From Silence to Strength

April 16

1h 8m

Episode Description

Season 2 Episode 5 From Silence to Strength by Kirsten Voorhees. Interviewed by Brian Smyers and Julius Knapp

After I quit bartending and drinking I found a voice, opinions, hills I was willing to die on
that I hadn’t realized or explored prior. When I was a bartender my boss at the time
asked me to, essentially, keep my opinions to myself, so as not to alienate any
customers who may want to come in with differing opinions. This was during Donald
Trumps run for president back in 2015. So I did what any good bartender/manager
would do, and I kept my opinions off of social media and only discussed them with
people who held similar beliefs, rather than stirring any pots. I don’t hold this against
him and really do understand where he was coming from as the owner. I know plenty of
people who don’t ever “talk politics” because they don’t want to cause discord with
anyone in their lives, let alone affect their jobs, so again, I get it. I just really didn’t
realize what I was stifling just beneath the surface until I turned off the mute button and
stopped hiding my feelings in alcohol.

One of the first things I noticed about myself once I cut out alcohol and stopped
bartending was that I stopped allowing things to be excused that I’d previously accepted for normal. I went to my Costco Christmas party February of 2019 and a supervisor of mine lifted up my dress when I was hugging him goodnight. As someone who has worked in restaurants since the age of 16, harassment and inappropriate behavior became my normal at a very young age. At 37 it was like I could see past what I had been taught was okay and was finally able to say “no, that’s not okay.” I did report that supervisor and he was demoted and moved to a different building. That was the first time I stood up for myself when it came to harassment. I think experiences like this
have also done nothing but help fuel the things I stand for today.

On that note, the thing that matters to me most and fuels my voting, is women’s rights.
Not a shock since I am in fact a woman, but that’s my biggest hill I’m willing to die on.
Luckily, most other things I care about, which is basically all human rights motivated, fall
under the umbrella of women’s rights. It will never stop baffling me that women don’t
just have the right to do whatever they want to do with their bodies, not because they
need to fight for it or have an amendment for it, but rather because we are human
beings. It’s the same to me as feeling that an amendment saying that slavery is illegal
or its illegal to have sex with animals just seems silly. Do we really have to say that
anymore? But that answer is clearly yes as women are dying without proper healthcare
and getting arrested for miscarrying. Not to mention the legislators in Tennessee trying
to make abortion punishable with the death penalty for women and doctors. The way
that this world just insists on proving to women over and over again that despite the fact that we literally create the ENTIRETY of humanity we will never be seen as more than something to be owned and used is so disappointing.

I also hate the way society now works in absolutes. Two things can be true at one time
but for some reason society has turned into a place where if you don’t agree with
something in its entirety then you’re the enemy. This is especially true since the woke left and extreme right came about. If you don’t swallow their manifestos completely
then you get kicked off the party boat and can then be doxed or cancelled. There’s no
middle ground and as someone who knows that outside of if something is actually a
black or white situation that the world exists in gray, the lack of in between drives me
nuts.

I’m hoping at some point we get back to a society where the whole matters more than
the individual. In the 80s/90s society functioned more in a “don’t air your dirty laundry in public” policy and I genuinely miss that. Unless your neighbors were racist, drug
dealing, child beating pieces of shit, no one cared about what was happening in their
lives. I blame social media for the idea that the whole world needs to know about our
intimate lives, needs to care, and needs to accept all of it.

Kirsten Voorhees

Entrepreneur
Host of It’s Loud In Here

Podcast corrections, comments, allusions and addendums

Everything that Kirsten said in the interview was on point. No real corrections in this one. Just comments, allusions and addendums to color.

4:42

Egg on my face

8:27

Ideocracy

9:26

11:27

Egg on my face again. I knew the name, I just brain farted. I feel so bad.

Uber U2 mentality sneaks in and alters Kirsten’s podcast title in Brian’s head.

It Might Get Loud is a rockumentery where Edge, Jack White, and Jimmy Page meet each other and sit down for a jam session and teach each other lessons.

Its Loud in Here is Kirsten’s podcast