900 Jeanine Staples-Dixon:

Melinda Wittstock:

Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

They’ve noticed a pain pattern that they can’t get rid of, and they feel stuck. So, the first baby steps are just to be awake in your life and aware in your life and you as the common denominator in your relationships, in your moves around business. And that’s not about blaming yourself or shaming yourself around, maybe feeling stuck or feeling a little bit fractured or disingenuous, but it’s just really connecting to the idea of the fact that you’re the center of gravity in your world. And when you shift or move or evolve or heal yourself as a center of gravity, then everything must heal and shift and reorder around you

Melinda Wittstock:

We’ve all been socialized as women to play small, often people pleasing, putting yourself last, or worrying about what other people think or want or need from you.  Jeanine Staples-Dixon is on a mission to help women heal the fractured parts of ourselves so we can all play a bigger game without guilt, tradeoff or apology and still come home to ourselves in a way that is deeply authentic and connected to our true worth and value. Founder of the coaching business Literacy for Life and her new initiative, The Supreme Love Project, Jeanine shares what it takes to truly ‘have it all’.

Melinda Wittstock:

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m all about paying it forward as a five-time serial entrepreneur, so I started this podcast to catalyze an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other. Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together and lift as we climb.

Melinda Wittstock:

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who is focused on dismantling supremacist patriarchies through her groundbreaking research, teaching, her coaching business Literacy for Life, and now her Supreme Love Project, a movement supporting marginalized people, mainly women and people of color, to heal the relational and social terrors in their souls and launch revolutions in their lives.

Melinda Wittstock:

Jeanine Staples-Dixon says most of us have a fractured identity, forcing us into false binary choices that keep us playing small as entrepreneurs, in particular the assumption that we can’t have both love and business success. Today Jeanine shares how we can “go big and go home”, uniting these fractured pieces to move from performance to personhood to be the biggest version of who you can be.

Melinda Wittstock:

Jeanine will be here in a moment, and first, Election Day is just 2 short weeks away. Have you voted? Made a plan to vote? Checked your voting status to make sure you haven’t wrongly been removed from the rolls? I hope so, because your voice is your value and your power. This time, the choice couldn’t be more stark or consequential, and your vote counts. Ask yourself: Do I want a level playing field with more resources, funding opportunities, and fair competition for my business? Do I want financial support to look after my aging parents at home as I raise my kids and build my business? Do I want control over my own body and healthcare? Do I want to live in a democracy where I have agency over my future and that of my community and country? If the answer is ‘yes’ to any of those questions, your vote is for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and Democrats on the ballot for the US Senate, House of Representatives, state legislatures and governorships. Why? The alternative is a Handmaiden’s Tale where our hard-won rights as women are erased, an authoritarian and corrupt kleptocratic regime where simply speaking your mind might make you what Donald Trump repeatedly says is “the enemy within”. Don’t take my word for it. Trump has said over and over again he is going to use the courts and American military against Americans who disagree with him. And the Supreme Court made him immune from prosecution so there are no guardrails on his extremism, a man his former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, called “fascist to the core”. If that’s not bad enough he has also promised to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, education grants, the right to an abortion, and so much more. And it’s not just him – the blueprint is in Project 2025. Now I know it is easy to think your vote doesn’t count. It does. So do your research and please vote for the future you want for you, your business, your children. Please make sure you, your friends, family and colleague know the stakes, and please use your vote to honor our rights, freedoms and opportunities to prosper. The future is in our hands.

Melinda Wittstock:

Ever feel pulled in 20 different directions at once? Feel like you’re shortchanging yourself as you put everyone else in front of you in line and then serve everyone from an empty cup? Wonder if it’s possible to play a big game in business, sustain a loving relationship, and balance all that with kids and friends?

Melinda Wittstock:

Often success feels like a tradeoff because all the disparate parts of our fractured selves are competing for attention. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Melinda Wittstock:

Jeanine Staples Dixon is an inspirational advocate for women’s empowerment, and with her motivational mantra of “go big and go home,” she encourages us to embrace our most powerful visions of our true potential, while staying grounded in our authenticity.

Melinda Wittstock:

Jeanine has been coaching women leaders for 20 years with her business Literacy for Life. A Professor of Literacy and Language, African American Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the Pennsylvania State University, Jeanine has a unique perspective on how women’s entrepreneurial success is often hampered by patriarchal indoctrination and societal conditioning, as we all have greater potential for transformative business success than we often think.

Melinda Wittstock:

Today we dive deep into the intricacies of integrating both masculine and feminine energies to cultivate authentic leadership and full personhood, as well as the internal conflicts women face in leadership roles, including performativity versus authenticity and the pervasive fear of rejection and isolation. Jeanine also shares what it takes to overcome traditional binary thinking that leads to fractured identities and scarcity mindset, and how to embrace a holistic approach that embraces strength and softness—qualities personified by leaders like Kamala Harris.

Melinda Wittstock:

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Jeanine Staples-Dixon and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

[INTERVIEW]

Melinda Wittstock:

Jeanine, welcome to Wings.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Hi, Melinda. Thank you so much for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:

I’m excited to talk to you because one of the aims of this podcast is to really encourage women to play a bigger game in business. And yet, I think sometimes fears hold us back. We think that we might end up alone in that endeavor. Maybe we intimidate every single man or, or woman, and we can’t somehow have an amazing love life as well as have an amazing business. How do you navigate that? What’s your message for women that either consciously or subconsciously are struggling with that?

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

What I would say to women who are struggling with that is ‘go big and go home’. It’s not a ‘go big or go home’. Go big AND go home, meaning go big. Figure out the most powerful and empowering vision that you have of yourself. How can you manifest an ideal of yourself as the woman of your wildest dreams and then go home to yourself? Go home to heavenly places. Go home and re anchor yourself again and again and again in your right to have that vision manifest, and also in the responsibility to have that vision manifest. And if you keep going big and going home, you can have what you dream.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s beautifully said. I’ve actually never heard that said with such clarity that really that you can have both. But there’s this outer piece, and there’s the inner piece. You’ve been doing this coaching for 20 years now with Literacy for Life and launching the Supreme Love project. The women that you work with, what do they struggle with most?

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

In this context, I would say that it is a fractured identity. One of the things that I coach women around specifically is getting to know the fragmented, disowned, orphaned, wounded parts of your consciousness. How has the patriarchy actually socialized you into smallness and people pleasing and being a doormat and putting yourself last and worrying, worrying and ruminating over what other people think or want or need from you, or how to sort of chase approval from other people. It’s really learning the logistics of those fractured parts of yourself and then understanding where they come from, why they’ve been put in place, how you succumb to them. And what are the methods to actually deconstruct those fractured identities so that you can come home to yourself in a way that is deeply authentic and really connected to your worth and value? That is a lifelong personal liberation project. It takes time. It takes energy. But when you have a good coach and a good curriculum and a good community.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

You can do it faster than you think, but it’s not a cakewalk. So, I would say it’s a fractured identity. That’s the biggest obstacle.

Melinda Wittstock:

I think what you say about fractured identity makes so much sense because we’re socialized to be so many things to so many other people, and all too often, whether we know it or not, we’re putting ourselves last in that equation because we also have all the bombardment about, oh, like, not being too pushy or not being too selfish or like all these sorts of things where, like, you’re right, we’re so worried about what other people think of us that, I mean, what do we think of us? Who do we want to be? From my own life experience, I know this is actually a long process. Let’s start at the baby steps for somebody who isn’t necessarily even aware that this is happening to them, right?

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Yeah. I think that the baby steps come in relation to an awareness and an awakening around what’s materialized in your life, what’s actually happening. What’s the concrete story? So, typically, when women come to find a coach, whether it’s in business or in love, whatever it is, it’s because they’ve noticed a pain pattern that they can’t get rid of, and they feel stuck. So, the first baby steps are just to be awake in your life and aware in your life and you as the common denominator in your relationships, in your moves around business. And that’s not about blaming yourself or shaming yourself around, maybe feeling stuck or feeling a little bit fractured or disingenuous, but it’s just really connecting to the idea of the fact that you’re the center of gravity in your world. And when you shift or move or evolve or heal yourself as a center of gravity, then everything must heal and shift and reorder around you. The first step, I think, is just awareness, waking up and saying, hey, I keep choosing the same guy. He looks different, he’s got a different job, but it’s the same guy over and over and over again.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Someone who rejects me or abandoned me or someone that I have to sort of shrink to sort of massage his ego, or I keep playing a really small game in business, I’m really developing a hobby, not a business. When you start to notice and name those factors and variables and point to yourself and say, where do I need to evolve as a center of gravity, as a center of consciousness, that’s where you can really begin to make some changes.

Melinda Wittstock:

I think one of the things that’s very difficult for women in business is that business, just the structures of business, the language of business evolved over hundreds of years in a very masculine way. And then as women, we need to fit into that, or we believe that we do. So, we can lean so far into our masculine that we sort of lose our feminine. And the power of the feminine, how does that manifest for people? Because when we’re in our masculine all the time, it’s very difficult to be in a love relationship. Do you know what I mean? Like, a dude doesn’t necessarily want to be with a, you know, once it’s 05:00 or. Well, if you’re an entrepreneur, it’s all the time. But how do you transition between those sort of identities, really, between the masculine and feminine?

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Well, one of the ways that I coach women into that is we sort of get worried that, and also fixated on the idea of masculine as one thing and feminine as another thing. And they’re in a binary, and that means a competition with each other. So masculine is hard, it’s aggressive, it’s strategic, organized, sort of fixed, rigid. And feminine is more breezy and easy and soft and sweet and kind. And we think about those energies as diametrically opposed. And then we get into this binary, we feel like we have to choose. Like, either I’m going to be in my masculine, and that’s going to get me these rewards, because I’ve been shown this message over decades of my life that that’s what gets me stuff. Like, if I’m really, really driven and hard-nosed and, you know, sort of fixed and rigid, I’m going to get success in my business.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

And if I choose to go to the other end, the opposite end, and go to my soft and my breezy and my sweet and my sort of delicate and demure energy, that will cost me something, or I can only do that in my romantic life. You know, there’s all kinds of ways that we’re operating on a binary. And honestly, you know, Melinda, what I coach women into is, you know, the binary is poverty, that scarcity mentality will cost you. It means you’re going to lose something somewhere. And the bottom line around that is, is, again, this fractured identity when really a more efficient and effective and also a more egalitarian and inclusive framework to use is where am I in performance, and where am I in full personhood? So beautiful, right? Like, so it’s a performativity is where I’m putting something on and I’m going to try it. Like, I’m going to try to be. I’m going to really dance and a jig, and I’m going to play a game for as long as I need to get something that, over time, is very exhausting and it really detaches us from our authenticity. And so, but if you choose to opt out of performance and just say, I would like to be in full personhood, I would like to be the full and complex energy and entity that I am.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

I would like to grow and expand and generate the capacity to hold my multiplicity. Then you can relax into your authenticity. Then you can say, okay, I do have an amalgamation or a melding of these binaries. They’re actually not on a strict, fixed plane. I actually have a melding that I operate from. I can sort of do a touch or a dab a little sprinkle of masculine energy in my feminine energy. I can place some softness and some gentleness in my masculine energy if I’d like. I actually can learn the fullness and the complexity of who I am and then operate in my world as an entrepreneur and as a partner and as a parent, as a sister, as a mom, as a friend from that space.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

And it’s so much. It’s not easier, but it’s more simple and clean. You would still have to practice, but that’s true with anything. But you’ll feel in the fullness of your personhood as opposed to performativity. You’ll feel more agile. You’ll feel deeply connected to a sense of totality, and you’ll be able to connect to your worth and value more easily than if you’re just performing.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, what you’re saying, Jeanine is resonating so deeply with me, and I’m looking for examples of women that embody what you’re talking about. And the person who came to mind was Kamala Harris.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Because she has obvious strength. Do you know what I mean? Like, no one messes with her. Right. And yet she’s all woman as well. So, I want you to break down what you see, because I think she’s a great leadership model for women in business.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Yeah, absolutely. And the thing that I’d like to correct there, there’s something in my study. So, I’m a social scientist, so I studied what’s called the syntax of supremacy, and it’s really the way sort of a white supremacist, patriarchal ideology sort of creeps into our language, and it confuses the way we talk about people. And there was something that was just stated that I want to add something to. Strength and softness are not mutually exclusive. They’re not diametric.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. Right.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

So, like, this is the thing. Strength is required for softness, and softness is required for strength. For either one of those energies to be manifest, we have to understand how they’re commingled. So, when we think about Kamala Harris, and we think about the ways we can look at her and listen to her and see clearly her strengths. She’s got a titanium spine is what I, like, say. She knows who she is from the inside out, and she’s got fortitude, and she’s got a sensibility. She’s got a moral compass. She’s got an interior constitution that is well developed and clear.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

And on the outside, she can give you a warm hug. She can, like, probably kiss a boo boo for, like, one of her grandkids. She can, you know, sit and listen for long periods of time without interjecting, without hopping in. She can smile and laugh and let loose, like, from her belly and be completely present in the moment. And then she can go and strategize a plan for the planet. She can do all of the things. She’s got that totality going. She’s got the full practice of personhood happening such that she’s not performing.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

That’s a part of what I shared before. She really does exemplify what we’re talking about right now, Melinda. And I just, I love her as an example of what that means to be in full personhood. And this is the thing I want to say. Kamala, just like any other woman, is not finished or done. When I say totality, I don’t mean completion. So, she’s got another, what, 30, 40 years on the planet? She gets to evolve and grow and expand in the practice of her personhood and continue to learn and be her fullness.

Melinda Wittstock:

Ever since she emerged, because she seemed like she was in the shadows, right, as Vice President, and then all of a sudden, within 24 hours, and then just consistent mastery. And I’ve been very, very interested in this whole subject of what you were talking about, like, the duality between masculine and feminine and kind of working on that within myself, just really with a belief that the highest expression of a person, a man or a woman, is when these archetypal energies, I guess, the masculine and the feminine as archetypes are, or, I don’t know whether balance is the right word. Maybe integration is a better word. You’ve expressed it better than me, but this has been a theme I’ve been thinking about for, like, more than a decade now, in the context of business and my own leadership as an entrepreneur in terms of, you know, how you inspire a team, how it expresses in your marketing and your personal brand, how it expresses when you’re fundraising, raising venture capital, and all of a sudden, Kamala Harris is there. And I was like, oh, my God, that’s it.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Yes. Yeah. And, you know, she is running an organization. And the thing about entrepreneurial energy is that enrollment is required on every level. So marketing is enrollment. It’s an enrollment conversation. Sales, they’re enrollment conversations. Even, you know, recruitment and hiring and attention, they’re enrollment conversations, which means it’s about speaking to people and communicating a message to people that they want to say yes to, that they’d like to be a part of, that they’re enthusiastic around.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

And what we’ve learned from a masculine, patriarchal model is that that takes some, like, sneaky, conniving energy. It’s about, you know, tricking people or, I don’t know, hypnotizing people or convincing people, like, working really, really hard, figuring out how to convince people where, like you said, a more integrated or balanced energy towards entrepreneurial manifestation and building an organization, building a company instead of performing, which has so much to do with pushing an agenda. The embodied personhood, which we see in Kamala and a lot of other really amazing women who are focusing on this internal external balance and authenticity. The personhood is about creating an enrollment experience that people feel excited about. Like, I would like to be a part of this energy. I would like to be a part of this great story. I would like to be a part of this change that we’re making in the world. I would like to be a part of this change I’m making in my world.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

And when a person is focusing on their totality and their interdependent self, they can be an entrepreneur that is constantly enrolling but not getting burnt out.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. A couple weeks before election day, just the pace that she’s been on. But she never looks exhausted.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Right, right. She doesn’t look exhausted. So, performativity, which is that masculine, patriarchal ideology that’s built into business building and it’s built into community building. Performance is hard. If there’s anyone in our audience, Melinda, today who’s been an actor, if you’ve been a performer, if you’ve had to get on stage and craft a persona and push an agenda, you get worn out.

Melinda Wittstock:

You’re exhausted afterwards. Yeah, 100%. I think that’s really, like, you end up an empty shell. I have an experience in another life. Very early in my life, in my late twenties and early thirties, I was a television news anchor. And it was. It was, you know, for the BBC and ABC News and such. And there was a performative aspect of that.

Melinda Wittstock:

Or at least it felt like there had to be at that time. Perhaps as a generational thing, there doesn’t have to be. There doesn’t have to be for that. As I became very, very good at that and could just be myself, like, not only did I do better, but I wasn’t tired after being on the air with breaking for 4 hours. You know what I mean?

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Absolutely. 100%.

Melinda Wittstock:

You’re just being yourself, right? Yeah.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

And I’ll say, in my other life. So, I’m an entrepreneur, and maybe what your guests may or may not know or have seen, but I’m also a college professor, and I am a tenured full professor at a global research one institution, which means I am spotlight often. And before I got this message, this coaching that I’m actually sharing right now, and I integrated into my own life, I was also exhausted. A lot of people don’t realize being a college professor is like being a stand-up comic. Melinda, oh, my God. You are front of undergrads and grad students, and they could be throwing tomatoes at any moment. You’re constantly trying to capture their attention, keep them focused, entertain them to get the message across. When I disconnected from performativity and I really just started to nurture my personhood and show up authentically, and that doesn’t mean some of the messages that we get as women is showing up authentically means showing up sort of lackadaisical and sort of lazy and unprepared, and I, you know, sort of frivolous and, like, letting it all go however it’s going to go.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

No, I was prepared. I studied. I worked on my craft and my technique. What I’m saying is the difference between performance and personhood. Practice, like, practicing your whole person, is you’re getting in touch with what motivates you. You’re getting in touch with the big vision that is driving you to feel energized, to feel excited, to feel inspired, and you’re staying deeply connected to that vision. You’re connecting to how that vision will not only serve you, but also serve the people that you’re talking to, and you’re connecting to your excitement and your honor around being a participant in that. So, when I look at Kamala, when I think of you, when I think of myself, when I think of other women who are really, really practicing personhood as opposed to performativity, what we’re saying is, I am not obsessive the way I used to be around some of the masculine methods to building a business or the masculine methods to building a career.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Instead, I am saying, who am I? What am I here for? Why does that matter? Who will be served by my presence and by the sharing of my gifts? How are those people important? How can I add value? What is uniquely mine to share? Let me get excited and celebratory within myself about that. And now let me go out and build my business now let me go out and serve my community now let me go out and create something exciting. And then I don’t get tired, then I don’t get burned out. And I think that’s an important distinction to make.

Melinda Wittstock:

It really is. I mean, just for contrast, say, if you look back to Hillary Clinton, and I’m just curious, your thoughts on this, because I think one of the things that after she wasn’t running anymore and she wasn’t, and you started to see the real authentic person, and where was that in her campaign, you know?

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

You know, interestingly enough, when I think about Hillary Clinton, she’s, she’s, there’s something about generational socialization as well.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Or for a woman, I don’t know. Is she in her seventies now? I think she’s must be.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, I would, yeah, I would say so.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

She’s probably 25 years older than Kamala, and I don’t know how much older she is than you and me. I’m a midlife person. And I think that she was very bound into and entrenched in the idea of masculine energy. I didn’t see Hillary Clinton as a masculine leader, honestly, I did not. But I know she was informed by masculine energies, and she was poised to constantly be thinking about men and what they perceived in her rhetoric and what they perceived in her affect and what they wanted or needed. And I think that she was distracted by some of that, I mean, to no fault of her.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Not at all. Not at all.

Melinda Wittstock:

Because I think it is a very generational thing which tees up. My next question is, do you find that with younger women, like women in their twenties and thirties, do you think they have a more innate mastery of this or is it still the same learning process?

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

I think it’s the same learning process just because, like, a part of my research is to study white supremacist patriarchal ideology. It’s absolutely mammoth and ubiquitous. So, I would never say that anyone in their twenties or thirties is sort of absolved of that burden. I would say, though, that women in their twenties and thirties, the women that I teach on college campuses and women also, that I’ve coached in my programs. They are a little bit different. They do have a different networked sensibility around sort of deconstructing attachments to those patriarchal values than we have as women in forties and fifties. I think that they have a different space for community and collective support around thinking differently and being differently in their space of entrepreneurial energy and also in romantic relationships. I think they have a little bit of a leg up.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, I mean, I want to believe that.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. I mean, I really do. I mean, the other thing that fascinates me, you know, personally in terms of the way, you know, I run my businesses. But how women as leaders can really improve business and I mean, I mean, you know, on one hand you’ve got these masculine patriarchal structures that are very short termism, you know, bottom line results, you know, only thinking of the shareholder. It’s great to return money for shareholders. I have them. You do that. But you have a wider community where a business can also be a force for social good.

Melinda Wittstock:

It can lift people up; it can improve communities. It can improve the lives of everybody that’s involved in the business. It can make a difference in climate change. It can do all these sorts of things. Do you think women in business, when we’re in that non performative, more authentic, integrated masculine feminine? Integrated, masculine feminine. Integrated masculine feminine, that energy, that our approach to business can really be a force for good, do you think women generally are going to be different in the types of businesses that we create when we’re playing big?

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

I think we can be. So, here’s the thing. I like to be cautiously optimistic. And again, it’s because I studied the patriarchy that I understand how deeply we’ve been indoctrinated into patriarchal ideals and values. It’s not easy to shake them necessarily. Even when we consciously long to be free of the shackles of those kinds of ideologies, there is still subconscious programming that we would need to undo. So, what I would say is women are poised to generate companies that can save the planet. We are positioned to.

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Melinda Wittstock:

And we’re back with Jeanine Staples-Dixon, founder of Literacy for Life and the Supreme Love Project.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

There are some women who love the patriarchy more than womanhood, though there are some women who are more seduced by the patriarchal ideology than we might readily admit. I want to be clear that just because a person is a womanhood or claims femininity or womanhood, it doesn’t make her or us automatically good or sort of automatically trustworthy, as a matter of fact. But we are definitely poised to, mainly because of our longing to be free of the kind of really strict, oppressive values that are sort of stumping out one huge aspect of our being. So, we’re definitely positioned. I’m thinking of someone right now. Have you ever heard of Fawn Weaver?

Melinda Wittstock:

I have not.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Okay, so everybody who’s listening, look her up. Fawn Weaver is like a mentor in my head. I absolutely love her. She is the founder and CEO of a company called Uncle Nearest, which is a bourbon company. And she crafted, not crafted, she found. She discovered, like, as an historical dig, the story of a man named Uncle Nearest, a black man who actually taught Jim beam how to create bourbon and whiskey.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes, I know that story. Yes.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Follow her on Instagram. Fawn Weaver Uncle Nearest. Buy the whiskey by the bourbon. Buy it all. And she is. Her company just broke a billion dollars, I think, in 2024. I’m almost positive. And it’s on Forbes.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

We can look it up and be sure if she didn’t break it. She’s close. And so she is an example of a woman who is creating a company and building a global brand that is, like you said, creating revenue and return on value and investment for shareholders. Actually, maybe she doesn’t even have any shareholders. Let me take that back. If I know anything about Fawn, she’s a sole stakeholder in her company, but she’s building a brand that thinks, has a consciousness, like, has an idea around equity, inclusion, that has an ideals around fairness and integrity. But what I would say, though, if you look at her story, she’s also done a lot of deconstruction work before she built this brand that she’s currently generating on the planet. She did a lot of deconstruction work, Melinda, meaning she went into her own interior life, found the fragmented and wounded parts of herself that were operating in low logics that were keeping her stuck, playing small, being invisible, worrying about what other people were thinking, being a people pleaser, chasing approval, attempting to follow trends as opposed to breaking out and being deeply connected to her authentic story.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

She did the deconstruction work and the reconstruction work to create a sense of personhood that is singular and cooperative. Meaning she thinks of herself as an individual, as a one of one who also has deep membership in community. Right? So that’s also very feminine in terms of just positioning a masculine energy, wants to be a maverick and break out and not have responsibility for anyone. It’s about making money and hoarding wealth, whereas an integrated personhood that takes cues from a feminine energy would say I am distinct. I am unique, I am an original. I am the only one of my kind in terms of my personhood. And I have membership in multiple groups and communities, and I have responsibility to the perpetuation of those communities, and I get to give back and contribute to them as they have built me up and contributed to me. So a person like Fawn Weaver comes to mind in addition to Kamala Harris.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s a great example. And I love the tying it back to the deconstruction in order to construct because we have to heal so many of these things, you know, with consciousness. Yeah. And so, what you’re describing, what I’m hearing, is really a shift from a scarcity mindset to one of abundance.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

That’s right.

Melinda Wittstock:

And this has been an interesting one for women. I’m curious, your take on that, because in a patriarchal system where there was a sense of scarcity, like, there can only be so many female top executives, or there can only be so many women who really, you know, get to the top of their game in entrepreneurship, or there can only be so many. And I think a lot of women in that scarcity mode end up manifesting all sorts of weirdness. Like, you’ve heard of tall poppy syndrome, where women are not supportive of other women.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Talk to me about that a little bit, because that’s been an interesting one. That’s been one where some women can be actually not very supportive of other women, and that’s very much. Yeah. Is still being stuck in that patriarchal thinking.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Yeah. And that’s one of the reasons that I cautioned around imagining that 20 or 30 something year old women have, like, a freedom from this patriarchal norm. That’s not true. That’s not true oftentimes. And even if we look at, you know, sort of what’s going on in our post pandemic era politics, a number of white women have actually voted against their best interest and against the safety and security of other women in the United States of America.

Melinda Wittstock:

It drives me crazy. I’m like, how can you not see? I just. It’s depressing to me. Right. Like, I don’t get it. You know what I mean?

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

No, it’s the patriarchy. It’s the patriarchy. So, what I’m saying is oftentimes women are chief enemies among other women, and it’s the socialization that we have which teaches us competition, it teaches us hierarchy, it teaches us superiority, and inferiority. It teaches us scarcity and poverty and hoarding, visibility, wealth, favor, popularity. And if we don’t check in to our interior selves and how we have absorbed those logics, Melinda, we are not safe with each other, right? No, we can’t imagine that. Oh, I see a woman. I’m safe. No, you may not be.

Melinda Wittstock:

I’ve seen this dynamic even in, like, female entrepreneurial groups where the mission is like, we’re all going to lift each other up, and then the actual dynamic in the group is anything but that. Right?

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Right, right. Because the mission is the expressed external messaging, but that doesn’t change the internally expressed message. So, you can go into a room or a mastermind with a great leader, an amazing leader, who spouts the message and says, we are here to support each other. We are here to build each other up. And that’s a beautiful message. It’s aspirational, and it’s important to set that tone. However, it does not negate the interior life messaging that is in operation in the souls of each woman in that room. That is an inside job, and that’s a personal responsibility that no one can dictate.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

I mean, we’re all sovereign, Melinda. We’re all sovereign. We’re a constellation of humanity, and each woman is their own planet. You can determine in your own governance what messaging you’d like to interrupt and what messaging you’d like to actually substantiate inside of yourself. But nobody else can dictate that for anyone.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. And I think what adds a layer of complexity to it is, I think one of women’s biggest fears is literally being kicked out of the tribe, right? So, this kind of desire to want to fit in can kind of interrupt that process. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a leader, right? By definition, you’re innovating, you’re creating something that didn’t exist before or a form that didn’t exist before. You’ve spotted a problem that only you have. You know, you’ve either you’re alone in seeing the problem or you’re alone in coming up with the exact right solution for an exact right group of people. So, like, by definition, you’re a leader, so you’re not a follower, and that can be lonely.

Melinda Wittstock:

And I think that aspect of it is, I don’t know, in my experience with so many women that I’ve, you know, mentored, talked to over the years, or just in the context of this, this podcast. That’s a tough one because I think just deep, deep, deepest down inside ourselves, we’re afraid of being alone.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Yeah. Yeah. I’ve a part of my research project for the last, I guess, 20 years now is I’ve interviewed and collected data basically from 4000 women. They’re called terror narratives. And the terror narratives are the written and verbal account of encounters with trauma as a result of a white supremacist patriarchal ideology over time in schools and society. And what I found is that the biggest undercurrent that creates this sense of threat that you’re describing right now is what’s called a fear of annihilation. So, in the sort of bundle of annihilation, because that contains so many different ideas, what you’re describing is a part of it. I fear being left out.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

I fear being alone. I fear being rejected. I fear being abandoned. I fear being sort of uncovered and found out to be a fraud or to be incompetent or inadequate. And that all connects and ties back to the root fear, which is annihilation, which is to basically be disappeared from the collective meaning. You are no more. It’s essentially a fear of death. And so that’s an abstract way of naming how women either self-sabotage and keep themselves from fulfilling multiple higher iterations of a promise or a purpose, or they sort of counter sabotage where I’m going to tear another woman down, I am going to create a smear campaign about her.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

I am going to criticize and condemn her, going to pick her apart. Those are all ways that we manifest our, our impoverished scarcity attachments, where we think because of that patriarchal view, that there’s not enough space for all of us in any space of prosperity and wealth and abundance. And so, we’ve got to clear the space and get rid of folks. That’s where the girl syndrome comes from.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, you know, Jeanine, I can think of a number of times in my life where I’ve been wounded by that. You know, like, I’ve had that experience of other women kind of sort of feeling like they’re coming for you, you know, like, and. And it’s weird. It’s been so, just heartbreaking, right. And, and figuring out how to navigate that. How do you heal from that and how do you navigate it? Because it happens.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Yeah, it’s definitely happened with me as well in life. It happened to me like, two weeks ago. So, like, that’s the thing.

Melinda Wittstock:

Like, there’s echoes of it all the time. Like, there big times, but then there are, like, these little things, like, oh, yeah, this is this again. Oh, my God. You know what I mean?

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Yeah, absolutely. And there’s a couple of ways that I support women in thinking through this. One is I say, you know, let’s get rid of the shock and clutching of pearls around that whole sort of breakdown. And I say that because shock also takes up a lot of time. I mean, we spend a lot of time being shocked and going into, like, grief spirals and stress and anxiety around these breakdowns. These are energy breakdowns. But we don’t need to be shocked because we can really take for granted that these are parts of the human predicament, and they are liable to come as we move forward through life, and we grow and expand. And so just understanding them as a part of the tapestry will help us a lot.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

The second thing I say is the goal is to shorten your recovery arc. That said, meaning it’s like, okay, I might encounter some mean girl energy. I might exhibit some mean girl energy inadvertently or sort of by mistake or on purpose, because the fragmented, disinformative parts of myself have risen up out of my jurisdiction or control. And I may feel saddened by that energy, but I don’t need to spend weeks, months, or years spiraling in relation to that mean girl energy, that sabotaging energy or that competition energy or the meanness. So, shortening a recovery arc is a really important goal to say, I’m going to allow myself space to feel what I feel about this, and I’m going to make sure that the space is limited in some way. Like, I don’t need to give my days and nights over to it. I can still self-honor what I feel without becoming a deeply dependent on that energy to sort of know myself. And the third thing I would say is it’s important to understand, to overcome.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

One of the things I coach women into is this idea of, like, if we can understand, Melinda, why this energy is happening or where it’s coming from, we actually increase our propensity to overcome it. I’ve noticed in my research is that when a woman encounters competitive energy or scarcity energy or like, sort of that crabs in a barrel energy with, with girl groups or women’s, women’s, women centered organizations, we encounter a space of shock, as I said before, or grief or mourning. And then we go into why narratives? Why is this happening? Why did she say this? Why did I do this? Why didn’t I say this? Have you ever walked away from a mean girl’s encounter and thought, ‘woulda, coulda, shoulda’, like, I wish I had said this, I wish I had done that. But if we can say to ourselves, I get why this is happening, I actually have an understanding of what is energetically in play here, then I can connect to acceptance and release more quickly so that I can continue building my business, so I can continue, so I can continue, instead of building up anger, resentment and a justification, be mean back to other women. Maybe you have nothing to do with this encounter. So, understanding to overcome is a really big deal.

Melinda Wittstock:

It really is. I mean, it’s really about being conscious and not, and allowing, I guess, allowing the time to heal. Because when we’re healing, we’re healing all the parts within ourselves that. I don’t know how much you’re into things like law of attraction or that kind of energetics, but we do tend to manifest what we’re actually thinking. Right? So, what’s our personal responsibility in that? Yeah, so we’re not victims. Like, I don’t know, how does that break down in terms of, like, without blaming ourselves? Like, oh, it’s all my fault that this is the way it is. Right? But at the same time taking responsibility. So, we’re not victims of it all the time.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Right? So also, I’m glad we’re talking about this. I take the syntax of supremacy again here and again, a patriarchal view does either or meaning I will take full responsibility for everything that’s happening in my life, or I will take no responsibility and be a victim and be constantly at the objective stance of people’s projections onto me. And so, what I would introduce in, especially in our objective, to eliminate shock, to shorten our recovery arc, to understand, to overcome is to really connect life, which means I both have personal responsibility for my thoughts and my feeling. That’s my domain and what I have full influence and control over. I have universal design inside of myself. And I also understand that there are systemic infrastructures that I’m also encountering as I build my business, as I build my marriage. As I work with my children, as I be a sister or a daughter or a mother, there are systemic influences that we are encountering that are not imaginary. So, it’s a both.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

So, Melinda, when I think about the law of attraction, for example, and I think about personal responsibility, one of the ways that I sort of lean back from that ideology is because I can see where the patriarchy has seeped into that ideology and keeps us in a poverty and a scarcity mindset. So, when I give a contextualized example of how that works, what I share is that a woman can go into a mastermind. For example, she’s an entrepreneur. She wants to start a business. She would like to have a great coach, an amazing curriculum, and build something powerful. And she is maybe feeling insecure. Maybe she’s feeling intimidated, maybe she’s feeling less than visible.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

She’s not really deeply attached to her voice. Her interior monologue that is saying I’m not good enough, I’m not worthy is definitely an energetic aura. And that aura is probably connecting vibrationally to other people who feel insecure, other people who feel maybe like bullies and who want to sabotage or intimidate to satisfy their own sort of sense of insecurity. Right. So, what I’m saying is there is personal responsibility for one’s life. There is personal responsibility that we can look at. We can definitely reconstruct an interior life such that we have more affirming and appreciable thoughts. What I’m saying is the way the patriarchy seeps into the sort of like, law of attachment is that it leaves out the meta socializations, processes that we’re all subject to.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Which means that a woman who is responsible for her own thoughts and who has empowered and affirming thoughts about herself and her business and the love she wants to create in the world, she may go into a room full of incredible codes and in beautiful aura that is generative and strong and vibrant and operating at a very high level, and still bump into and encounter women in that same space who are not operating at that level. And it’s because we cannot disconnect. Disconnect from the power of our socialization, meaning that a white supremacist patriarchal ideology is still in effect. And there are systemic regulations that we need to be conscious of in addition to our own self-regulation. Does that make sense? And did you get that?

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes, it totally does. My goodness, Jeanine, I could talk to you for hours more because there’s so much here. And so, I’d like to invite you to come back on the show. I love it. Sometime in the new year. In the meantime, though, I can see how your work is so beneficial for so many women, whether we’re entrepreneurs or an anybody, really, you know, because this is something we all need to master. What is the best way for women to find you and work with you?

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

So, you can find me on Instagram, you can find me on LinkedIn, you can find me on Facebook, you can always dm me on any of those accounts. I’m Jeanine Staples everywhere. Dixon is my married name. We didn’t get to my love story, Melinda. Oh, maybe.

Melinda Wittstock:

I know, I know, I know. Because this is your whole expertise is. Yes, this is why I come. We’re going to have to do a part two on this. All right?

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

I hope so, everybody.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

Find me. Jeanine staples everywhere DM. Me and my team will definitely keep us connected.

Melinda Wittstock:

Wonderful. Jeanine, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Jeanine Staples Dixon:

It’s been a dream. Thank you for having me.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock:

Jeanine Staples-Dixon is the founder of Literacy for Life and the Supreme Love Project.

Melinda Wittstock:

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