The Deeper Pulse with Candice Schutter
Hi. I'm Candice Schutter. I started this podcast during the pandemic, repackaging personal stories as self-help epiphanies because old habits die hard and turning pain into profit was at the heart of what I had long bought and sold as a new-age grifter. Eventually, I began to look more critically at two decades spent in spirituality and wellness circles. Sharing about those years publicly for the first time (See Episode 33) led me into the world of cult recovery, and I soon after became a wellness cult whistleblower. The Deeper Pulse offers cultural commentary alongside in-real-time recovery as my guests and I grapple with moral injuries in the aftermath of spiritual abuse and the toxic positivity that silenced us. Finally free(ish) from the myopia of self-help 'cult'ure, the pod now focuses primarily on current events, social justice, and ongoing critiques of leadership that disrupt the hierarchical frameworks that live inside and around us.
The Deeper Pulse with Candice Schutter
#99 - Together, We'll Outlast Them: Community & Collective Imagination | Darcy Totten
Episode 99(!) of the pod is a riveting and heart-hitting conversation with Darcy Totten, Executive Director of the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls. In this episode, you’ll hear about the Commission's history, its growth over the course of 60 years, and the critical work it does to promote gender equity. Darcy is a staunch advocate for solidarity among women, and she shares personal stories about growing up queer in the 90s, braving home insecurity while straddling racial/class divides, and how her early-in-life experiences shaped a leadership philosophy rooted in collective action and inclusivity. Darcy shares tangible strategies for building collaborative communities and encourages a collective shift away from individualistic self-care toward a community-oriented worldview. We also delve into: how systemic changes can transform hearts and minds (versus the other way around), the unique role of women and/or gender-nonconforming folks in leadership, and the importance of making mistakes and learning from them. Darcy provides practical steps that each of us can take to actualize the collective imagination and dismantle hierarchical systems of power built by (and for) wealthy white men. This episode offers valuable insights for individual and communal empowerment, urging listeners to actively contribute to making the world a better place, not just for some, but for everyone.
Darcy J. Totten serves as the Executive Director at the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls. She has over 20 years of experience in crisis communications, journalism, public policy, and external affairs. Darcy has built nationally recognized efforts while at the Commission, including authoring the Commission’s award-winning original research report, the California Women’s Economic Blueprint for Pandemic Recovery, and the award-winning #womenareessential campaign highlighting the role of women as essential workers in California’s economy. She is an expert in social impact strategies, issue advocacy, crisis communications, and gender focused public policy. She is passionate about coalition building and working with intersectional and inclusive teams that prioritize historically marginalized communities. Darcy holds a bachelor’s degree from Mills College in studio art and visual communication and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. She lives in Sacramento with her wife, Jasper, and too many cats.
You can find Darcy on LinkedIn. And click here to learn more about the California Commission on the Status of Women & Girls.
The stories and opinions shared in this episode are based on personal experience and are not intended to malign any individual, group, or organization.
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And I'm always sort of trying to remind folks, you know, the reason I'm so invested in women as a category is we're half the population and within that population is every other marginalized group of people. If you can solve this sort of challenge dividing us all, if you can bring women together. If you can figure out how to build solidarity amongst women. That is far more than half the battles that we are all fighting. And so from my own life and into sort of the imaginary life I wanna help create, there is this sort of core thought that, you know, your problems are my problems. And mine are yours. And we are in this together. That is the right and natural way of the world, how I see it. It is not rugged individualism. It is that we are connected.
Candice Schutter:Hey y'all. Welcome back to another episode of The Deeper Pulse. So this week, rather than clogging up the airwaves with a long meandering monologue, you know how I do, we're gonna just dive right in to today's content. Because the conversation I'm about to share with you really speaks for itself. It's a dialogue about what it means to build community in the face of crisis after crisis, about navigating dark times with a sense of hope and optimism. But not the fluffy sort, the kind that has legs. The sort of hope that enables us to keep moving and that empowers us to sit down with people who are different than us so that together we can challenge systems, reimagine, and realize the world that we actually wanna live in. A world where girls, women, and traditionally marginalized folks are not only represented, but are leading the charge toward change that is inclusive, non-partisan, and lasting. Speaking of, women have been fighting the good fight behind the scenes and on the front lines for decades. For example, in this episode, you'll hear reference to American Labor leader, Dolores Huerta, who once said: Every moment is an organizing opportunity. Every person a potential activist. Every minute a chance to change the world." Huerta also coined the phrase:"Si, se puede" or, Yes, we can, which has been a collective cry of labor organizers since 1965. And at 95 years of age, she's still at it, showing up in multi-generational, cross-cultural collaboration with community organizers of all ages, identities, and political persuasions. Huerta is living proof that effective movements, well, they keep on moving. Because the aim isn't tied to any single leader. Devotion to the cause of justice should be bigger than any one of us if it's to be in service to all of us. So today's episode is dedicated to all the organizers and activists whose shoulders we stand on. Especially to those who have labored invisibly behind the scenes, whose contributions have been overlooked, ignored, or in some cases purposefully erased. And over the course of this delightful and candid conversation, today's guest reminds us that meaningful lasting change happens when we all come together, however messy and imperfect it might look, in solidarity to make things better for the next generation. Darcy Totten serves as the Executive Director at the California Commission on the Status of Women Girls. She has over 20 years of experience in crisis communications, journalism, public policy, and external affairs. Darcy has built nationally recognized efforts while at the Commission, including authoring the Commission's award-winning original research report, the California Women's Economic Blueprint for Pandemic Recovery, and the womenareessential campaign highlighting the role of women as essential workers in California's economy. She's an expert in social impact strategies, issue advocacy, crisis communications, and gender-focused public policy. She's passionate about coalition building and working with intersectional and inclusive teams that prioritize historically-marginalized communities. Darcy holds a bachelor's degree from Mills College in studio Art Visual Communication, and a Master's degree in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. She lives in Sacramento with her wife, Jasper, and too many cats. Thanks for tuning in y'all. You're in for a real treat. Here's my conversation with Darcy Totten. You made it.
Darcy Totten:I cannot seem to get the light to stay on.
Candice Schutter:You're definitely creating a vibe in the room with the lighting.
Darcy Totten:This is, this is my like, standard vibe. This is how it is.
Candice Schutter:I dig it.
Darcy Totten:I do all the like, really, really bureaucratic stuff in an office with fluorescent lighting. So all the good creative work happens at home.
Candice Schutter:I love it. I love it so much. I just happen to have a desk that faces a window so I get all the natural light. That's my trick.
Darcy Totten:There's a window right in front of me. But I'm such a nerd about things like this. Our neighbors let their tree like grow onto our roof. And it drives my partner absolutely nuts, and I love it. And I never let her cut it back. And then, of course, in the winter, it's like pitch black in here at 10 in the morning.
Candice Schutter:Right, right.
Darcy Totten:But I love it. And all the little animals come and like the neighborhood cats cruise through, so it's like a whole, there's a whole soap opera like right in front of my desk.
Candice Schutter:That's fabulous. So it's like a little cocoon all around you.
Darcy Totten:Yeah, yeah. I think the house was built in the 1940s. It's cottage vibes, right? Like it is full on cat lady cottage, lesbian with clutter and books and art like records everywhere. It is, it is exactly who I thought I would be when I was like 13 when I grew up.
Candice Schutter:Oh, I love that so much. I love that so much. And we will touch upon some of that for sure, today. I'm just like, so deeply grateful that you agreed to do this. Darcy. I admire you a lot. The work that you do. The talk that I saw you give at the Women Leadership Conference. And then following you on LinkedIn and just seeing everything that you're involved with, it's just you're really an inspiration and you're a motivator during these crazy times. And it's just truly an honor to sit down with you and share you with the podcast listeners.
Darcy Totten:Oh my gosh. Thank you. I,
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:I sort of feel the same way about what you're doing with this podcast. Like you're just bringing really bright spots to people in a really dark time. And I'm so honored to be here, so thank you.
Candice Schutter:Thank you. Yeah. Well, we're all doing what we can, right? I mean, that's kind of what we're here to talk about is doing what we can. So if you would, I know a little bit about you, but would you introduce yourself to listeners and tell them about the work that you do presently?
Darcy Totten:Sure. So my name is Darcy Totten. I am the Executive Director for the California State Commission on the Status of Women and Girls. The commission's been around since 1965. We were made an independent state agency in 1971. There's a little lore there, but the important part is that we were collectively created by both Democrats and Republicans. So we are nonpartisan, uh, which in this. Particular moment feels important to point out that women's issues are nonpartisan.
Candice Schutter:Yes.
Darcy Totten:Um, and we have grown astronomically. And I'm really, really excited about that. That we went from being sort of a small advisory commission in 1965, full of mostly men that was designed to kind of help figure out what to do about the fact that all these women suddenly wanted, you know, jobs in equal pay. To co-sponsoring some of the most impressive gender equity legislation in the nation, running massive grant programs that measurably change the lives for women and girls in the state, and really just continually being at the forefront with incredible partners like, uh, well at the moment, first partner Jen Siebel Newsom, who is a huge champion for women's rights. But historically also, First Lady Maria Shriver with the California Legislative Women's Caucus that has radically expanded in recent years. We are almost a parity in the state legislature.
Candice Schutter:Wow. That's awesome.
Darcy Totten:Although it, let's be real. I am not a big fan of proposing that we need to fight for parity. I don't think we should stop at half.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:I think that's and artificial limitation on women that we should not be placing on ourselves.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:Yeah.
Candice Schutter:For sure.
Darcy Totten:We've had all-male everything forever. There's no, there's no reason to only say that we want half.
Candice Schutter:That's right.
Darcy Totten:We want as many qualified people as possible everywhere.
Candice Schutter:A hundred percent.
Darcy Totten:So that's what I do now. And, you know, our staff has grown hugely, which is really exciting. It means we can take on more projects. This is sort of an unusual job for me, and actually I think for a lot of people in this kind of era, because I've grown up with it. So I started in 2019. I did crisis management, crisis communications. And I worked for associations. And I, you know, was dabbling in federal lobbying and just sort of playing around in all these different sandboxes trying to figure out how I was gonna transition my life from what I grew up thinking it would be to what now felt really possible. And I just got so burnt out. I did what a lot of women do, which is, I just sort of thought that if I worked harder than everybody else, I would've eventually figure out how to make money and have security and do all that, right? And instead what happened was I burnt myself out, not once, not twice, but three times. And by the last time, it was 2019 and I just said, enough, I'm not doing this anymore. Closed up, shop, folded the business, and uh, you know, was looking around for, okay, I have a little money saved. What am I gonna do next? Started thinking I'd write a book. But I fairly quickly thereafter was hired as the communications director for this commission.
Candice Schutter:Ah.
Darcy Totten:And they had never had one before. And the executive director. And I knew each other and she was like, hey, we're doing this really big, really intense program to bring medication abortion techniques to all the UCs and CSUs. And as you can imagine, it's a bit of a crisis. And I need someone with that experience who's willing to work for, you know, government money. And I just said, do I have to work on weekends? And will you ever call me on Christmas? She said, no. I said, great. That's my new job. I work for the state now. Let's do this. And I was so excited. And of course, you know, my first meeting was, there were like a hundred people out the door, sort of with very big feelings about this program.
Candice Schutter:Sure.
Darcy Totten:I got introduced and the person giving comment on the line was like, well, you know, said something horribly insulting. And you know, I don't even remember. Uh, and I just kinda went, I can do this. This is good. I know how to do this. This is fine. Everybody's looking terrified. No, we're good.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:And then I kind of grew up here. I became the director of external affairs. I managed some of our policy work. I wrote what ended up being the state's economic blueprint for pandemic recovery for women and girls, really focusing on kind of what happened to us as a workforce and how that impacted the state. And now I am the executive director, building a, a team that I just could not be prouder of. We have some of the most incredible experts in state service, from all different sort of areas, big agencies, other commissions, who are coming together because they believe in our mission, which is not always what you get in government, right? You get people who believe sort of high level in public service. It's really an honor to get to lead a team that believes deeply in a much more narrow vision and focus around equity and around making sure that, you know, America works for everybody.
Candice Schutter:Yeah, yeah. Well, speaking of equity, I'm assuming that over the course of 60 years, the team that you have created now is much more diverse than in the past. Is that true or thoughts?
Darcy Totten:I don't think so actually. I wanna say that diversity in government is just so, it's so interesting. We've made a huge effort to build a diverse team. I think on paper we are the most diverse team we've had yet. But there have been these moments in the commission's history, there's an ebb and a flow to sort of how government works, where it looks different, right? That like, so for example, there was a moment where we were led entirely by women of color. And that's not currently the case. It's a little more spaced out. But we've added men we've added folks with different sort of, uh, identity diversity is different histories.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:I've talked to some former executive directors about one of the sort of most interesting parts of this work for me is being somebody who, has occupied different class strata in my life. And I am also a queer person. I'm very open about that. Uh, I am also white presenting, which is sort of an interesting lens on the world, and on privilege and on, on racial privilege in particular.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:But I think that one of the things that we've really done a great job of in recent years is focusing on diversity as just a baseline starting strength. We just assume that that's going to help us, that the more sort of perspectives in the room, the better and the more effective we'll be. And we kind of just, is now just kind of part of, of like the air we breathe. That's part of how we think about this work.
Candice Schutter:Sure.
Darcy Totten:And it's funny, I always find it a little jarring when I talk to people about feminism or women's rights or gender equity in general. The way that people sort of get a little startled by that approach, right? And I'm always sort of trying to remind folks, you know, the reason I'm so invested in women as a category is we're half the population and within that population is every other marginalized group of people. If you can solve this sort of challenge dividing us all, if you can bring women together. If you can figure out how to build solidarity amongst women. That is far more than half the battles that we are all fighting.
Candice Schutter:Yeah. Well said. Well said. And you know, I'm like pulling that thread together with something you said a little bit earlier when you spoke about first showing up in your organization and the line out the door and the conflicting viewpoints and your ability to sort of maintain a sense of center in crisis. Like that was kind of what you had come, the skillset you had brought into it. And I know having talked to you before and heard you speak before that there's a little bit of a backstory to that. Like why it is that Darcy is so equipped when it comes to crisis. And inclusion and diversity and what that means. And, if you're comfortable sharing a little bit of your backstory with folks, because I think it's super informative and it gives us a peek at. I don't know. I just, I just think so many of these, these concepts like diversity and inclusion and collaboration, all these things, they're so high minded. And when I hear you speak about your personal history, and how it guides your philosophy around leadership, it's the opposite of high minded. It's gritty, it's real, it's earthy, you know? And that's what I, and that's what I love though, Darcy. That's why I was so drawn to you more than any other speaker, quite frankly, at the conference, because you brought something so real and really relatable to me. So share with us your story a little bit.
Darcy Totten:Well, I'll start with this. It's sort of a deep part of my ethos to show up, honestly. Um, I believe that there was a time where women had to not do that. Women had to, women in particular, had to be very careful what sort of persona they brought to the workplace. And one of the most important things that I think I get to bring now is showing up as my full self and sort of telling these stories, being who I am and still being a leader.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:Which is nothing I ever thought. Like that is, it is a word that I still trip on it a little when it comes outta my mouth when it applies to me. Um, so yeah, so I grew up in Sacramento. I grew up in a really nice part of Sacramento. If you were to go back even further though, I was in foster care until I was about two and a half, three years old. I was a baby adoptee. So my birth family is in my life. I know, I know my mom. And she came from, um, you know, a place that mostly in government, we just talk about as statistics, right? She's not the kind of person who ever shows up to testify in a committee hearing or that, you know, lawmakers get to hear from. And I'm very blessed to know her and to have known her pretty much my whole life. We met when I was 18.
Candice Schutter:Okay.
Darcy Totten:But I was taken by Child Protective Services, put in foster care as an infant. She had a pretty serious drug problem. Um, and I was adopted by a white family. This is important. My mom's Creole. Um, by a white family who lived in the suburbs and raised me in like Fair Oaks, California, which I, if you're unfamiliar, is a very fancy part of the suburbs of Sacramento. I grew up basically down the street from where the governor has a house now.
Candice Schutter:Oh, wow.
Darcy Totten:And at the time, of course, none of that was there. It was horse pastures and like old dudes with motorcycles. Uh, but it, it's a very nice part of California. And around 14, I came out of the closet. It was 1994, 95, I don't remember, early nineties, mid-nineties. And my mother, former chair of her college young Republicans Club, uh, absolutely could not handle it. Uh, my father was incredibly supportive. He was like an aging punk and like a wild liberal, and they found each other and they, they have like a whole amazing love story.
Candice Schutter:Interesting. Yeah.
Darcy Totten:But something about me coming out so young triggered her really. And we were, pretty quickly off to the races. It was violent. It was difficult. A lot of really sort of immediate, um, sort of punishing societal things happened to me that I also sort of didn't, we didn't have language for as women, right?
Candice Schutter:Sure.
Darcy Totten:I was, you know, almost 40 before I could sort of like, use the sexual assault survivor language for myself, for I think that at the time were just like, what happens when you're
Candice Schutter:Same.
Darcy Totten:a kid that nobody's watching, right?
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:One of my biggest frustrations about hearing some of the language now about sort of, um, know, uh, child sexual assault victims being called not really children because they're teenagers. I'm like, mm.
Candice Schutter:Ugh. Yeah.
Darcy Totten:No. Those were kids. I was a kid. Lots of us were kids.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:And you know, the process of that was all tied to being out as a queer person, and I didn't even totally know what that meant yet. I knew I was the only one I knew. And that there, we weren't in movies yet. We weren't on TV really. We weren't in books. It wasn't a thing anybody talked about. There was this like one crystally, like sage burning new age bookstore down the road that had a shelf in the back behind a curtain, bottom shelf with five gay books. And they were all about men. And a read all of them in the corner.'cause I couldn't buy them and I couldn't take them home. But hard as I tried, you know, my, the way that worked is I was in and out of my house. So I became a, I guess what we would call housing insecure. I was not completely homeless, but I was on any given week I was ordered out and couldn't come back. And I would have to figure out where to stay, how to feed myself, all the, right. So I became really self-reliant really, really early. And it kind of just got worse until the end of high school, at which point my mom was like. I have to tell my friends something. So I'll co-sign on a loan for you. You go to college and then just don't come back. And that was the deal. And I thought I'd never be in Sacramento again.
Candice Schutter:Wow.
Darcy Totten:So I took all the money I could get. I went to Mills College, which is a very expensive private school that I am still paying for that was worth every penny. And that I went to graduate school at the University of Texas just to see the other side of things, where I got my very first government job working for a Republican administration as a fellow. And you know, like I could write a book about the things I learned just in that short period of time. But I guess the biggest one is I walked in and said, you know, I'm all of these things that you people hate. And they were like, we don't hate you. We're glad you're here. We picked you. Do you want the job or not? We're gonna pay you. And I was like, could use the money. Yes, I'd love the job. And a bunch of people I thought I was mortal enemies with taught me politics and were kind to me and still inspire me now.
Candice Schutter:Wow.
Darcy Totten:So that was an amazing introduction to politics. But it sort of didn't stick. My father got sick. He got cancer. I came back to Sacramento. I got special dispensation to come home to take care of him. He died. that happened, my mom and I started to thaw a little bit, not enough for me to stay. I ran off to New York, met a, you know, amazing musician, married the gay rock star and did all the things. Um, and you know, throughout all of that I was always sort of on my own, right. And it was still an era where people got fired for being queer. Wearing it visibly was part of your ethos. It was part of your politics. It became part of your safety, right? It had like pink spiky hair and all the things. And I couldn't get an office job after that one in Texas, right? Like I went from a government job to, you know, like promoting parties in New York City and living a little bit like bohemian lifestyle, right? Lots of unheated warehouses with eleven roommates and one bathroom, kind of a vibe. Um, and, and like well into adulthood, right? There was, I think it was 29 when we left New York. And I just, my whole life, I never thought I would have things like a career or stability because that wasn't something queer people got, right. Like, we got murdered. We got vigils that got protested by the Phelps family, right?
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:It, it was violent. And it was really, it's so hard to explain to queer folks now'cause we did such a good job changing the culture for young queer people now.
Candice Schutter:That's right.
Darcy Totten:Um, but at the time, I mean, it was just any, leaving the house meant you might be like in a fight with somebody three times your age at any given point, right. It was just, it was a rough time. And you know, I did a lot of organizing around that and a lot of sort of political work. But always from the perspective of an underdog that would probably always lose, like I just never saw future. Um, and then, so the story I usually tell is about sort of the power of policy and the power of paperwork and the power of changing systems. Because at some point in there, then San Francisco Mayor, Gavin Newsom, issues a whole bunch of marriage licenses, in violation at the time I think of state and federal law. And we all watched it on TV and we kinda went, huh, weird.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:They're gonna let some of us get married. Nobody had ever considered that that would ever be an option. Much less like a big public thing, right? And it's just paperwork, it's a form, it's licenses, it's bureaucracy, it's something for someone to stamp, right?
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:Doing that changed the entire world in such a short period of time. Everything sped up. The whole country suddenly knew that people like me and my friends existed and that we wanted to live our lives right next to them with all the same opportunities. And suddenly it happened.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:And suddenly it was illegal to fire us for being gay. And I could like get a job and be sure I'd keep it. And I kind of started looking around and I got two degrees. I'm pretty smart. I could do stuff. Wow. Let's do stuff.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:And then it was trial and error, because while I had all the degrees, I had zero social skills for working in cubicles and didn't know how any of that worked because I had been raised by glitter wolves in like a total parallel system. Um.
Candice Schutter:Glitter wolves.
Darcy Totten:I, I mean that's kind of like, that is what happens
Candice Schutter:I love that.
Darcy Totten:when you throw out all the queer people and they raise each other, right? Like you, we built our own world.
Candice Schutter:Yeah. Yeah.
Darcy Totten:We had our own parallel economy, justice system, you name it. Uh, it took a long time to adapt to how everybody else lived.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:Um, and as a result, now in the work I get to do, I find it fairly easy to toggle back and forth between sort of what the room is assuming everyone feels or thinks, and a bird's eye view of thinking, well, what about this? Or who's missing? Or maybe that's not the only perspective. And I find that incredibly helpful.
Candice Schutter:Absolutely. And building community. Like you for the sake of survival, we're relying on your community. And the word community I think means very different things to different people based on their lived experience. Right? It's just such a, a subjective definition because of how we have or have not experienced what community means. And how it collides with crisis and creates a depth of community that I feel like you bring into leadership. That's one of the reasons I find you so fascinating and inspiring, is that you had this experience of being, you know, rejected and marginalized and creating this world to sustain yourself with other people outside of the mainstream. And yet, you entered into, and maybe it was this pivotal experience you had in Texas, being able to work across the aisle as they say, and make room for all these different perspectives. Like how do you, what do you think it takes to do that? Because I think right now, we should spend a little time on this because I think this is something that folks are struggling with a lot right now. And this is what you do day in and day out is attempting to bridge those divides. What do you have to say about that?
Darcy Totten:There's so many pieces to that. So the first one is sort of the story I just told, right? That I became aware, acutely aware, that if you change systems, you can change people, that the average person approaches the problem of like social bias I think backwards. We assume that you have to change someone's mind, you have to change their hearts and minds, and then you get better policy. And it turned out that if you got better policy, people changed their minds fairly simply. That if you simply were able to say, the structure is now different, people are incredibly adaptable.
Candice Schutter:Yes.
Darcy Totten:Five years later, I had rights no one ever dreamed of.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:I had a life. I, I own a house. I, who am I? Right? I
Candice Schutter:Right.
Darcy Totten:I have slept in cars. I have slept on park benches. I own a home.
Candice Schutter:Right.
Darcy Totten:In the city where I thought I would never be again actually. I lived in Sacramento again. Um, that was sort of the end of that story. My mother also eventually got sick, and I moved home and took care of her for the last year of her life. So we did get like, there's sort of a happy ending to that story. We did actually eventually kind of come together. And she, by the end of it, fell absolutely in love with my wife. And,
Candice Schutter:Oh.
Darcy Totten:Insisted on throwing us a wedding while she was alive to see it in our backyard.
Candice Schutter:Oh, Darcy, that's beautiful.
Darcy Totten:It was amazing. And it was just before it became legal. So we did another one later, but it was incredible. And she invited all the neighbors, and all the people that she used to be sort of embarrassed to know that I existed.
Candice Schutter:Making repairs, right there. Yeah.
Darcy Totten:It incredible. So some of it is the systems change piece. And I had a glimpse of that in Texas, right, about how policy worked and policy could change big systems. Um, some of it is that I had all of these incredible sort of women who were my heroes who treated political difference like, like any other difference. Like a, a thing you could joke about or argue about, but that didn't fundamentally undo somebody's humanity. And I think that the environment has shifted a little, right? It is a lot harder to do that with somebody who believes that you should not exist.
Candice Schutter:Sure.
Darcy Totten:But it, it gave me a little bit of background. And that is one of the things I have always loved and admired about Texas women, right? Ann Richards and Molly Ivins and these sort of like staunch advocates for equity and things I believe in, but who were more than happy to sit down and smoke a cigar and have a bourbon with a guy who absolutely thought they were wrong about everything and just figure it out.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:And I, you know, sort of adopted that similar approach.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:Not so much the cigars, um, uh, not anymore. Uh. But also I think that some other piece of this is, there's kind of a weird superpower to being someone who blends in, who has a really different experience from other people in the room. So I was just at a dinner, this incredible meal with all of these wonderful women leaders. And they're venture capitalists and they're tech CEOs. And I'm sure there was an heiress in there somewhere, right? Like they're just big impressive, like we run the world sort of, well-moneyed women. And I am, you know, I'm never gonna be fully comfortable there, but I'm more comfortable, right? And I just, everybody's a person. So I'm chatting. We're finding what we have in common. We're like arguing about how to get more women into sort of wealth building spaces. And it is hot. And I am of an age where now I am sometimes unbearably hot, so I lose the jacket. And it was, you know, you clock it a little bit when you've lived through a lot of trauma, that hyper vigilance sort of kicks in. And I watch six women go straight to my tattoos, none of which are particularly pretty, right? Like they're, they're, mark from whence I came.
Candice Schutter:Yeah. Yeah.
Darcy Totten:And there's that moment where people are sort of like, how did you get here? Do you belong here? And one of the things that I sort of love about that is I can tell stories. And by the end of the story of like how this ink got here, right? This is like my whole arm is covered with sort of markers of my parents and sort of, who did them and sort of what it meant, right?
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:Uh, the first one's actually a really beautiful story about a woman who just held me while I cried after my dad died. And like, uh, did it in a weird position where she was actually just holding me like a baby.
Candice Schutter:Oh, wow.
Darcy Totten:Which is, it was such a gift for somebody grieving who didn't get held like that.
Candice Schutter:That's right.
Darcy Totten:And by the end of it, it was wonderful. It was bonding. It was a connector instead of a thing that made me different. But what gets it there is me, right? Like I could have gotten all shrunk down and uncomfortable and made up all these stories in my head about feeling judged or feeling like I would never fit in here, right? And some of it is you just have to sort of be brave enough to be like, I'm nothing like you. We are very different. That's okay. I still like you. I bet you still like me.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:You have to give people space to be their best selves.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm. Well, one of the things that really stuck with me in the talk that you gave, it feels thematic whenever I speak with you. Are these two words: outlast them.
Darcy Totten:Oh yeah.
Candice Schutter:I feel like that needs to be a tattoo on my arm, quite frankly. But like, I mean, there's, there's different contexts in which we would use that phrase and what we would mean by it. But in this instance, it feels like it's connected to the next question I was gonna ask you, which is what you perceive power to be.
Darcy Totten:Yes.
Candice Schutter:And when you talk about showing up in that moment, I feel like it's maybe connected to your answer. I don't wanna assume anything, but I'm gonna let you take it from here.
Darcy Totten:Yeah. I mean, well, so everybody has superpowers and mine is that. It is the tenacity to outlast everybody who has ever gotten up and gotten in my way, and said, you cannot do this. You cannot have this. You cannot be this. Um, and sometimes they have been able to prevent that for some short period of time, but I have outlived or outlasted every last one of them. So what I know for sure now is, they're wrong.
Candice Schutter:Hmm.
Darcy Totten:That's it. Full stop. They're wrong.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:If they're wrong for me, they're probably wrong for anybody else. It is possible outlast the people who tell you no. And when I think about power, it's funny, I think about power a lot actually.
Candice Schutter:I bet.
Darcy Totten:Because it is the thing that is not shared. It is a thing that is usually the biggest barrier between people in my communities that I love and the things that would make their lives better or easier or more fair. And often people conflate power with things like position or title or money, resources. And it's true, power comes with all of those things. But power is also in collectives. Power is in collaboration. Power is in solidarity. There was this incredible night that I'll never forget, long ago, and far away, right? In a different world. Sort of hanging out like a bunch of rowdy queer kids in the Mission District, right? I don't even remember how old I was. And at the time, that was kind of like inviting a fight a little bit. Just the stoop we were on and the sort of amount of space we were taking up. Sooner or later, somebody was gonna come tell us to like disappear. And we knew that. And you know, at the time there was a lot of, sort of very gendered presentation. I had, you know, very short hair and very tough in my leather jacket, scrappy. Um, so there's a bunch of us sort of very masculine presenting and one hyper fem woman with us, like a corset or something. And a bunch of dudes walked by and just started harassing her. And it was like a switch flipped. Nobody wanted to get in a fight about it. Everybody was just funny and sarcastic. And I just remember being part of this group of like beautiful queer women chasing these guys down the street, cat calling them and telling them how good they looked in their jeans. And they'd be much prettier if they smiled more. And they were terrified. It was like the scariest I've ever been. Um, and it was, it was such a, I normally hate the word empowered, but it was such an empowering sort of moment for me to understand that there are more avenues to power than like direct application of such, right? That you can suck the air out of a room with a joke. That's power.
Candice Schutter:That's true.
Darcy Totten:You can convince people who were sure that they hated you, that maybe they actually can put up with you. That's also power.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:That there's lots of power. And that in groups of people, people who think they have no power, or people who often have no access to institutional, systemic power, people with no resources, people without that money or those titles a group, they have a lot of power, right? That is, labor unions are built on that.
Candice Schutter:That's right.
Darcy Totten:Huge movements, social movements are built on that. The concept of collective power, of sharing our hope and our desire for a better collective future, that's power. Collective imagination is power. And it's one that we ignore all the time, which just baffles me. Because it's, I think, the most powerful. If you can be the group of people or the person or the group of people who envision what the world looks like 20 years from now, the amount of power contained in the ability to conceive of that and then make it happen. It's incredible, right? Like being able to pull yourself out of the immediate survival and say, okay, what's this? A lot of people are really scared right now, right? Things that they have counted on, they're sort of crumbling. Even I'm watching folks absolutely coming for rights that I was delighted to get and never thought I'd have, right? And also, I am fully secure in my capacity to survive without those rights. I just don't want to. I'm very comfortable. I'm old now. I have older knees. My stoop sitting days are over. And I will fight to keep them. But at the same time, what's so important is, okay, what do I want the world to look like when we're done tearing it all apart? Sometimes you have to do that, right? Like, see, you know, you tear through the house and throw everything out, and then later you regret some of what you're missing. But also it's clean, you start over. I'm a person who's picked up and moved to a new city with a trash bag full of things, mostly clothes, more than once in my life. Starting over is also power. The ability to just reinvent, not just yourself, but the world you live in.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:Um, because it, that sort of reinforces that it doesn't have to be however it is. There is a world where women run absolutely everything. There is a world where, you know, having a female president or a female governor is not even remotely surprising. There's a world where, you know, Black women aren't leaving the workforce in droves because they're being forced out. Instead, they're running all of these new tech companies and their collective understanding of the world and imagination is what's driving our algorithms not four white dudes and hoodies, right? Like there are whole ways that the world could be. And if we can kind of harness that. Not just hoping for it, but harness sort of the collective consciousness about what is possible, we can make that happen.
Candice Schutter:Yeah. I love this collective imagination piece. And as you're speaking about it, I'm thinking, well, isn't that really what good policy work relies on? Right. I, I never really thought about it that way. But it makes so much sense that it's such a huge part of the work that you do as a coalition. And, you know. I'm thinking'cause I am studying organizational leadership and I'm taking a critical perspective, and it really is all about dismantling, deconstructing pulling it all down. And that working in cooperation with what you're describing is the secret sauce I feel like. The two things happening alongside each other. And we need people like you helping us to actualize the collective imagination. And I feel like that's where I get a little stumped. And I, I think if I, if like a zoom way in to just my more immediate life and the little town that I live in, which is a little red state town, that I feel sort of alien and to be perfectly honest. But I, I do my best to make connections, and I've learned a lot. That's the beauty of speaking to all of you listeners out there who live in a bubble of community where everyone is really similar to you. There's something really nurturing and wonderful about that. But being placed in an environment where you are the record-scratch moment, just by virtue of being who you are, it also is very formative. And it, it, I think it does help to, um, there's something about the dissonance that actually feeds the imagination.'Cause it helps you to see there's a lot of different perspectives here that we have to figure out how to come together. What do you think about pragmatize that, whether it's in your organization or in individual's everyday lives, like what does that look like?
Darcy Totten:So it always comes full circle back to that community piece for me. Right, um. And one of the most interesting things I've learned working in government instead of outside for it to change, is how revolutionary to this system things I thought of as just sort of baseline survival strategies are. So the standard answer, if you want a government agency to do a thing it doesn't do is, well, we don't have the money, right?
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:And that's usually true. They usually don't have the money. So I kind of came in, and somewhere in my journey the commission was like, what if we did X, Y, Z? And the answer is, well, we don't have any funding. And my answer was, we don't need money. Everybody kinda stared at me. But that's the truth, right? The same way that we do anything is how we get things done. We have partners. We can trade. We work on the barter system.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:I don't have any money, but I can, you know, talk to you about something you wanna change in the world. I can elevate this issue.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:Do you have money? No. Do you have space? Yes. Great. Now we're gonna have a meeting. And we, so we actually sort of just did this recently that I'm, I'm really proud of this. There are city and county women's commissions and they're all sort of independent of each other. They all popped up at different times. They have different sort of rules and structures of how they get created. One thing that they all have in common is almost none of them have enough money. They're not well funded.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:And, for the first time, as far as we can tell, since this commission was established, we just convened them all in LA. So we invited every single one of them to the table to have a set of conversations. In, in part to celebrate our 60th anniversary. We did it in partnership with the LA County Commission, which was one of the longest running, sort of older ones. They turned 50 this year. So we partnered with them. And we have a longstanding partnership with Mount St. Mary's University, which is a private women's college in Los Angeles with like a deep underpinning of social justice at its core. So we also have a relationship with them, an MOU I built years ago. So called them up and said, can we host all these people on your campus? Will you help us make sure that everybody gets, like, you know, coffee and some snacks in the morning? And LA figured out lunch. And we figured out programming. And we brought in all of the people we work with, incredible researchers, folks from Equal Rights Advocates for National Partnership for Women and Families, Hospitality Training Academy Professional, right? Like some of our grantees. Brought in Dr. Debra Duardo, uh, LA County Office of Education, right? The superintendent for the county. Madeline Di Nonno from Geena Davis Institute. Just brought all of these leaders together to sort of share their data, share what they knew, have this collective convening. But we kept it really small. It wasn't a conference. It was, you know, I think we kept it at 140 people. There were some travel delay. We got like a 111 solid committed folks who represented the depth and breadth of sort of embedded women's institutions in the state.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:And we put them all in breakout rooms. And we said, you know, talk to each other and then come back and tell the group what it is you are willing to show up for, what you wanna work with each other on. And let's build a policy agenda that we all just agree we're gonna work on together. We're gonna show up for each other. The same way that like, know, kid me on a bus showed up for the gay guy getting picked on in the backseat, even though I didn't know him. Like, how am I gonna apply this sort of teenage me principle to government now? And we did it. And we have come up, collaboratively developed a women's statewide agenda. For the next several years we've built in, we're gonna be hosting four follow-up meetings on these topics that'll be open and on Zoom to everybody who was there, but also to all of their partners, their community organizations. And we kind of said, what are the things that we have to fix for gender equity in this state, in the state of California. And we got, you know, the local commissions need a funding source. But we also got housing and pay equity and wealth building for women. We got product safety and women's health and the things that still aren't being handled there. Career development for girls, support for survivors of human trafficking, kids in foster care, right? Like we got this incredibly large umbrella set of issues, with the idea being that when somebody runs a bill, somebody runs a fundraiser, somebody starts a program, somebody holds a conference, we now have this network. And all of these start small but mighty. But we have a network of women's commissions across the state who will show up for that other commission. They will show up for each other.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:And that is how you make change.
Candice Schutter:Yes. I love that so much, and.
Darcy Totten:I am so excited.
Candice Schutter:I bet. It sounds thrilling. And it's not hard to see the parallels of how we could do that same kind of thing in our smaller communities.
Darcy Totten:Well, one of the things that was so powerful is the last time I had been at an event at Mount St. Mary's that we had, had something to do with was around the Equal Rights Amendment. And Dolores Huerta came. And it was like towards the last day and we only had about 30 people there. And she showed up, and she was like, this is how I started.
Candice Schutter:Oh.
Darcy Totten:Just get a bunch of women in a room around a table and see what they can do. This is what women are good at. And I really brought that with me a year later to this convening. And, you know, it was started out the day sort of disappointed. People couldn't get on their planes. There were travel delays. There were all these problems. And I kinda went, eh, we're gonna do it again and again and again. This is a stellar start. We got a bunch of women around a proverbial table in a room to roll up their sleeves and see what we can do. And the only thing we're gonna do now is build bigger, longer, stronger tables and invite more of them to join us.
Candice Schutter:So what would you say to people who are like, Darcy, that sounds amazing. But I don't live in California. That kind of thing only happens in California.
Darcy Totten:Well, I, I wanna give California credit. We do tend to start things.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:We do lead by example in ways that I think are really powerful, right? Um, our former Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson, authored the California Fair Pay Act. That is having its tenure anniversary this year. And that's a model for equal pay legislation at the state level across the nation. I think 42 other states immediately copied it, right? California really does lead in this way. So I guess what I would say is, here's the model. This is the template. I will share with anybody the template for how to do anything, right? You want me, you want my Mad Libs emails? Here you go. Let me show you how we built the website. I'll teach you WordPress, honestly, right? Like, like what do you need to replicate this? But then go replicate it, right?
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:I think one of the biggest challenges is that we sort of live in an era where people, they want to push a button. They want to write a check. But they want someone else to do the thing. And at the end of the day, if you wanna change something, you actually have to do the thing yourself and then with friends. And then you have to let other people do the thing differently than how you would do it. That's, it's like you start it and then you have to let it go. That part's hard, too. Right? Like I want all those commissions to convene without me.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:I want them to have meetings that I'm not invited to someday. I don't want to be the thing around which it circles. I'm proud to have started it and now I want it to go. And I'm gonna steward it until it will do that without me. And then I'm gonna start something else that needs doing. Because that's kind of my energy right, is catalyzing things.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:Um, and I think it's really important that women start thinking in those collective ways. I got a bunch of little glass bricks with my name on it. And that's nice. And I appreciate it every time that happens. And it's never the reason to do anything. At the end of the day, the work is what's important. What's important is, did we build something that outlives us, that outlast us? I wanna build things that outlast me. And it's not even really a legacy issue,'cause I don't care if anybody remembers that it's mine. I just want it to work. I wanna leave the world better for women and girls than I found it.
Candice Schutter:Yes.
Darcy Totten:And frankly, that's not that hard to do'cause I didn't find it in great shape. So there's lots to do. and there's room for everybody to get in.
Candice Schutter:And I'm gonna shift gears a little bit. Because something that we talked about last time that really is gonna land for The Deeper Pulse listeners in particular, because a lot of folks who listen to this podcast started tuning into it because they were, like me, sort of like apostates from the wellness world. And, um, some are still, you know, involved in certain ways. Not to say that that's necessarily a bad thing. However, I've voiced lots of critiques of that world on this podcast. And one of the things that came up in our conversation was we were talking about the wellness and self-care directive to turn our attention inward and to focus on like bettering ourselves. And that that's the thing that's gonna change the world or that's the thing that we need to be doing. And while there is a time and place for that, there's a way in which that can be its own sort of smoke screen behind which things are happening. It can be a way to distract us from doing the grunt work. And I think there's a balance to be had there. And I wanna hear your thoughts on that.
Darcy Totten:I just, I was just part of a leadership development group. And we just had a session where I was holding forth on this exact topic, probably annoying at least half the room with it. But I feel strongly about this. And I wanna also say, so I am not a wellness practitioner. I am married to one.
Candice Schutter:Okay.
Darcy Totten:And so I get sort of a lot of kind of outside perspective. But not from within it. So where I land with this is a couple of things. The first big one, there's a sales imperative to constantly convincing women in particular that they're broken and in need of healing. People make money off of that. And in addition to making money off of that, it serves the sort of added bonus of keeping you insecure, not confident in what you are able to do, and consistently trying to fix something about you that may or may not even be broken. Or even giving you a self concept of being broken.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:It also is culturally really American. It is deeply steeped in this sort of rugged individualism idea that it is you against the world, and will always be so. And that that is somehow the right and natural way of being, which is deeply disempowering and frankly designed to be disempowering. And it keeps people from, you know, accessing that lever of collective power. If you are all sure that you're supposed to individually be succeeding on your own and healing on your own and fixing things on your own, you're not spending a lot of time building that community that might have the power to change larger systems and circumstances. And it sort of feeds like a human impulse towards selfishness, um, and, and self-absorption in a way that I don't particularly vibe with.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:Like, my life has been saved by strangers more than five times. I haven't actually sat down and counted, but like the ones that are immediately, like multiple times, strangers have literally saved my life. Like a time I almost drowned, a thing at a party. Right? Like people have taken care of me. And they're not the people you would think. They weren't immediate family, right? Like I got pneumonia once and was in real bad shape and couldn't go to a hospital and didn't have health insurance and didn't have any money. And the neighborhood drug dealer brought me antibiotics.
Candice Schutter:Hmm.
Darcy Totten:I don't know him. I didn't know him. I've never seen him since. Nice guy. Not even sure how he found me, got to me, or knew I was sick. Brilliant, right? And I was better. If you want a village, you have to be a villager. You have to show up. And what that means is the whole like messaging around sort of take your space, rest, right? You do have to do those things too.
Candice Schutter:Sure.
Darcy Totten:But you can't do them at the expense of other people, right? When you are tired and you have a long day at work and your neighbor needs help, you need to go help your neighbor. Right? That like your friend having surgery. And they need meals cooked for them even though it is the worst possible time'cause it's over the holiday. And you've got like, you know, your kids and your ex's kids and everybody, right? And like you have all these things. Figure it out. DoorDash them, something, right?
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:You contribute what you can.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:We have got to pull ourselves out of this sort of individualistic thing, as humans aren't meant to live like that. We live in a society. We operate as groups. That is what the core of our humanity is steeped in. And so from my own life and into sort of the imaginary life I wanna help create, there is this sort of core thought that, you know, your problems are my problems. And mine are yours. And we are in this together. That is the right and natural way of the world, how I see it. It is not rugged individualism. It is that we are connected.
Candice Schutter:Yes. I agree with everything you just said. And I would also say, that it's important to flag, in these wellness spaces there can be sort of two ways that that rugged individualism can present itself. One is the contraction into self-care, self-help endlessly. And there's also the way the pendulum can swing in the other direction of, rather than just being a villager in the village who just shows up when the need is present.
Darcy Totten:Mm-hmm.
Candice Schutter:We become the identity of the healer. The person who's figured it out, who's dealt with their trauma, who's check, check, check, check, check the box, and is there to serve. But it's actually more about, in my opinion, the performance of being the person who serves than it is about being a part of the community. There's a hierarchical thing that just sort of happens. And, and I, when I say that I wanna own that I've been that person.
Darcy Totten:I wanna flag a gender perspective on this that I
Candice Schutter:Okay. Please.
Darcy Totten:think is really important on this, right? We are one grandmother in to women having any remote expectation of a life even a little bit equal to a man's. That, uh, of a life of independence, a life with a career, a life with any sort of power over what happens to us, a life with our own money. One grandmother. Like we are one generation into this being possible for women in America, like one full generation.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:And we've made huge strides in that time. I do not want us to fault women for looking for toeholds that are considered socially acceptable.
Candice Schutter:Sure.
Darcy Totten:To leadership and power. And the thing is, and wellness is a place historically that the men are like, can have that. I won't take it from you.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:And so women have built themselves whole industries there.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:Right. But like when you. Which is it? We talked about this a little bit, that like, you know, uh, the self-help section of a bookstore should be titled leadership except it's all for women.
Candice Schutter:Hmm.
Darcy Totten:Women are still sort of finding our way in terms of how we use power. How we collect it. How we build it. And we're still sort of teaching each other badly about how to do that.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:We sort of talk about networking and using these sort of like old social climbing models, um, that were like deeply embedded with also sort of specific types of class and race, sort of like a force. And one of the things that we're also seeing is sort of the way that women are encouraged to be caregivers, even when they have things that could give them power, right? Like we have more female billionaires now than ever. There's this stunning wealth transfer that has happened where women are like really wielding lots of wealth. And what we're watching them do is start foundations and give it away. Because that is a socially acceptable thing to do with money if you're female. I personally would like them all to pool their finances and buy all of the industries that are ruining our lives and then change them. Because that's another way to change the world.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:But we don't talk about that. And it's not polite to talk about money. And it's definitely not polite to tell other people what to do with their money, right? Like, there's all of these sort of restrictions that hobble our power. Men don't have that problem. Men have been sitting in back rooms telling each other what to do with their money for a long time.
Candice Schutter:Yeah, yeah.
Darcy Totten:We have to get more comfortable with power ourselves and with the sense that we might be judged for wanting it, taking it, using it, applying it.
Candice Schutter:That's fair.
Darcy Totten:Because you will be judged. People will judge you. That is just the reality. But also, people will judge you no matter what. So at some point, you just have to kind of live your life.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:And I think particularly in wellness spaces. Again, it sort of feeds things that are expected of women. It is expected that we are sort of like, small and injured and fragile and in need of outside help or outside saving or stuff, right? Like it feeds that kind of like princess in the tower narrative. And then you get all this empowerment messaging by like, I don't need that. I healed myself. And now I'm totally perfect. And I can teach you how to be perfect. And it's like, well, no, that's also bad. Like nobody,
candice-schutter---she-her-_5_11-25-2025_110409:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:That's, that's just fitness industry, like rejiggered with more. Soothing sounds, uh.
Candice Schutter:Yeah. Yeah. It's just like a laundered, a laundered perspective. Yeah.
Darcy Totten:So some of it is we just have to let go of, we collectively, and particularly as women, we have to let go of this idea that we have to do or be anything at all other than what we want for ourselves and for each other. I promise I'm living proof. And it's one of the things I love to kind of run around in my new world like in a suit, in capitols, having these conversations with people going, promise you there's no rules. Because I've lived on the other side where there weren't any rules or none of these rules applied. There's a whole capacity of the universe to adapt to what we want, uh, instead of us endlessly forcing ourselves to fit into what we've inherited as the right way to be.
Candice Schutter:Yes.
Darcy Totten:And so as a collective, as, as a collective of women, as a collective of sort of humanity, we kind of owe it to ourselves and to each other, just behave as though the world is whatever we want it to be.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:That's for the wellness community. That is actually how manifestation works, right? It's not that you say the magic words a million times in the mirror. It's that you adopt the energy of the thing you wanna pull to you and it matches you, right? Well that works just as well for politics. In terms of systems. That works for money, not in terms of bringing it to you, but in terms of how it operates, right? If an entire neighborhood simply adopts the idea that pooled money is a better way to be, well then that's how money works in that neighborhood.
Candice Schutter:If they actualize that idea. That's a, a blind spot I see a lot in new age wellness spaces though, is there's a lot of lip service.
Darcy Totten:Well, you gotta make it real.
Candice Schutter:You gotta make it real.
Darcy Totten:You've roll up the sleeves and get everybody around the table to do the work.
Candice Schutter:That's the thing you're saying, like, yeah. You can't just write it in your manifestation journal. You have to go out and get your hands dirty and do it.
Darcy Totten:And in the same way you can't just, you know, yell at Congress or expect someone else to fix it.
Candice Schutter:That's right.
Darcy Totten:There is a core amount of community just being people who show up for each other and with each other to fix problems. That's some of why we adapted to living in large scale societies as we can do that. You know? Um. Childcare is a great example. We talk about childcare all the time. There are not enough childcare slots. Women in the workforce are hurting always because there's not, uh, sort of an adaptation for childcare. And we tried really hard to sort of just convince men to do half. But they don't. They didn't. And you know, so we sort of looked at government and said, can you fix it? And government's like, no. And now we're having to look around and go, well, what are the other options? Right? And some of those other options, or the other option that has been in use since, you know, time started, are friends and family networks. Informal networks where communities care for each other's children. Also it's a really burdensome, it, right? Some of the challenge is just how do we do this so that it works for everybody?
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:And then you just do it. You figure it out. Uh, we've seen great pilot projects in some communities that are helping women start home care businesses, right? So we have some counties in California that are really seeing massive drops in the need for childcare because so many women started home-based businesses.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:And they're culturally responsive. And they're safe. And they've been trained. And they're, you know, there's available childcare now. And the people providing it have a job that pays well because normally providers don't get paid very well. But if you own the business, it's a little bit different, right? You can adjust for that, especially if it's home-based. So there's always a solution. Women have never, I don't know if you or your listeners have seen this speech. Reese Witherspoon gave some amazing speech at some awards show that I cannot remember which one. But she was sort of talking about how much she hates in scripts, in movies, when the, you know, the female character goes,"oh no, what do we do?"
Candice Schutter:Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Darcy Totten:Because never in history has a woman not known what to do. Right? You just apply that to everything. You apply that to childcare. You apply it to grocery prices, right? Like, um. The amount of neighborhoods I'm seeing just near my own where everybody is sort of bartering on food, right? The chicken lady and the goat lady and the veggie lady have a trade going and it's awesome, right? I don't know that we've figured out how to make that real for everybody. But women figure it out, right?
Candice Schutter:Yes, we do.
Darcy Totten:Um, we get things done. And there's just no reason to get in our own way, because we're sure that we're not the right person. We're not healed enough. We're still too whatever. All that energy we spend on sort of healing our collective trauma, it's important to heal, but it is also important to understand that sometimes one of the most healing things you can do is change the world so that the cause of your hurt doesn't exist for anybody else anymore.
Candice Schutter:Yeah. Yeah, one of the things you said in our last conversation that sort of feels like it underscores all of this is I asked, you know, about what every day people can do starting now, and the first thing you said was,"stop waiting for instructions."
Darcy Totten:Oh, yeah. Oh yeah.
Candice Schutter:I love that.
Darcy Totten:Nobody is coming with a worksheet. Figure it out.
Candice Schutter:Exactly, exactly. And that circles us all the way back to the beginning. And like, when you have lived experience where you have no choice.
Darcy Totten:Yep.
Candice Schutter:You can't, nobody's gonna give you the instructions. There's nobody to even ask. The instructions maybe don't even exist. Which is often the case, but we actually know what we and our communities need. We're not at a loss.
Darcy Totten:Well, and so if there's two things I want women to let go of. And there, it might sound a little strange. But, um, embarrassment, right? And this sense of fear of making mistakes. Like I want women to get so comfortable screwing up in public. And everybody sort of says, Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, in public when the stakes are high, right? I talk about my mistakes because I think it's important to share that you can make them and still do things that you want. It doesn't end you. It's not, right? And yes, you get judged. And yes, people are mean. And yes, people are petty. And also you get to learn from them and then you are that much better at whatever the thing is you're trying to do. But we have got to give ourselves and each other permission to screw up and keep going.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:More and more. That is how every business owner who built something out of nothing did it. They screwed up and kept going. That is how politicians get made. It's how policy gets made. It is how the world changes, is that you cannot sort of be afraid to act in case you make a mistake. You have to act and make the mistake and then keep acting.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:And when you make a mistake, you have to be able to say, Ooh, whoops. I got that wrong. I'm sorry. Let me repair that.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:And it just, it gets folded in. And I think so many women, again, one grandmother in, so many women are really living with this overly burdensome idea that they have to be perfect. That they have to get it right every time. That they cannot ever show weakness. And there's good reason for that. I also don't wanna like discount that, right? There, lots of women have been thrown out. They've been blackballed. They've been sort of stopped from doing the things they want. And also, the world has changed. Look around, lots of men are making lots of public mistakes. Go ahead, take that liberty for yourself.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:And change the world. I always tell young women that I'm mentoring, you will have so many men in charge of your life who don't know what they are doing. And they're gonna be making three times the salary that you are. And at some point you just have to be like, you know what? It's my turn.
Candice Schutter:Uhhuh.
Darcy Totten:I am not deferring to somebody else's sort of iterative learning process anymore. I'm gonna start my own.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:And you don't have to be anybody you're not to do that, right? Like, I am naturally sort of like loud and big. And also, you don't have to be that either. You know, some of the most powerful women in my sort of kitchen cabinet, like my personal advisory board of people that I keep around who tell me when I'm definitely screwing up, are incredibly quiet and incredibly introverted and very, very sort of hard to draw out. And yet when they speak, people listen. They carry themselves with authority. They have the weight of knowing what they know and the courage of their convictions. And they stand by those things. You don't have to be any personality type.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:To do what I'm talking about.
Candice Schutter:Yeah, yeah. It's like caring out loud, you know? I mean, and we all, we all show that differently. We all show up differently. My person, you know, it's like I have my partner and then I have my person, like my bestie of many years. And she's one of those people who doesn't take up a lot of space, doesn't speak a lot. But when she's ready to talk, I'm like, everybody zip it.
Darcy Totten:Yeah.
Candice Schutter:Because I know the potency of what's getting ready to come out of this person's mouth is something we're all gonna wanna hear, you know? And sometimes that, that pregnant space that gets created by the people who aren't as vivacious as Darcy and I, who have all the kinds of things to say all the time, that creates a different kind of possibility. And it's um, it's just as important. So I think I appreciate you underscoring that'cause I think it's essential. And.
Darcy Totten:I just, the, the last thing that I just wanna say is that is so important is, we're so new into possibilities for women, right? And it doesn't feel that way for a lot of us, right? A lot of us, uh, millennials and sort of younger, grew up with some amount of expectation of that. And a lot were sort of stifled by the women who just squeaked in before them. And they have lots of sort of like feelings there. So the thing I wanna just encourage women in particular to do is to say each other's names in rooms they're not in. To, to bring each other with them. To stifle the urge in yourself to gatekeep or to say, this is my space. Or I own this piece and you can't have it. We have to stop competing with each other. There is always going to be room for more of us. We, we don't take up nearly the space we collectively could. You're not gonna lose your spot. You're not gonna lose what you worked for. You've got to bring other folks in.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:So one of the things I'm really intentional about right, is if I'm in a conversation, actually had several of those this week where somebody's kind of like, what do we do about the thing? And I have an idea. I will give my idea and then I will also give the names of one or two or three other women I know who either have a different perspective, have a piece of it, know how to solve some chunk of the problem. And I'm immediately putting people together, right? Like, I wanna build this certification program. Great. It's gonna be you. But also all of you over here. Do you want in on this? Right. I'm the first person to make a phone call saying, who wants to be part of this thing? Everybody put your name on it. The sort of sense of working together is foreign to a lot of spaces that I now move in. People are suspicious of it. Sometimes they get nervous about it. Sometimes there are two hour meetings about whose logo goes where, right? Like it happens. But you just keep pushing on, right? Like you let it happen. Because it hasn't happened in those spaces before. And that is one of the things that I hope I get to contribute, is this idea that we can collectively do more if we work together. And I hope that that outlasts me long, long after this isn't what I do for a living. Um, or am not living, right? Like I want that to be a true thing.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:And it's so interesting, too. Also just the little bit about kindness, right? There's a kindness that comes with that. I wrote that memoir. I just finished it. And I've been looking for, publishers. And so I, you know, the query letter process, if you've ever written a book, is just terrifying, right? Like, you, you give them all your stats. You tell them how to sell, you know your story. And then you send these letters. And then they send back, no, thank you.
Candice Schutter:Uh, yeah.
Darcy Totten:You get rejected. So, but I just got. I wanna give this woman credit. I just got the sweetest, kindest rejection letter I've ever gotten in my life. And I printed it. I saved it. Because it was such a wonderful no. And I wanna use that as a model for when I have to tell people no, right? And she, it wasn't the sandwich. It wasn't like compliment, no, compliment. It was,
Candice Schutter:Uh huh.
Darcy Totten:It was a well thought out, sort of like, this just doesn't resonate with me. I don't have any connection to the story you're telling. So I'm the wrong person to sell it. Good luck. And I was like, yeah, it's honest. It's kind. It's real. It doesn't feel fake. I don't feel catered to or fluffed. This is how I wanna learn how to, right. So I have now learned something from this woman I'm probably never gonna meet about how to say no. And I'm so grateful for it.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:And someday, when I find the person who is gonna publish this book, I'm still gonna keep the no letter up. You know?
Candice Schutter:Yeah, yeah.
Darcy Totten:Because it is just as important as whoever eventually does say yes.
Candice Schutter:Yeah. And well, I can't wait to read it, first of all. I will be.
Darcy Totten:We gotta find somebody who wants it first. But someday.
Candice Schutter:It's gotta happen,'cause I wanna read it.
Darcy Totten:Someday.
Candice Schutter:And I think though, which sort of touches upon everything you're saying is that we have to be willing to go through this awkward phase.
Darcy Totten:Yeah.
Candice Schutter:Of figuring out how to do all of this differently because we haven't done this before. And so it's gonna be awkward. We're gonna make mistakes. We're gonna have to call each other out in ways that are kind and honest and true. We're figuring this out together. And I am just hearing you say that the more we show up, the more we have models to look toward, like this woman who wrote this letter. And.
Darcy Totten:Yeah, we just have to do that for each other. And then also understand that like absolutely nothing about hierarchical systems built for men, designed to exclude most people, is going to benefit us collectively. If we try and model our own new world off of that, right? Like it benefited everybody it was supposed to.
Candice Schutter:That part.
Darcy Totten:This, right now, this movement, this is the result of that model, right? We have done a full test of that model. We gave it a solid 250 years. This is what you get.
Candice Schutter:Yep.
Darcy Totten:With that model. Do we wanna keep the model? Is it working? Do you feel like you are served by this model? And my guess is, all the people who are in their mind being like, maybe not, simply do not yet understand that the only thing between their life and a new model is them being like, yeah, no. Let's do it different. And then just doing it different, right? Like so much of what I learned how to do as a kid is you just, it's forgiveness not permission, right?
Candice Schutter:Yep.
Darcy Totten:You just do it differently until someone makes you stop and then you figure it out.
Candice Schutter:And then you outlast them, y'all.
Darcy Totten:And then you outlast them.
Candice Schutter:That seems like the, the perfect place to end, right?
Darcy Totten:There we go.
Candice Schutter:There's, we said there was no formula, but there you have it. That's as close as we're gonna get.
Darcy Totten:Perfect.
Candice Schutter:This has been so great, Darcy. I feel like I could talk to you for hours. And I just, just so appreciate the work that you're doing. And, and when I say you, I mean just everybody that you work with in partnership. Everyone that is coming together to make these possibilities real in our lives, to actualize the collective imagination. And we can, many of us, we lay in our beds at night, you know, maybe fretting over the news or this and that. And what, what are we really doing? We're, we're hoping for something different. And we're imagining something different. If we can focus on that part. And contribute to collectives, like in the way that you're doing and use what you're all doing as a model. It just gives me a tremendous amount of hope. I like to say hope is a verb, and I feel like you're verb-in' it. You're, you're making hope real in the lives of so many people, and I'm so grateful.
Darcy Totten:Oh, thank you. I mean, I need to acknowledge that I am one of so many people doing all of. Like I am a piece of a collective.
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:If you get a chance, go check out our website. We've just put up a new piece of it, where actually if you portal in through the part about our 60th anniversary, you can see a list of every woman who's ever served on this commission. We're trying to ad all the EDs as well. But it is, it's an impressive list.
Candice Schutter:I bet.
Darcy Totten:But the thing that I love about it is they cycle through, right?
Candice Schutter:Mm-hmm.
Darcy Totten:It is a collective effort over decades to build a thing that is designed to move the needle on change. It is the smallest piece of a big, massive change, right? Like we are, we are this little bit of it. And it has taken so many of us working together in whatever ways we did to get our little piece. And the, the hope is that everybody is doing that and then it's all sort of coming together, right? Like that the bird's eye view is like the inside of a big clock or something. It's all the gears are working.
Candice Schutter:Yeah.
Darcy Totten:Yeah. If you link to our website and folks go to that convening page, they'll also get that collective agenda that all the commissions built.
Candice Schutter:Oh, love that. Yes, yes.
Darcy Totten:Which also includes the dates for the follow up meetings. I do need women to understand they have a place in this. They have a role in this. They, everybody has a, a job to do and a part of making the world better.
Candice Schutter:Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.
Darcy Totten:Thank you so much. This was great. I love talking to you. We should just do this.
Candice Schutter:Oh, good. I'm so glad. So I want it to happen again.
Darcy Totten:Yeah, I would love that.
Candice Schutter:So check the show notes everyone. Thanks again, Darcy. Thank you so much for coming today.
darcy-totten_2_11-25-2025_100413:Thank you so much.
Candice Schutter:I wanna extend my thanks once again to Darcy. Our conversation was both a joy and an honor. And it really brought to mind the words of writer and activist, adrienne maree brown."I believe that all organizing is science fiction, that we are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced." I hope this conversation leaves you feeling motivated as it did me. And please be sure to visit the show notes to learn more about the Commission and to gain access to that invaluable report that Darcy mentioned. And lastly, I wanna express gratitude to you for continually tuning in, or even if this was just a one-off listen for you. Today's episode is#99 here on the main feed, which is like, yowsas. And I'm committed to making it to at least Episode 100. So I will be back. But I'm not sure when, because I'm taken off for a while to focus on some of my graduate work. Which means, that if you want more of The Deeper Pulse in the meantime, please consider checking out bonus content over on Patreon. I do release episodes there at least once a month, and I will be dropping something soon, in the next week or so. So if you wanna check that out, head over to patreon.com/thedeeperpulse. I hope to see you over there. And bye for now.
