dad is still alive and we all have the recipe and.

It's so delicious.

How amazing when I love that that, I love that that continues. I am so grateful to you for giving your time, but for being a voice in our democracy at this current moment. There are a few people who I will go and listen to when I'm feeling down about the state of the world, and you are one of them. So thanks, thank you so much for your time and your wisdom, and I just wish you all the best in everything.

Thank you.

It was an honor to be on your podcast with you, and I appreciate all the good you put out in the world through this and everything else you do.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.

Mini Questions is hosted and written by Me Mini Driver, Executive produced by Me and Aaron Kaufman, with production support from Jennifer Bassett, Zoey Denkler, and Ali Perry. The theme music is also by Me and additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay Addison, O'Day, Henry Driver Lisa Castella, a Nick Oppenheim, A, Nick Muller and Annette wolf A WKPR, Will Pearson, Nicki Ittle, Morgan Levoy and mangesh Pa.

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