Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Politics Chicks is a progressive politics podcast and politics news show hosted by Christy Branham and Monica Healy.
Every week, we sit down with candidates, elected officials, journalists, historians, policy experts, advocates, and everyday Americans shaping the future of our democracy. We go beyond the headlines with thoughtful interviews, fact-based analysis, and candid conversations about the issues that affect our lives—from elections and public policy to healthcare, education, civil rights, and the economy.
Whether we’re interviewing members of Congress, first-time candidates, medical experts, or community leaders, our mission is the same: to inform, challenge, and inspire.
If you’re looking for a politics podcast that values evidence over outrage, curiosity over division, and hope over cynicism, welcome home.
New episodes every week.
Follow us:
Substack • Threads • Bluesky • Instagram • TikTok • Facebook
@ThePoliticsChicks
Christy: Welcome to the "Politics Chicks" podcast. I'm Christy Branam.
Monica: And I'm Monica Healy.
Christy: writing feels less like political commentary and more like witnessing. Terry Lee is the creator of "Fierce Love," where she writes about grief, community, mutual aid, women, resistance, and what it actually feels like to live through difficult moments together.
Monica: One of the things that really stood out to both of us about Terry's work is that she pays attention to the people most media tend to overlook. The helpers, the organizers, the mothers, the neighbors, the ordinary people trying to hold each other together while the world feels increasingly chaotic.
Christy: Welcome to the show Teri we're so glad to have you
Teri: Thank you. Thank you. I wanna comment on what you just said, Monica. Something I've learned in all the collection of stories I've been doing these last few months, there is no such thing as ordinary people. Every single woman I have interviewed is way beyond phenomenal and extraordinary, and they wanna stay quiet and ordinary.
It's really profound.
Monica: I think that
Christy: a great
Monica: about just women in general.
Teri: And that's a great way to start off this podcast, 'cause we've got some really phenomenal things to talk about that your work has been doing. So Terry, let's start with the phrase itself. What does fierce love mean to you? Because that's a phrase we see quite a bit in your writing.
it hit me, I think, the day Alex Pretti died, when I saw all the helpers and that beautiful Mr. Rogers quote about look for the helpers in a tragedy, and how immensely the Minnesotan people just showed up, and showed up in every way possible, and just put themselves out there. And I, I shouldn't say themselves, ourselves.
Like, we are still doing the work. We are still showing up. We are still there every step of the way. And I think it comes down to my true definition of love, and love is the ultimate energy of the universe. We are constantly breathing. We learned this in COVID. We are breathing each other's air, every breath we take is the same air as every other soul in the, in the world that's ever lived here.
There's scientific proof that we are breathing right now an atom or a molecule that came out of Caesar during his last breath,
Christy: Wow. recycling energy. And if atoms and molecules moving and reorganizing themselves are energy, then we are That energy, and that energy is fierce love.
Teri: Like, the fierceness of love is recognizing that we are all connected in that way, and we have to find a way to respect and adore and appreciate all energies 'cause we're all part of each other all the time.
Monica: That's a very interesting analogy, and the Caesar piece, that's kind of mind-blowing.
Christy: Yeah, it is.
Monica: Christy and I, write as well, and I always, say that Christy is very academic, and I, fondly refer to her as the brainiac, and she's so fact-based and she's so intelligent. And my writing tends to be more emotional.
If I feel something deeply, if I am really sad or angry, that's when things flow out of me. And I think that your writing reflects a little bit of that too. Your writing is very emotional, but it's never hopeless. so even when you're writing about grief or fear, there's still beauty in it. And where does that come from?
Teri: it's the duality of the world, like the yin-yang. Every emotion has its flip side coin. So you cannot feel grief without recognizing that grief comes out of the immense amount of love that you felt for what you've lost. And so it's the both/and. Every time you have a negative, quote, "negative emotion" like fear, it's because you know and recognize and value the safety and security on the other side of it. And so you have to have the both, and if you're mired in the fear or the grief or the loss or the rage or whatever, it means that you've the other side of inside yourself. The opposite of love is not anger. It's not rage. It's not hatred. The opposite of love is indifference. The opposite of love is not having any emotion.
And so that's where I find the hope, is that if people are angry, if people are hateful, if people are rageful, it's really them saying, "I wanna find the love," rather than saying, "I don't care."
Christy: Queen Elizabeth said when Prince Philip died that grief is the price that we pay for love, and that-- I just-- As you were speaking about that, that just popped into my head because if you love someone, you have to be willing to know that when you lose that person, You're going to experience this profound pain and sense of emptiness.
That's exactly what popped into my head too, Christy, and I lost my mom just a little over a year ago, and there are still things that, that pop up periodically and, you know, it just brings that grief to the surface again and-- But that is the price you pay for having loved someone deeply.
Teri: And it's a reminder of the love in a sad, hard way, but it is. That's how our bodies need to process
Monica: Yep.
Christy: better to feel that pain than to feel nothing about it, because it helps you to process everything a little bit more effectively. Because when you're numb, you're just-- you're not facing it head on,
Teri: And isn't that what it means to be human? To feel?
Monica: Absolutely. And some people need to feel a little bit more perhaps.
Christy: And you've said that you've never considered yourself a political person before all of this.
What changed and made you change that perception of yourself?
Teri: I'll I'll be vulnerable and raw here. There was even times when I didn't care to vote, and I didn't vote. And I just, I t- took more of a spiritual tact of whatever happens, I'll figure it out and I'll work with it inside myself, and it's not about me being an activist. And it was when the surge started, I just got consumed by the doom scrolling, and there was some energy to it, and maybe that it's this dualistic energy.
There was so hatred and so much pain and so much love that I saw in the people trying to protect each other, that the emotion of it really consumed me, and that emotion took me over I kept watching and watching, and everything else in my life felt frivolous. Everything else, all my business, all my stuff that I was writing, all the stuff I was working on, all my spiritual beliefs even just felt frivolous in the face of this intense emotion that I saw going on in my backyard, in my community.
And then when Rene Good was killed, it amplified even more. I think we all felt that, especially here in Minnesota,um, seeing a mother, a poet, a beautiful soul eradicated, and that grief was collective. And that collective form of it's, it's contagious, and it's kinda like what I was saying about breathing.
Like we're all breathing that same air. It became contagious. And then when Alex Pretti was killed, that even amplified it more, and that was when I started writing my good news, I couldn't focus on the negative anymore. I had to look at the both/and. The both, there's this pain, there's this rage, there's this anger, and inside that there's this love and tenderness and this desire to connect and unite commune as a And when that happened, I became an activist. And I wouldn't say I became political. I became an activist, but as an activist I I define activism as different. I define it as being alive rather than as
Monica: Yeah.
Teri: an agenda or trying to do something. feeling, I feel so alive in all of And I, I, I guess I wouldn't call myself political because I'm not trying to force anything.
I'm just expressing aliveness and what it means to me.
Monica: you mentioned earlier about, Mr. Rogers, looking for the helpers. and just now you talked about finding the good, and is that where all of this comes from is focusing on the positive? And why is that important to you to focus on the helper stories?
Teri: I think the helper stories is what reminds us that we are all human souls connected at that core level. And in our bone marrow, our ancestors, our origin stories is that we are all sharing this planet, and we need to find a way to respect and love and appreciate every human on the planet. And so that's what's more important to me.
And so even then, I'm not gonna say anyone's right or wrong. I'm gonna say everyone just needs to love on some level, and how can we find that common thread so that we can love each and agree to disagree if we have to? But can we agree to disagree in a way that is human and humane and just and loving?
Monica: I taught elementary school for 30 years, and by the last decade, I would always tell them, "We really only need one rule," and it was be kind, because that covers everything else, and that sort of is the same thing that you spoke to. we need to love each other. We need to be kind.
Teri: Yeah.
Monica: we need more of that for
Christy: Yes, we do. We do.
Teri: And define a common definition of what kindness
Christy: and who is worthy of kindness also, which is everybody is worthy of
Teri: All souls, yes. Every living being and creature on the planet deserves kindness.
Christy: And you're documenting women across Minnesota who are stepping into things like mutual aid and resistance work. And just as an aside, we met you through Kelly Wilson, who is the founder of Project Do'Gooders Minnesota. Do'Gooders is a, an organization on the ground here in Minneapolis that is providing mutual aid, so rental assistance, food assistance, utilities assistance to people who've been impacted by ICE enforcement in the Twin Cities.
And what are you seeing happen to ordinary people like Kelly, who just told us one day, she's like, "I-- We have to help." What are you seeing in those ordinary people in that moment where that switch is flipped and they're no longer just ordinary?
Teri: I think there's something happening collectively to all souls who are impacted by this. And in-- I'm collecting stories of these average everyday women who are sharing with me what they're doing. And I ask them four questions as I interview them. I ask them, "What are you doing in the resistance, in the efforts to convey fierce love?
Andhow have you been impacted by ICE directly? Have you had of your own encounters with ICE, and how has this changed you?" And every one of them focuses more on that last, that fourth question, how it's changed them. And every one of them is saying when this came, in the same way that I just answered to you, like when the surge came, something triggered in them that they can't go back a a normal the way it used to be anymore.
That something in them says we need to elevate the world to a different level of connecting, treating each other with kindness, and sharing our resources and sharing our admiration for each and the stories are just phenomenal. They're just these tiny little tidbits, they, every single one of them is so profound that it is one of those tender moments of life that your entire heart just gets ripped And I think what's happening is every human who has some sort of encounter with either someone been affected by or their own encounter with ICE, it is just ripping our hearts right open and making us think about humanity life in a whole bigger way.
Monica: Is there one particular story that really stands out to you that you wanna share?
Teri: Every single one of them is Um, the one that's sticking with me right now is the one I just wrote this week. A school teacher, uh, she's the organizer for her elementary school, and her elementary school was very close to that neighborhood in North that had the big standoff ICE after the Venezuelan man was shot.
Um, so she was put on teaching only online school after Rene Good died, and she was a first grade teacher. But she had to report to the classroom every day to teach from her class. So she was reporting to her classroom, teaching to an empty class, no students in the but, uh, her students But she had a bench outside her classroom And she said students that were live in person in other classrooms would come sit on that It, it was their safe space, and they would cry.
Monica: Ah.
Teri: And every day she would greet a child sitting on that bench, she she had a moment. She said, "What has our world come to that as a teacher, instead of recognizing my students' sounds by their laughters or their voices, I know which kid is outside my classroom by the sound of their cry?"
Christy: Oh my God, that's heartbreaking.
Teri: And then she'd go sit out with those kids, and they would look at her and say, "Why can't they just leave us alone? Why does ICE hate us so much? Why does the world so And what do you say to a first grader, a f- a six-year-old has that simple and clear perspective of like, this is so not human?
Christy: that there are people, you don't wanna say it to a child because you don't wanna jade them, but there are people that support that and take pleasure in seeing that. And I think that's what stirs the anger and frustration and resentment and difficult feelings in me, because there are people that see that and they're like, "Yeah, that's what I voted for."
And I just, I cannot fathom feeling that way about another human being, even if I detest them, even if I detest everything they stand for. And so
Teri: human.
Christy: They're still human, but how do you protect these children who are figuring it out for themselves what these people are like? Children should not have to understand that horrible side of human nature in the first grade.
I'm sorry. That's just not how it works.
Monica: I think that's what I struggle with the most is the further we get into this and the harder things become and the more cruelty we see, the angrier I become about the people that have enabled it and continue to enable it. And I recognize that's not a productive way to feel, but I feel helpless to change it.
Teri: I, I agree with you. And that, that helplessness you know, for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. So when we feel helpless, it triggers something in us that is the equal and opposite of, "I have to be active in something." So that's what's causing the phenomenal move activism aliveness.
People are stepping up in ways. Because we feel helpless, we have to something, and that something that we're doing is loving in different ways. So if we fix and stop what they're doing over here, let's just love what we have over here And let's go love this child. Let's go love this And that turning to each other is the power I think that we need to focus on.
Christy: So taking that into consideration, what have these women taught you then about courage? Because it takes courage to do that. It takes courage to continue to see the person in front of you as a human, even if they're doing and saying i-i-immoral, unjust, unthinkable things. So what courage have you learned from these women?
Teri: I think what I've learned from these women in their courage is that if they get over the first hump of facing that they get reinforced about their courage in how things respond. So how the other side responds or doesn't respond in that way. let me tell two stories, two very short stories that are also in my collection.
One woman,she call-- I give them all pseudonyms. They're all know. They don't wanna be name, her pseudonym is Kelly, and Kelly was walking into when there crowd of ICE agents at the entrance, and one of them just broke off from the crowd and randomly attacked So she She's 60 years old. She had a broken and she was just walking, hobbling into Target, and he just attacked her and was about, was trying to punch her in the face while straddled on top of her.
Christy: ICE
Teri: And she... An ICE officer, sh- he did. She suffered some injuries. She got a concussion and a couple other injuries.
But in that moment, she looked up at him and she said, "What are you doing? I could be your mother." And he stopped, and he got and then yelled at her something else and left. that that moment of that humanity, she saw him as a human in that moment, and it clicked in him. in that moment, she had the courage to, like, use the only thing she had, which was her voice, ' cause she couldn't fight him in any other And it was all she knew, but in that moment, she realized that her voice had that power because it stopped
Monica: Huh.
Teri: you know? And then th- that built courage in a different way. Now, of course, she's dealing the PTSD and all the injuries and so forth. She's got her own traumas and so forth she has to process.
But at the same time, she looks at me and I'm not grateful that he did that, but because that happened, I'm feeling more empowered in And so for every negative emotion, negative en- encounter, there is an equal and opposite powerful moment in reflection
So the second story is there's a group legal observers that since the beginning of the surge way back in December, they've been observing at a mobile home park in Roseville. It's across the sort of from this park where I walk my dog every morning, and they are making sure that the kids can get on the bus and off the bus safely every single day.
And they're mostly women. Sometimes there's men, but there's mostly women. And on this particular day, there was a group of maybe three or four women, and ICE came, and there four or five ICE agents in a couple of vehicles. And these two older women, s- 70s just walked up to the ICE agent and very calmly said, "Why are you here?
Who are you here for?" And they were yelling, "We're here child molesters, and you're the worst of the worst They just quietly said to them, "Do you have a And they kept yelling, and they just quietly said, "Well, we're gonna stay here until you can show us a warrant," or, "We're gonna stay blowing Other ones of them are blowing whistles as normally after a couple of minutes, the ICE agents just realized they couldn't get these women to get They just kept speaking so calmly and quietly that that energy became contagious to the ICE agents, and the ICE agents actually shook and said, "Okay, thank you for your time," and shook their hands and And That kind of moment, and that was early on, that was probably in December sometime, they share that with all the other legal observers that are showing up at that place every And all those observers say, "We We, we saved someone that And they just keep coming back and keep coming back because that's happening.
And what's happening now, I mean, they are still there. I go-- I walk there every day, and they are still there every
Christy: Everyone who's listening to this podcast, understand ICE is still here and they are doing things. They're just not in the news anymore because the government figured out that this was not playing well in the media for them. Okay, I'm sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to make that point.
Teri: ICE is still showing up at that mobile home park, and those legal observers have been there every single And in that observing every day, they've become friends with the entire community. It's to the point where even if ICE didn't come, I think they would keep going to put these kids on the school bus because they responsible to the "This is my grandma But there's more to it. It's that courage it worked. In that moment, using my voice, using my calm, using my de-escalation skills, all the motherly, womanly intuition that we it And how many people have we saved that Probably thousands. I mean, just at that mobile home park, they know how many families.
only one person has been taken, and they keep coming back for them, so they must still think there's more But I think the courage comes from getting over that initial hump, which comes from that helplessness. The helplessness triggers that heart opening of, "I have to do something and I don't care.
I'm just gonna run into the fire." And once you're in the fire and you see that what you're doing works, the courage just builds from we can't And there, there's another piece to it, and this is the... Am I allowed to swear on
Christy: Absolutely. We swear all the time. It's past the first three minutes. We can't swear in the first three minutes, so you're golden.
Teri: There, there is a theme among every woman I've interviewed, and all the women I am interviewing, except for a couple, have over 55. So they consider themselves old white ladies, owls. And every one of them,
Christy: I'm I'm not an old white lady.
Teri: they say it endearingly,like, "I like being an And they all say, "I got no more fucks to give."
And they reference some articles they've read, like being perimenopausal and me- postmenopausal. They are, "The fucks are gone. I don't give a shit anymore. You can take me." Like, "I've lived my life and I've done my thing, and now is my time to really And I do think something's happening to old white ladies right now, up until this all happened, Women our age complained about being invisible.
And what's happening now is that we aren't invisible. In fact, we are the force that is reckoning again through this res- resistance. And every old white lady is telling me I'm standing in my privilege because that's what the world needs right now,
Monica: I'm gonna wear that old white lady badge proudly, and I have
Christy: I'm gonna make an owl shirt design.
Teri: What's so funny is Like, I call my totem animal owls. Everyone gives me owls. I have owls all over my and that started probably when I turned 50. And so when these women started calling me and each other owls, I'm like, "Yep, that fits. That tracks. We are wise."
Monica: were invisible for so long, and now you're right that we have become a force and that we have become the subject of derision on the other side, where it's never been okay to make a blanket statement about any other large group of people, but that's what they say all the time now. "These liberal white women, these liberal white women, these liberal white women."
These liberal white women are leading the charge of
Christy: And we're fucking sick of the shit that is going on here. I know Monica said that I'm very academic, but I'm also very spiritual, and I hear you talking about this and the three archetypes of women are maiden, mother, crone.
And as time has gone on, the crone used to be revered in the community. The crone was the older woman who was wise, who was the healer, who was who people would go to for advice. And in the the early part of the 20th century, women had already been, you know, swept under the carpet for centuries.
But when you became a crone, you were no longer relevant. until probably now, I would say, is when we're finally... Because Monica, we're crones, I hate to tell you. we're our childbearing years,but we're finally stepping into our own and back into our righteous spot as a leader in the community and not someone to be shut away in the dark for the rest of their life, and I love that,
so. And this whole surge is forcing that in Minnesota, and the world's And the world is watching as all these old white ladies are stepping up showing the world this is how the world should be humane.
It's always the fucking women.
Teri: Yep.
Monica: and I wanna speak to what you said about, speaking to people's humanity, and you'd mentioned these women that, you know, would speak to the ICE agents, and the ICE agents, eventually shook their hands and walked away. Early in the surge, I had a lot of anger, and I was one of those people that showed up at the hotels where ICE agents were known to stay and make noise and stay until the police told us to leave.
And then the Singing Resistance, came into being, and we marched through the streets of Minneapolis and sang at hotels and appealed to ICE agents' humanity. Like, "Join us. We have more in common than separates us." And that flipped something for me
Teri: Yes.
Yes.
Christy: And appealing to humanity When you were talking about that story with the woman who got pushed down and she looked up at the ICE agent and said, "I could be your mother," what my mind instantly went to is Michael Fanone the Capitol Police officer who was on the ground being tased with his own taser, and him looking at the people that were there.
He thought he was gonna die, and he looked at them and said, "I'm a father. please don't orphan my children." And that he believes that is what stopped them from killing him.
Teri: Yes.
Christy: appealing to that humanity worked for him in that situation, and it clearly worked for that woman at Target, even though she did get attacked.
So, I think if we spend a little bit more time appealing to humanity rather than, you know, trying to make the other person feel even worse about themselves, because I feel like these people have some deep-seated sense of self-hate or incompleteness as a human, and that's what makes them drawn to doing this to other people and being in that position of power.
Monica: Hurt people hurt people.
Teri: Yeah. I also suspect, and I I haven't said this much out loud, but I suspect, for example, that ICE agent that attacked that woman, I think there's probably some drugs involved. I think some of the ICE agents might be on some form of steroids or because that kind attacking assault,f- it can be very chemically forced.
Christy: Well, and there's documented evidence of an ICE agent being high at hotels in Minneapolis. He was high on cocaine, and he was bleeding out of his nose. so I agree with that for sure.
Teri: And there's a culture with that, if, if there's one, there's probably more, and there's a culture, and, and so that shows that our world needs deal with that deeper issue of chemical abuse and how that changes our chemistry in terms of
Monica: You,
Teri: all of this is bringing things out to make us better, so let's go be better.
Christy: Yeah.
Monica: When you hear so many stories and it certainly seems that you are taking the positive despite probably some really awful things that you are hearing. And is there a way that you can help other people to do that, to take those grains of positivity in a sea of negativity and go forward in the world that way?
Teri: Oh, that's a big question. I do think it comes from the stories. I think the more we read and expose ourselves to the stories and the more we find the stories, every person will have their own trigger. Yours was going into the sing- singing resistance. Mine was just watching Alex Pretti Everyone's gonna have something that triggers inside them that it's a story that activates that feeling and that emotion, and it comes from the emotion. So all of this is forcing us to be more connected with empathy and emotion flip those switches inside us some And spiritually, I think it's just bound to happen.
I think we're just waiting for this iceberg to eventually more and more people will be triggered by something so that humanity will tip the world of kindness more than anything.
Yeah.
Christy: So years from now, I think stories will be told and there will-- I can't even imagine what the history books are going to look like y-years from now looking back at this part of history. And what do you think people should remember about Minnesota in this moment?
Teri: I'm hoping-- I, I'm writing a book, and I'm hoping my book is one of the history books. I'm collecting these stories, and these stories are going into a collection chapters. Each chapter is a tidbit about Minnesota culture and who we are and the humanity of being a Minnesotan the women that match that piece of the culture.
I think that's where the world needs to go, is telling these stories and sharing that to pull it out of the history will, will come out, but it won't be in a textbook. It's gonna be in stories like mine and documentaries the local journalists and how they're collecting things together. I've already heard that, Netflix might interviewing people for a documentary about what happened in Minnesota. I know Andrew Mercado was recently interviewed by Netflix, so
Monica: Oh, really?
Christy: Yeah.
Yeah, and he's an example of that humanity thing being flipped because he was hardcore MAGA before he became a citizen journalist.
And he had that moment of recognizing other people's humanity, and he just looked at it and said: "What the hell am I doing?
What the hell are we doing?" And that was that moment that you talk about where that spark happens, where you start seeing other people as human beings
and despite everything happening, again, I wanna go back because you just brought it up, hope.
The hope that you have isn't naive, it's grounded. Where do you find hope right now, even in seemingly hopeless situations? Monica calls it the flood of awful, and
Monica: It is.
Christy: are you fi- Yeah, so where are you finding that hope right now?
Teri: I think I'm gonna answer that in two ways. One, it's biochemical. when we get bombarded with negativity, we get bombarded with adrenaline and cortisol and stress hormones in our system that are really powerful, but it's a surge. And then there's always sort of a downfall that sort of a hangover that happens after we get a surge of adrenaline and the opposite emotions, the serotonin, the love oxytocin, those happy hormones that exist, they're more under the surface and they're more long-lasting. And so I dig into those, the everlasting source quiet nervous system is what we need to remind ourselves. And the symbolize that is to look at the pure numbers within So ICE came here and there were 4,000 but for 4,000 agents, there were probably 400,000 people doing some form of love work under the surface on the calm, everlasting way. And if you look at those numbers, that's the same power of what's going on in our bodies and our systems, is we have more love and oxytocin and serotonin and calming hormones in our system, and occasionally they get spiked by the adrenaline.
But we can overpower that by really controlling ourselves. So the hope comes I am one of those people who keep going back to the undercurrent of the positivity. And if we look at those numbers and we look at that
Christy: Yeah.
Teri: And that's what this moment in time It's, it's a spike in the adrenaline and cortisol of American It will level out over time. It's-- That's just how the nervous systems of the world
Christy: Yeah.
Monica: the better.
Christy: let's hurry
Monica: for it to be
Christy: I would-- Yeah, I need a little more serotonin over here and dopamine and a lot less
Teri: it's in there. The-- It's always there, and you just gotta touch it. You just gotta remember it. And that's why you look for the helpers. The helpers are expressing that serotonin and oxytocin and dopamine and all the good It's there. And they can coexist. Adrenaline and serotonin and oxytocin, they can and do coexist.
Christy: Well, they're supposed to. They balance each other out.
Teri: Yeah. Sorry, Monica. Go ahead.
Monica: That's all right. I could use more positivity. Terri, before we wrap things up, do you have any final thoughts? Any other stories you wanna share? Like, I love your stories, so if you have more stories, have at it.
I've got dozens, I'm working on... I have a of, like, 50 or 60 that I'm writing into this How are you finding these people?
Christy: Yeah. That's fascinating. Where are you a good question. I've been-- I started writing "Good News" on Substack the day, two days after Alex Pretti died, and I went a little bit viral on Substack, and then I put on a call, one little note on Substack. I said, "Where are my Minneapolis women? I'm lonely. Come to my house." And 25 women answered.
Teri: I vetted them, and I in- and 15 of them responded reques- my invitation to come to my house, and 10 of them showed up.
Monica: Huh.
Teri: as they were sitting around in a circle in my living room telling their stories, I just kept thinking, "I gotta tell your story. I got..." And so one, I, I asked them, "Can I write your two-thirds of them said yes, and then they started introducing me to other people. And I've now... I've only done 14 interviews, and every interview produces about a dozen stories.
Monica: Wow.
Teri: And every single person I talk to has a story. They all don't think it is a story, and that's what's so powerful, I'm the writer.
It's my job to make it interesting. It's your job just to tell me. And I'm, I'm now collecting stories. I have a backlog of probably three or four more people to interview, but I will continue taking interviews, and I'll do this for the rest of my cause these stories are so So
Christy: and tell us a little bit more about your Womyn, W-O-M-N project. Is it Womyn? Is that what you're, how you say
Teri: Yes. It's woman. It's woman without the E or the A so that it's not masculine, it's purely feminine. And then MN is Minnesota. The Woman Project is the book. It started out as I wanna write a book, and now I have the structure for the book and I'm there are way too many stories. So I wanna keep collecting the stories and keep writing the stories and keep showing this is how fierce love and tell the story of-- You wanted one more story.
There was a woman fiancé was taken and deported back in July, so before the And his fam- he was living with his family and one of his cousins decided to self-deport because he knew they would come for him and it would be easier just to go home. So she went with him. She bought an airline not to actually go somewhere, but to get beyond TSA so she could sit with him in the gate until he took off on the And so she went into the airport with family member the, the sheer opposite of how ICE agents looked at her versus looking at she, she went in as sort of protector. she's, she's my like 120 And he, her fiancé's cousin was like a big burly Mexican dude, And they got to the gate and they're waiting at the gate, and then right at the time that it was time to ICE came and took and they took him onto the plane. They wanted to make sure that he got on the And so they took him onto the plane, they put him on the plane, and then they came out, and that's how they got their And she just watched it she didn't get on the plane 'cause her ticket was for a flight and she didn't even do that flight. She just went home from But the love of this woman you know, my fiancé lives with your f- family in Mexico and they're gonna have to figure out now have a she served as his bodyguard that beautiful. that's
Monica: women leading the way
Christy: Yes.
Monica: again。Yeah。
Christy: And tell listeners where they can find "Fierce Love" and follow your work.
Teri: So Fierce Love MN is the website, fiercelovemn.com, and that takes you straight to my Substack. So I post good news notes on Substack every day, and I write these-- I post these stories every Tuesday. So there's a new story coming out every Tuesday. And I will be putting up a women, The Women Project website in the coming weeks, where then I'll collect more stories and I'll keep Adding to these stories and explain on that website what this is all about.
But right now it's just on Substack, fiercelovemn.com
Monica: Thank you for documenting all of this because it's so great to hear these stories, and I can't wait to read more of them and dive in, and, uh, people need to hear these stories.
Teri: Yeah.
Christy: Uh, whenever I need to feel a hit of that dopamine or oxytocin, I will go to your site and just read, go through your profile and just read your posts because our posts tend to focus on the negative and all the things that are going on to keep people updated, and it can be overwhelming. And when I read your posts, they kind of fill me up.
So our posting kind of empties my cup, and your posting fills my cup. So thank you so much for being here and for documenting this moment with so much tenderness and humanity. This has been an amazing interview. Like, I'm gonna be walking on, the chemical high for the rest of the day from this 'cause there's a lot of dopamine going on right now,
Monica: and I could listen to more stories all day.
our listeners, I hope you go look for them as well. And your work is such a beautiful reminder that even during difficult times, people still show up for each other, and that, that matters a lot.
Teri: And I think it's shifting our culture. I think it's not gonna be still showing up. I think this is gonna be our new normal, that
Monica: so.we need a new normal. Yeah.
Teri: we are just more loving. it's turning up our volume on love.
Christy: I
Monica: that. Turning up the volume on love.
To our listeners, if you wanna turn up the volume on love and you're finding meaning in the stories we're sharing, if something moves you, challenges you, or makes you see the world a little differently, please like, comment, and share. It helps more than you know.
Christy: And follow us everywhere at the Politics Chicks on Substack, Threads, Blue Sky, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
Teri: Mm-hmm.
Monica: being a part of our community. Keep shining your light so we can find each other in the dark.
Christy: And remember, we're stronger together. Thank you so much, Terry. This has been an amazing interview. It's been a privilege to spend this time with you.
Teri: my honor. Thank you.