Yahoo Lifestyle Melinda French Gates Reveals the Biggest Thing She Learned From Her Divorce
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Melinda French Gates understands the art of the pivot. The philanthropist has been thinking about it a lot these days, navigating a series of big, high-profile transitions while in the public eye. Last year, she turned 60. She also recently divorced her husband of 27 years, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and stepped back from their namesake Gates Foundation. The big question looming over it all: What's next?
French Gates delves into it, along with insights on how to stay true to yourself when everything's changing around you, in her new book, The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward, which comes out on April 15. "I’ve always been a goal-setter, but one of the most important things I’ve learned is that you have to leave room for your plans to change," she tells Good Housekeeping. "I thought I was going to be married to Bill for the rest of my life and that the Gates Foundation would be the center of my life’s work. But what I found when I ended my marriage and started a new chapter in my philanthropy was a whole world of possibilities I hadn’t previously considered."
It's these possibilities that French Gates is most excited by. "That is the magic of the next day," she says. "You will find things there you can’t even imagine yet. But the promise that they exist can be enough to keep us moving forward even when the ground beneath us is shifting." She offers this advice for anyone else with a big change before them.
In the book, you talk about the importance of listening to your inner voice. How would you recommend someone get in tune with theirs if they have no experience — or, worse, are practiced at tuning it out?
I’m really lucky that I went to a Catholic high school run by wise and wonderful nuns who created this little makeshift chapel out of two classrooms and had us spend a lot of time there in quiet prayer and reflection. I wish I could take credit for learning how to sit with myself in silence and distill that small voice inside me, but really most of the credit goes to them.
The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward
If you’re trying to get in touch with your inner voice for the first time, frankly, I think it takes some courage to take the first step — to put down your phone, enter a quiet space alone, and just be with yourself, sitting there with whatever difficult emotions may come up. But the payoff is tremendous, because if you take the time to really tap into who you are and what you care about, you are so much better equipped to set your own priorities and make your life your own.
When I tried to get back in touch with my inner voice as an adult, it helped me to find channels to express it externally. It helped to write down what it was saying in a notebook. It helped to tell my closest friends. It helped, a lot, to talk to a therapist. Once I started listening again, my inner voice was there for me, and I promise there is a voice inside you that is there for you, too.
Hearing your inner voice and listening to your inner voice are two different things. Any advice for when the inner voice is saying one thing, but the people around you are saying something else?
The best piece of advice I’ve ever received was from my mother, who told me when I was a teenager, 'Set your own agenda or someone else will.' When my inner voice is telling me one thing and the people around me are saying another, I go back to that and ask myself, 'Who gets to set my agenda?' I think the world will be a better place in general once more women in more places have the power to set their own agendas.
You wrote, “Therapy made it possible for me to respond to the betrayals in my marriage without betraying myself in return.” Can you expand a little bit on the ways that people betray themselves?
I can’t answer that for anyone else, but for me, staying true to myself is about living a life where my actions are in line with my values. And living your values isn’t a decision you make once. You have to keep checking in with yourself and making sure that everything is still aligned.
When people are going through a rough transition, they tend to be unkind to themselves. Is there any advice for how to extend yourself grace?
Isn’t it sad how much harder we make these moments on ourselves? I’m not an expert on this subject, but in the book I write about someone who is. The psychologist and mindfulness teacher Tara Brach has done a lot of writing and teaching about the importance of allowing yourself to feel your feelings — even challenging feelings — and respond by nurturing yourself with self-compassion. I know a lot of people who find her work very helpful.
You mention in the book that your divorce is the hardest transition that you had to go through. What’s the No. 1 lesson that you learned from it?
There’s a story I love, a parable attributed to the spiritual teacher Ram Dass. Two waves are traveling toward the shore, one big and one small. The big one sees the waves in front of them crashing one after another and starts panicking. It tells the small one that the end is near and they’ll be gone any second. But the small wave has a different perspective. It assures the big wave, 'I can make you feel better in just six words: You’re not a wave. You’re water.'
When I first started hearing the voice in my head telling me I needed to end my marriage, I thought my whole world would end. But it didn’t. Not at all. I’m doing just fine.
What’s one piece of advice you’d give to someone who’s about to make this transition themselves?
I would tell them: You’re not a wave. You’re water.
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