00:00:02:13 – 00:00:30:00
Daisy
I think being a journalist is extremely risky and dangerous in many parts of the world. Whoever you are. For women, it is so much more, so much more of a risk and so much more of makes you so much more of a target for trolling, harassment.

00:00:30:02 – 00:00:57:18
Claudia
Hello and welcome back to Shift Happens. I have been listening a lot to one of my all time favorite songs. What the World Needs Now by Burt Bacharach from 1965, a time when the United States were deeply divided over the Vietnam War. Just as a side note, it always gives me hope. I feel united, it lightens my spirit as I’m thinking about the state of life generally.

00:00:57:20 – 00:01:24:12
Claudia
I’ve been pretty much disconnected from the news recently, which I feel guilty about on the one hand, but since I get anxious, it’s okay to push the off button. It is timely that today I’m in conversation with Daisy Sindelar, who lives and works in the Czech Republic. For over 20 years, Daisy served as editor in chief and vice president of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, with its headquarters in Prague.

00:01:24:14 – 00:01:50:12
Claudia
Daisy shares with us how and why she left her job and started into a new phase of life without any plan at all, and how often everything in life just comes at once. And how she maneuvered these challenges. Daisy talks about the important and very dangerous work of journalists, particularly women journalists in war and crisis zones, and the responsibility that comes with it for the head of a news organization.

00:01:50:14 – 00:02:12:15
Claudia
Listen in and explore a complex field of work and life circumstances shared by an earnest and experienced storyteller.

00:02:12:17 – 00:02:15:14
Claudia
Here we are. Welcome.

00:02:15:15 – 00:02:17:02
Daisy
Thank you very much.

00:02:17:03 – 00:02:19:09
Claudia
Welcome to a shift happens.

00:02:19:11 – 00:02:31:12
Daisy
Yeah. I must begin by saying what a brilliant name that is. And so well done. I don’t know if that’s your invention or someone else’s, but it’s. It’s really very brilliant.

00:02:31:14 – 00:03:03:20
Claudia
Actually. It was came from playing around with words and ideas that friends had sent. And then of course, I thought, oh, this is mega brilliant and found out that there are other podcasts with the same name, but that’s okay. Yeah. Daisy’s so nice that we reconnected and that we are now spending time together here on Shift Happens. I was, of course fascinated and humbled and especially honored to have you here on this podcast.

00:03:03:20 – 00:03:36:04
Claudia
After reading your biography, your CV, and all these influential marks that you’ve left in your journalistic and media career. So as the former vice President and Editor in chief of Radio Free Europe, we will hear later what the shift of leaving this world meant for you and why you’ve done it. But before we get there, I wanted to ask you a few questions.

00:03:36:06 – 00:03:39:20
Claudia
What is your current state of mind?

00:03:39:22 – 00:04:08:18
Daisy
Wow, what an interesting question. To begin with, I would say my current state of mind is a peaceful one. A happy one and perhaps most importantly, a very interesting one. So I wake up with the knowledge that every day is going to be different. There are many component parts to my day. And that makes it very interesting for me.

00:04:08:20 – 00:04:15:02
Claudia
Great. How would you describe your idea of perfect happiness?

00:04:15:03 – 00:04:41:12
Daisy
Perfect happiness is in fact, there’s a quote that I like a lot that actually is the definition of perfect happiness. And I think about it a lot because it when I first encountered it, it struck me as unusual. And as time goes by, I realize how close it is to a perfect definition of happiness. It’s attributed to Gandhi.

00:04:41:14 – 00:05:09:01
Daisy
I assume that that is true. And it is that happiness is when what you say, what you think, and what you do are in harmony. And I think that means that you have no internal dissonance, that regardless of whether you are doing great things or small things, that the picture is harmonious both in terms of how you think about it, you talk about it and in terms of what you do.

00:05:09:02 – 00:05:27:12
Daisy
So I think that happiness in the 21st century can be, portrayed as something akin to joy or exuberance. In fact, I think it’s something simpler. It is knowing who you are and what you’re about.

00:05:27:14 – 00:05:35:13
Claudia
Yeah. Beautiful quote. I agree. Which living person do you most admire.

00:05:35:15 – 00:06:10:21
Daisy
Another excellent question. I would say except that’s in the spirit of the, the political season that we’re in. I’m taking equal inspiration at the moment from Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris. These are two bookends of what I think many American women hope will be a historic moment in the United States, where we can finally get to the point where we can elect a woman into the highest office.

00:06:10:23 – 00:06:30:17
Daisy
And I think they’re both very inspirational because of what they have gone through personally. Also because of their incredible dedication to public service, their obvious intelligence and grit. So I like to think of them in terms of a package deal. It took one for the other to happen.

00:06:30:19 – 00:06:42:07
Claudia
Yeah. True, true. Fingers. Fingers crossed.

00:06:42:09 – 00:06:51:23
Claudia
So, speaking of incredible women, we can turn to you now. You have left your position about two years ago.

00:06:52:00 – 00:06:53:00
Daisy
That’s correct.

00:06:53:02 – 00:07:11:18
Claudia
And it would be just great if you, explain again. What? Not only what your position was, but your journalistic media journey and what led you to refocus and make a decision to take your life to the next phase?

00:07:11:20 – 00:07:36:00
Daisy
Sure. I’m happy to do that. So I’m, one of those people who has been in one industry my entire working life. So I have always been a journalist. But my interest and my academic background was in Russian studies, so I was in college at a time when a lot was changing in Eastern Europe. And the Soviet Union.

00:07:36:02 – 00:08:06:08
Daisy
And it was an opportunity to go to a part of the world that I had always been fascinated by. And experience something firsthand, really lived history. And it was a remarkable time for young journalists. I was very lucky to be able to live in Russia and work for newspapers there, and that really shaped my entire life and my entire career.

00:08:06:09 – 00:08:32:23
Daisy
I eventually did leave Russia, because I had had a baby and wanted to live maybe a slightly quieter life. Russia is a wonderful place to live when you are young. And, and fearless. But once I had someone that I needed to take care of, I decided to move, outside of Russia. And I settled in Prague, in the Czech Republic, which is the headquarters of Radio Free Europe.

00:08:32:23 – 00:09:07:14
Daisy
And I got a job with that organization very briefly, Radio Free Europe, provides journalism to some of the most dangerous and hostile countries to be a journalist. That’s Russia, Belarus, Afghanistan, Iran. It really is a remarkable organization. And so I was very lucky to get a job working there. I worked there for a long time, over 20 years, and for a lot of the time I was a reporter and an editor.

00:09:07:16 – 00:09:45:12
Daisy
And then in the, I would say the final seven years there, I progressed very quickly through a series of jobs and promotions. I think I may have had 5 or 6 promotions in the course of 5 or 6 years. Which I, I say not because I’m bragging about it, but because I think that that’s if there’s a warning take away it is to be to be aware, rapid succession or promotions, because you are on a constant learning curve and a constant instability curve.

00:09:45:14 – 00:10:07:14
Daisy
That can be very kind of wearing after a while. So I was the director of a Russian language television channel, did a couple of other managerial jobs, eventually became acting president of the entire company, and then settled into, my final permanent position as editor in chief and vice president.

00:10:07:16 – 00:10:22:04
Claudia
That’s interesting that the quick promotions is a warning sign. I mean, usually, right? This is what everybody is after to climb up the ladder even quicker and quicker. So that’s such an interesting takeaway and experience.

00:10:22:06 – 00:10:57:08
Daisy
Well, I remember very distinctly at the time that it began when I was offered my very first promotion, I had just returned from a reporting trip to Ukraine. This was before the war. But after the significant public protests that had been there, and there was nothing I loved more than being outside, being in the country, talking to people, reporting on the ground is a dose of oxygen like nothing else.

00:10:57:10 – 00:11:21:04
Daisy
And so I came back feeling very happy and excited about the trip I had taken, and it was at that precise moment that I was offered the opportunity to go into management. And my first response, my automatic response was, no, thank you, because I’m really very happy doing what I’m doing. And then somehow the, the, the ambition got to me.

00:11:21:04 – 00:11:36:11
Daisy
And so I did make the switch. And I think about that moment very often, I were I have thought about it very often in the years since, because that was a that was the first shift. And we’ll talk about the second shift later, I guess.

00:11:36:13 – 00:12:04:09
Claudia
Yeah. So, the second shift is that you left the high ranking position and that it was a decision. And what I find most striking that you said that you left with really no plan and, one of the good things, of course, was that you left and you’ve been a role model for younger women in your industry, and you basically, you know, prepared the way for them.

00:12:04:09 – 00:12:22:04
Claudia
So now it was the time for them to pick up the torch and move forward. But I really thought it was so striking to leave all you’ve created because you needed something new and something different with no plan. Amazing.

00:12:22:06 – 00:12:57:05
Daisy
It it could not have been otherwise. The the years that I spent as editor in chief, I was leading a news division that in total was about 2000 people, in a variety of different countries, working under a variety of different circumstances. But that period of time coincided with real geopolitical, chaos in a lot of the places where we worked.

00:12:57:05 – 00:13:42:08
Daisy
And globally, it coincided with Covid. It coincided with the return of Taliban rule in Afghanistan. It coincided with the start of the war in Ukraine. And it also coincided with, a very serious ratcheting up of pressure against journalists. In a lot of the countries where we worked, we were forced to close our operations inside Russia, inside Afghanistan, inside Belarus, and always make accommodations for where could our journalists work next?

00:13:42:10 – 00:14:08:16
Daisy
How were we going to ensure that our audiences in those countries were going to get continued access to the news and information that they really desperately needed? So it became a fight and a race that was had real human consequences. We lost, unfortunately, the lives of some of our journalists. We had other journalists who were put in jail.

00:14:08:18 – 00:14:41:15
Daisy
You may have recently heard about the the prisoner swap, in Russia, one of the journalists who was released was a journalist for Radio Free Europe. So it it was a very high stakes game. And it was then the pressure was immense on the entire organization, myself included. I know on a personal note, I was also going through menopause.

00:14:41:17 – 00:15:11:21
Daisy
My only child had left for university, and he was going through a gender transition that included the start of hormone therapy. So an extremely emotional time for him and an extremely emotional time for us as a family, to have him living in a different country on this journey on his own. So I say these things not because I think they’re unusual or I really went through something.

00:15:11:21 – 00:15:22:03
Daisy
I think through that women go through these types of things a lot. Yes. But it is it’s it’s worth saying out loud.

00:15:22:04 – 00:15:48:08
Claudia
Yes, absolutely. And thank you for that. It’s. Yeah. As you said, it is happening all the time to so many families and to be outspoken about it and to share also the, the vulnerability that comes with it. Yeah. And that we cannot always balance it all so easily because yeah, life and in this case, you know, your experience with the world changing.

00:15:48:08 – 00:16:20:20
Claudia
So rapidly and becoming so, a dangerous place again. Yeah. And then at the same time, going through these changes and vulnerability in your own family and in yourself, I mean, how much more can there be? Yeah, that’s a lot. So, then you thought stop or did it almost feel like now it’s time for something that I have been thinking about for a longer time anyway, but it didn’t really have the space to come up.

00:16:20:20 – 00:16:25:14
Claudia
Like, you know, this wanting to change and wanting to refocus.

00:16:25:16 – 00:17:01:19
Daisy
Yeah, I think I had been thinking about it for a while, and I realized that I only partially answered your previous question, about stepping down with no plan. I do believe it couldn’t have been otherwise because, it was a job that consumed you body and soul. And that was it had to be that way. I would not have been able to live with myself and good conscience if I had spent even a minute of my working day managing a transition to something else.

00:17:01:21 – 00:17:37:06
Daisy
I needed to stay fully focused on my job. And I also knew that in order to figure out what I wanted to do next, I would need time. I needed a break. So I first discussed my departure probably about a year before I left, and then we very slowly managed the the off boarding. And and then it went from crazy chaos and and busyness to, to nothing overnight.

00:17:37:06 – 00:17:39:21
Claudia
How was that?

00:17:39:23 – 00:18:11:23
Daisy
It was it was wonderful. And I it’s also very scary. It is scary not to know what you’re going to do next, but after you’ve had any period of working very intensely, it is nice to wake up in the morning and not have anything more to do, than read a book or take a walk. I think everyone deserves to have those periods of time when they can reset.

00:18:12:01 – 00:18:40:22
Daisy
Sometimes a vacation is not enough to do things like that. And. Yeah, and with that began a period of exploration. And it wasn’t a determined path. It was really a wander. And that is what it has been since then. And that’s why I said in this case, it’s sort of shift still happening, not shift has happened.

00:18:41:00 – 00:19:09:14
Claudia
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I know for some, who are leaving a professional routine wherever it stands and then go and end this and start a new path, it can always also be connected with a bit of a nosedive almost, or even depression. Now, because it is. Yeah. When you’re functioning in a certain system. You wrote factory setting that is every day the same and the pressure is really high and so on and so forth.

00:19:09:14 – 00:19:28:02
Claudia
But it also somehow has this in its claws. So when this suddenly breaks off, even though we are freed, it also takes some time to use this new freedom in a positive way. And I guess. Yeah. So what you said that you know, that you really need to take time. Are you still in Prague?

00:19:28:04 – 00:19:49:18
Daisy
I am still in Prague. This is a city where I’ve lived for more than 20 years. I really love it. Yeah. My kid is back from college and is living here, so I want to stay here as long as he is here. And, Yeah. I can’t think of a nicer place to live, so I’m very happy.

00:19:49:20 – 00:20:03:14
Claudia
So, have you already had kind of an outcome of your reflections about this new act or a second act or third act in your life, like what’s what lies ahead for you?

00:20:03:16 – 00:20:33:07
Daisy
I think so, and here’s what I would say. Having left with no plan in mind, I realized pretty quickly I’d better have a plan in mind. How long can this go on? But it was a bit too early to go through the exercises that I think people are often encouraged to to really lay down a game plan for themselves.

00:20:33:09 – 00:21:01:09
Daisy
So I have listened to countless podcasts, you know, talked to innumerable people and, in an attempt to find my way forward. And all of that has been enormously helpful. But what became very clear to me with time is that there was not going to be an easy solution. There was not going to be a magic idea that appeared out of nowhere.

00:21:01:11 – 00:21:31:03
Daisy
That would signify to me, this is your natural next step. And I keep coming back to the word wander, because that is what I think ultimately proved to be the goal. The goal is the wandering. So I have done a lot of really different interesting things over the past two years, all of which have been unforgettable. None of which I would describe as the ultimate goal.

00:21:31:05 – 00:21:46:08
Daisy
And at the moment, I have sort of suspended conversation about an ultimate goal. I think that, in fact, the point maybe this exploration that I’m going through now.

00:21:46:10 – 00:22:00:00
Claudia
Can you share, 2 or 3 experiences of your wandering that were most impactful and maybe surprising and impactful, surprising that that they were so impactful?

00:22:00:02 – 00:22:43:12
Daisy
The, the very first thing I did upon leaving my job was to begin reading books every morning, and to begin hand-writing letters to my friends and so I, I didn’t abandon social media or electronic communication, but when it came to communicating with friends, I wanted to adopt a slower pace. And I would heartily recommend to anyone who really is going through a stressful period to keep a journal or to write letters, and to do it by hand.

00:22:43:14 – 00:23:08:19
Daisy
The pace with which you can write, a letter with your hand is slow, it’s soothing, it’s meditative of it’s extremely relaxing. And if you think about it yourself, what could be more delightful than getting something in the mail? It really is like a little treasure, especially now that it is. It’s relatively rare. It doesn’t happen so much.

00:23:08:21 – 00:23:38:14
Daisy
So in that first year, I realized that one of the things that I had lost in the course of a very busy career was not only connection to family members who really needed me. In the case of my kid, my husband, and and others. But my friends, you know, I’ve I’m a very lucky person in the sense that I have accumulated extraordinary friends over the course of my life.

00:23:38:16 – 00:24:04:14
Daisy
We all live in different places, as is often the case, and I had really let that slip. Friendships need work. They need to be maintained and invested in. And that was something that I simply hadn’t had time for in a long time. So it was a wonderful treat for me to slowly and methodically really reconnect in a deep way with all of my friends.

00:24:04:14 – 00:24:49:01
Daisy
And for the most part, I was doing that through through writing letters. So I would say that that was hugely impactful. Beautiful. I spent about half a year living in a very small town in, the Hudson Valley in upstate New York. And the reason was that this town, which had not had a local newspaper in many years, was launching a newspaper because they were beginning to feel the effects of disinformation and community division, because there was no central source of unverified news.

00:24:49:03 – 00:25:14:22
Daisy
And this was a tiny town where my mother and her sisters had grown up. So it was very familiar to me as a place that I traveled to a lot when I was a child. So there was a real emotional connection going back to this town. I could still see the house where my grandmother had lived. I was able to connect with people by saying my grandmother was the local librarian.

00:25:14:22 – 00:25:39:03
Daisy
It was a completely different way to live. And and yet it was a place where I could apply some of the things that I knew, and to something that was really important for a small community and really important for me. My mother was there, one of my aunts was there. So on a personal level, it was very deep, very rich.

00:25:39:03 – 00:26:05:05
Daisy
I even remember one day walking past the house where my grandmother had lived and the doors were open because the building was being renovated and I just walked in and asked if I could walk around. And so I’ve that is a bit like a time traveling. If you walk, if you go back into a house that you occupied as a child, the dimensions of the building seem different.

00:26:05:07 – 00:26:42:00
Daisy
So much is just an extraordinary, almost physical vibration that you can feel. And so, I felt like that was the first opportunity that I had to reconnect with my family, but also a younger me. Kind of brings your your life full circle in a way that’s very meaningful. And the last thing I’ll throw in just because it’s a lark, but I recommend it for everyone, is I started playing mahjong, and I know that mahjong is all the rage.

00:26:42:02 – 00:26:43:02
Claudia
I played against. I think.

00:26:43:02 – 00:27:10:23
Daisy
We had. Yeah. And it was mystifying to me. It looks so interesting. I was able through much hard work here in Prague, to find a group of women who play mahjong, who were willing to let me come and join them and to slowly teach me, and these are a group of women who are retired, who are themselves going through really extraordinary things.

00:27:10:23 – 00:27:29:13
Daisy
And it has been such a tonic for me to have this friend group that I never would have had otherwise. And obviously to have something extremely engaging and busy to do at the same time. So if you don’t play mahjong, learn how to play it. It’s a wonderful, wonderful game.

00:27:29:16 – 00:27:46:21
Claudia
Yes, it’s the best. Oh, I love it all. Thank you. And, particularly the story of your six months in this small town. I mean, just that almost sounds. That could be. It could fill a book. Just this experience of homecoming. What’s the name of the newspaper?

00:27:46:23 – 00:27:55:02
Daisy
The newspaper is called the New Pine Plains Herald. And the town is Pine Plains, New York.

00:27:55:04 – 00:28:26:08
Claudia
The new Pine Plains Herald. Okay, great. I will look it up. So with your knowledge and these years and years of living in Russia and in Prague, I’m sure your insights must be sought after from organizations and businesses, even though, you know, Russia is, of course, at the moment, a difficult topic and a difficult area. But, are you interested or.

00:28:26:08 – 00:28:37:00
Claudia
Yeah. I mean, is there a place for all this that you’ve gained and lived through and experienced, throughout your professional life?

00:28:37:02 – 00:29:21:00
Daisy
I have done, some lecturing on disinformation. And it’s a, it’s a topic and an area that remains is very interesting to me and important. It’s not central to what I’m doing right now. I, I, currently working with an organization that does investigative reporting and that’s also been, a wonderful new chapter for me because it teaches me something new, and does bring me occasionally into, reporting that has to do with Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere.

00:29:21:00 – 00:29:48:23
Daisy
So some of it is familiar and some of it is new. So it will always be a part of who I am. Next month I’m traveling to the States, and I’m going to be reuniting for the first time with a group of women journalists who worked with me in Moscow, in the 1990s. And I think that’s well, that’s going to be an extraordinary layer to that experience as well.

00:29:49:01 – 00:30:03:18
Claudia
Yes. Are you in particular, focusing on female colleagues, supporting young female journalists, going out into the world? Is that something that you also do or not so much yet?

00:30:03:20 – 00:30:28:09
Daisy
Well, I it’s something that I have always taken very seriously. And I think being a journalist is extremely risky and dangerous in many parts of the world, whoever you are, for women, it is so much more, so much more of a risk and so much more of makes you so much more of a target for trolling, harassment.

00:30:28:09 – 00:30:53:18
Daisy
So in my job at radio for Europe, I really took pains to make sure that we had training and protections in place for women journalists, and that that was part of the conversation, that it was, increasingly about protecting our journalists and not just our audience members. So it’s something that I feel very strongly about. And I think that continues with the job that I’m doing now.

00:30:53:18 – 00:31:22:18
Daisy
Investigative reporters obviously put themselves at immense risk, immense. And I am always going to be very dedicated to women journalists in particular, who are doing that kind of dangerous work. You know, it’s interesting, Claudia, you were one of the first people that I talked to when I left, Radio Free Europe at the suggestion of a mutual friend of ours.

00:31:22:18 – 00:31:56:02
Daisy
And you had we had had a conversation about mentoring and, you know, helping women, creating conversations between women. And that really landed with me in a big way. And so since the start of this year, I have been running a mentoring group here in Prague that is for women. I think we we have a few women in their 20s, and then we will have women up through their 60s.

00:31:56:04 – 00:32:23:09
Daisy
And it was really meant to be just a community for women of various nationalities and experiences to have a safe space to get together and talk. And it has been great. So wonderful and such a surprising yet rich source of conversation. We just had our latest meeting last night, and it was it was fantastic. So I have to thank you for putting that idea in my head.

00:32:23:09 – 00:32:30:03
Daisy
And, but let you know that, those conversations are priceless.

00:32:30:05 – 00:32:36:18
Claudia
They are priceless, aren’t they? Yes. Well, I’m so glad that makes me super happy. How wonderful. I have to come.

00:32:36:20 – 00:32:39:15
Daisy
Yes, you must come and serve. Featured guest.

00:32:39:17 – 00:33:01:01
Claudia
Well. We’ll see. So usually I ask my guests about two hacks, that they share. One to how they, calm down in their busy lives, and the other one, how they get energized for what they are doing or what’s waiting for them on the day.

00:33:01:03 – 00:33:34:19
Daisy
When I need to calm down. Which, happens about two times a day. The thing that I find most effective is to think, what does someone else need at this moment? I think when I’m feeling a little bit of inner turmoil or feeling insecure, concerned about something, anxious about something. The most calming thing for me is to turn it around and think about someone else.

00:33:34:21 – 00:34:04:06
Daisy
So usually trying to actively run through your Rolodex of friends, family members, contacts, whomever and take who’s going through something right now, can I reach out to them? Just make sure that they’re doing okay? And it is, I guess to a certain degree, it’s an altruistic move, but it is enormously fulfilling because it takes you out of your head, and, and puts you in touch with someone at the, at the right time.

00:34:04:06 – 00:34:18:04
Daisy
And so I think that that’s a very useful exercise. And then in all of the things, calming down and getting energized, a walk, there’s nothing better than taking a really long.

00:34:18:06 – 00:34:55:05
Claudia
Yes, yes, I agree, I have to ask you one last question, because I just, arrived in Berlin from the States, and I’ve spoken to a few friends the meantime. And, there is a notion of the Ukraine war being so close and so around the corner. And I have to say, I mean, of course, I read the news and I, you know, keep up and I, support, where I can I featured an entrepreneur, a startup founder from Ukraine and these things.

00:34:55:05 – 00:35:23:20
Claudia
But living in the US, just physically one is more remote feels, you know, more remote from it. And so it was almost difficult for me to really deeply feel this, this angst, of this war being so close. Of course, I would like, you know, a brief statement from you about this because of your insights and also how you feel in the Czech Republic.

00:35:23:21 – 00:35:58:12
Daisy
Certainly. You’re correct. The war feels very close. It it has since the beginning. And, in, in Berlin, as in Prague, there has been a massive influx of, women and children who have fled Ukraine. So it’s in the Czech Republic, where I live. I think this is true in Germany as well. It has been heartening to see the steps that governments and communities have taken to welcome new communities, but it changes things.

00:35:58:12 – 00:36:25:17
Daisy
It, we have seen energy prices go up. We have seen, rent go sky high as real estate becomes less available. So you are seeing countries that are accommodating and in transition as they accept this new reality. And of course, these countries know perfectly well what it is like to be invaded or what it is like to be in conflict with with Russia or other countries.

00:36:25:17 – 00:36:29:15
Daisy
That memory is not that old for them.

00:36:29:17 – 00:36:32:07
Claudia
Yeah.

00:36:32:09 – 00:37:12:00
Daisy
And so that is extremely sobering. I, I can relate to what you describe the feeling of helplessness, that there is something happening not that far from your doorstep. You are limited in terms of what you can do to help to a certain degree. I feel that way about Russia, too, which I know is the aggressor in this case, but also victimizers its own population in waging a war.

00:37:12:02 – 00:37:38:13
Daisy
So what I recommend to anyone is to stay informed, to stay alert to what is going on. I think that the easiest thing to do is just to turn a blind eye to things like that. But I think our obligation as global citizens is to stay aware of these things. That extends to what’s happening in Gaza.

00:37:38:13 – 00:38:06:18
Daisy
It extends to any number of issues, and to always be ready to help, whether that’s through charity work, whether raising awareness, whether you can do something directly, working with journalists, working with aid organizations, every everything helps. But I think that it all begins from the basis of simply being aware and not keeping yourself in a in in a bubble.

00:38:06:20 – 00:38:24:17
Daisy
I was actually quite shocked in the when I was living in the United States by how many Ukrainian flags I saw, even in very small communities, that meant that people were paying attention to it. I can’t speak to what’s going on there now, but oh yeah, it was one of those.

00:38:24:19 – 00:38:26:12
Claudia
In New York City. Absolutely.

00:38:26:12 – 00:38:57:04
Daisy
It was the issue where I, I think, it was clearly an issue where the United States was engaging, on a topic that was far beyond its own borders. And that was a good thing to see. Obviously, the same thing is true with the Israeli Palestinian conflict. And beyond. These things are incredibly painful. But we are not citizens of our countries.

00:38:57:04 – 00:39:05:06
Daisy
We are really citizens of the world. And it’s important to pay attention to those things. Yeah, yeah.

00:39:05:08 – 00:39:40:14
Claudia
Well thank you, thank you, Daisy, really for this insight. And of course, I hope that you’re going to write a book. I know it’s probably like a super obvious goal, but, I mean, this years must have been so incredibly rich in experiences in, in very tough experiences, but probably also very humbling and human experiences. But, thank you so much for sharing your time and wisdom and your shift and, all the best for your family.

00:39:40:16 – 00:39:43:03
Claudia
And yeah, it was nice to speak to you.

00:39:43:03 – 00:40:15:06
Daisy
Well, thank you very much. And thank you so much for having these conversations. I think it’s incredibly important. I did just in thinking about this conversation and the mentoring group. You know, I think these types of conversations and creating this kind of community is, is really important because women so often are, put into positions where they have to conform to a set of rules.

00:40:15:06 – 00:40:30:21
Daisy
And I think having conversations like this is a step towards setting the rules instead of conforming to them. And so thank you to you for doing this type of work. I think it’s, it’s very inspiring.

00:40:30:23 – 00:40:46:08
Claudia
Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank.

00:40:46:10 – 00:41:12:22
Claudia
My take away from my conversation with Daisy today is to experiment with letter writing. Again. It’s such a beautiful way of reconnecting with friends and family. What a great reminder. And I will pick up on that. Definitely. What do you think? When was the last time you have received a handwritten letter?

00:41:13:00 – 00:41:37:16
Claudia
Shift happens, has been created and is hosted by me. Claudia Mahler editing Andy Boroson Social media. Magda Reckendrees. I hope you felt connected and heard by listening to Shift Happens and please leave a review and a rating wherever you listen to podcasts.