Ludo Chat about Acceptance without Understanding™ and the 1 Billion Challenge

Hello, how are you?

I am fabulous, how are you?

I'm excellent. Let me change this view so we're not flipped. There we go. I'm very, very well. I'm so glad that you've joined me today. It's so nice to like actually like see you in person online. Um, how— whereabouts are you? You're in the UK at the moment, aren't you?

Yes, I'm in London in my flat, so welcome to my home.

Lovely art behind you as well. Very, very nice. Um, thank you. As I said, thank you so much for agreeing to come on to our community empowerment session. Um, I am so intrigued to hear what you have got to, to discuss because I was reading over it just as well. For people who are going to be watching the recording, it's Acceptance Without Understanding and the One Billion Challenge. Um, obviously you're going to explain all of this, but I was reading through the blurb, which is in the Circle app, um, and I think it's something that I really, really need personally, just to really— just, I think everyone does— just to understand that it's okay to not understand something fully, to be entirely open.

Absolutely. Yeah, you know what, it's so intriguing when The idea first hit me, and we'll talk a little bit about the origin in a moment. It was the realization that, you know, as a society, all societies, we are so attuned to wanting to understand in order to accept something. And just think about, you know, whenever we're a wee one and, you know, there's always— there's the why questions, right? The terrible twos, like, why this? Why that? Yeah. And then as we go through school, right, we are taught the same thing because we're taught to ask questions in order to learn. And why is a question we ask in order to gain understanding. So we do that. And I know certainly in my professional career, which was as a C-suite technology career for over 20 years, you know, we had a troubleshooting technique called the 7-Why. Which was about getting to root cause analysis. So as a society, we are totally attuned to this concept of needing to understand in order to accept something. Yeah, except when it comes to human beings, that doesn't work because as human beings we are so inherently complex. And when we talk about a person's identity, it is not a singular aspect of my gender or, you know, any perspective of it or my sexuality or the way that I dress, right? The reality is, is it's so many components. And so it would really behoove somebody to think they could actually know another human being better than that person knows themselves. Yet along the way, of course, most of us don't understand ourselves completely.

Oh, hell yes. That is absolutely— that's like the truest thing. Oh, we're too scared to know ourselves. I think that's a key distinction as well. Too scared to fully allow who we are to be outwardly expressed. Um, but yeah, both. But before— this is going to be interesting, like absolutely fascinating. So I don't want— I want you to like regale us. Um, so if I'm gonna change the view, if you're happy, Cynthia, I'll change the view and then you can just like Let rip. So, okay, yeah, here we go. Okay, so I'm gonna make— let me see, do you need to share a slide deck or anything like that, or are we just having Cynthia? Okay, cool beans. Okay, please do, like, go away.

Fabulous. So it was intriguing that for me the origin of this whole concept, unfortunately or fortunately, came from the dissolution of my 32-year marriage. Was working with my, my ex, and we were going through couples therapy, and we'd really defined this baseline of what we call bricks in the wall. Think of it as a foundation that you would build something on. And because of me coming out, that caused us to have to have this deep conversation about things that mattered to each of us.. And along the way, we unfortunately didn't arrive at a place where we had that agreement. And it wasn't from a lack of love, but unfortunately love is not enough when we do that. And we know that because I know in my time working and leading LGBTQ+ organizations in North America and my involvement here in the UK as well, we see that youth who come out to their family are, you know, removed from the household for whatever the reasons are. And the reality is, is what we talk about with our children, giving them unconditional love. But the fact is, all of us have conditions to our love. And I'll give you a simple example. As a parent, I have two children, a daughter and a son. Son's the eldest. But when my daughter was born, I had this vision of, you know, walking her down the aisle as a father-daughter dance and the whole bit. Well, clearly when I came out, that's not the case anymore. But here's what's important. That was never her hopes and dreams. Those were mine and I put them upon her. In other words, I put the condition on her. And so I had to realize that what I had lost in that was not her, it was me. And so when a child comes out and feels safe enough within a family structure to say who they truly are, it behooves the parents to simply lean into love for that child. But as I said, love's not enough, so you need love and acceptance. And with love and acceptance, then we truly have this melding of what we call unconditional love. And so that was the place where acceptance without understanding originally came from. And as I said already, it was this deep perspective of looking at the human being. And see, here's the power. When I ask you for acceptance without understanding, I am simply asking you to accept that I'm a human being. And see, this is what's so powerful about this, because if you agree that I'm a human being, then you agree that I need and I deserve, like you, human rights. And because human rights are about equity, not equality, therefore each of us will equitably consume our human rights as we need to. And if you're from a more marginalized identity or background or so forth in society, you will need access to a different human rights than what others may have because they carry privilege in their experience that they may not even be aware of because it would be a privilege from birth. So it could be the family they're born into, which might dictate their skin color. It might dictate their socioeconomic status. It could, you know, talk about the class that they're born into. There's so many aspects that can be dictated, and that's not the child's fault.. But the child does enjoy privilege. And so when they grow up, you know, that becomes unconscious bias that that child has grown up with. And so when we realize kind of all of these intersecting, intersecting components, it's really important to realize that if I just say, can you accept without understanding that I'm a human being? And you say yes, then that's brilliant. Because I'm not asking you to agree with me, whatever you perceive my choices or my lifestyle. That's not what I'm asking. I'm also asking you— I'm not asking you to tolerate me, because when somebody tolerates you, right, that's— in other words, that's to be put up with. Nobody wants to be put up with. We just simply want to be accepted. And we know this to be true because according to Abraham Maslow, with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the third level of psychological need that every human being has is love and belonging. We all have a need to be loved and to feel that we belong within our families, within our workplaces, within our societies. And so the effort to accept begins to create a safe space And through that safe space, we can learn to have dialogue in order to ask questions safe— in a safe space and respectfully that we can grow to understanding. Again, I'm asking you still to accept without understanding. I'm not asking you to agree. I'm just asking that if we're human beings, we're naturally curious. So therefore, it is up to us. To have this dialogue in order for others to grasp and go, okay, I don't agree with you, but I get it now, at least where you're coming from. And we don't do that. Because these days, unfortunately, what happens, there's so much polarization going on. And in the work that I do as a global gender diversity consultant, speaker, and writer, What really we see in the conversation today is we see points of extreme. I simplify them and just say it's kind of everybody out or everybody in. And the fact is, no business, in my 30 years of corporate experience, no business has ever made a decision at an extreme. There's always a middle ground, there's trade-offs, there's a balance to be found. And nobody's having that conversation. And I believe that acceptance without understanding is the power for us to come and meet in the middle, not to agree, but to simply find a new middle ground that we can all live with. And so the One Billion Challenge says that if we want to get it out, it's important to note that the original origin— I've shared with you the story of how it came to me. But what I didn't tell you was that it was what I call spirit. I am a spiritual person. I'm not a religious person. I've had my history with the religion as both an Irish Protestant born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and also growing up in Canada. When I was married, I became Catholic. So I've been on both sides of that conversation. But I have left both of those behind, and I identify strictly as a spiritual person. And so To me, what I refer to as spirit gave me this message to help me grasp what was going on. And I was so naive that I thought it was just for me. And now I realize that it affects every marginalized person and all of us in our existence on this planet. And so the 1 Billion Challenge that I ask people to join me is that if you like this idea of acceptance without understanding, Spirit has asked me to amplify my work in order to get this message of acceptance without understanding out there. And so we have set what's called a BHAG, or a Big Hairy Audacious Goal, and we want to teach 1 billion people about acceptance without understanding by the year 2050. So that's what I'm here talking about today. Is how can you— first of all, can you accept without understanding? And if you can, can you help me begin to amplify this message to reach that 1 billion people, 1/8 of the planet based upon current population by the year 2050? Wow.

That was— let me change the view. Cynthia Fortlage, that was awesome. You said about 6 different things. I was like, oh my gosh. Like, I want to go there and I want to go there and I want to go there. Yeah, obviously I'm sat here completely curious, and I'm sure that people will be watching the recording and they will also be curious. There were so many— well, one, thank you so much. Thank you for having this conversation, like, with me. Um, I was writing things down that you were saying, and yes, I'm absolutely entirely open to the idea of acceptance without understanding, of course. Um, Absolutely. And there were some things that you said and I was like, oh yeah, shit, like, yeah, absolutely. One, like, hardcore, you going from Protestant to Catholic, by the way, that's wild. Um, like, and as you were saying that, I was like, is that what you're here for? Like, like, that's like your journey, like, to bridge people, like, going from, you know, as you'd say in your story, is that, oh, two camps, two camps, two camps, two camps, and you're the unifier that's in the middle. Um, yeah, anyway, that was my insight. But there's a few things you said, if you don't mind me asking these questions. Um, okay, I suppose one was a bit of a release, um, that I think that I'm a very accepting person, very much so, because I just feel like life is hard enough, um, without putting all of this other crap on top that is unnecessary. We're all gonna die, um, so why don't we just try hard to like live with love, um. And yet you were speaking about, um, privilege, and I'm pretty— I'm a white British woman You know, I'm privileged. And it took me, I would say it took me quite a long time to realize how privileged, um, and how powerful that makes somebody in that position. Just for the fact that you don't, you just skip through life, don't you? It, it becomes so easy. What's more powerful, like, or what's more privileged, not powerful, a white European male. Um, and it was only when I was kind of doing research around this and I thought, oh my God, you're on about equity. And I'm like trained in like the neurobiology of trauma and resilience training. And we speak a lot about this because marginalized communities, like they literally— have you heard of ACEs, Cynthia Fortlage?

Um, does it stand for something? It's not a—

yeah, so ACEs is basically acute childhood experiences.

Yeah.

So individuals— yeah, so individualized individuals from marginalized communities are much more likely to have, um, been dealt traumatic childhood experiences. And the childhood that we have dictates the health of the adult. So we can, you know, an individual who's got, I think, 5 or more ACEs, that we can predict their mental health is going to be pretty horrific, more likely to have cancer, type 2 diabetes, autoimmune diseases, stress-related illnesses. So sorry, I'm on a tangent. I know. But so it made me think when you were on about what looking at marginalized communities and looking at everybody in their different element. It's not even as much as accepting people, it's about we make people sick by not accepting, you know. We literally take years off people's lives by not just being curious, or like you said. Yeah. And I felt to me that was just really powerful. Sorry, that was a ramble, but it just it brought something home for me and I was like, yeah. Yeah.

Well, you know how I really learned that in a solid way was during the COVID pandemic under when we were all facing the first lockdown, what I just referred to as lockdown 1.0. I was actually traveling in South America and I was in Medellín, Colombia. I was supposed to be there for just under 30 days. And lockdown came in and we kind of bunkered down. That was a conscious choice. And so I ended up living in Medellín, Colombia, in South America for 6 months.

Amazing.

And what was interesting between my broken Spanish and their broken English, the neighbors and I were able to communicate in the flat where we had rented. And, you know, Medellín and, well, Colombia overall is a 99.9% Catholic country. So you can imagine as an LGBTQ+ person and with a trans identity, I'm thinking, oh, is this really a good decision? And what was so magical was that between our conversation with my neighbors, you know, they just said, look, you simply be you. And, you know, I'll be us and we can coexist. And in something that I feared so much, it showed me that, that societies, even when we were unable to properly communicate, that we could actually coexist. Now, look, in saying this, I realize that, first of all, as a white person in Colombia, I would stand out like a sore thumb as a tourist.. And therefore, um, you know, they're not necessarily treating me as they would other citizens. They are seeing me with privilege. And so they're going, okay, maybe it's— we'll leave you alone. But the simple fact is we could exist. Yeah, we don't need to be at war.

No, but we do war, but don't we? And it's— and like you were saying, when we look at those unconscious beliefs and those biases, and that's where it sits. Um, and I think that's, that's one of the keys to all of this, to the acceptance, is getting people to realize that most of the stuff that they believe is not their own thoughts, is what society has put on them to think and to believe. Um, earlier on, like I said, I'm, I feel as though I'm quite an accepting, liberal person, um, and I want to be that, you know what I mean? I want to be, I just want to always just love, um, And my son wanted his ears pierced. Fine, let's go and get your ears pierced. No worries, we'll just do this. Excuse me. And then we were in, and this is like sugar. That stuff is so ingrained because we're driving in the car and he went, well, I want both ears pierced.

Yeah.

And my immediate reaction was, boys only have one. And And then I was like, why do boys— do you know what I mean? But it's sad and it made me feel— I was then felt sick at myself that why, why is that? Why do I care? He just— we take them out, we leave. So what, what does it matter? But then I realized that that is sat so deeply. And then I was like, oh, so is it okay for other boys to have two ears pierced but not my son? Like, what is that? And then literally I went into the library and I was like, no, if you want 2 pints, you have 2 pints. I'll go and like sort my stuff out. But it was like, you know, Source or whatever you want to say had put this gift to me. I walked into the library where we were going and there was the most beautiful man, um, as in like just exquisite the way he put himself together. Um, then he had the most beautiful long earrings in, um, and I went you were just the person I needed to see. My son, he really wants to— he both ears pierced, um, and now he gets to see how beautiful that looks. But the story, yeah, so my story, it literally was— you don't get it, like, and I feel like I'm so open.

Yeah.

And then the second it was something like— I didn't realize how hooked I had— I was. Um, yeah, and I hated it. I hated the fact that that's where I went with it.

Absolutely. And, you know, but I— in the journey that I've been on personally, um, you know, for the first year I was very disconnected with my children, um, in that we only spoke for about 3 hours that first year, um, even though we lived in the same city. And In my journey of grasping everything, including the way that I parent, you know, a bit to your point, was when my children and I began having conversations again and dialogue, the first thing I did was apologize for the so many gendered ways, for both my son and my daughter, that I had raised them. And we began rebuilding our relationship with me as their parent, not as their dad, um, in a role of saying, okay, um, that was not the right way because of all of these negative consequences, especially for my daughter entering the workforce for the first time as a young professional woman in the legal industry. It was like No, like, I have not set you up for success. And so we really need to recraft this. Thankfully, she is very aware. But for my son, it is so amazing to see him grasp all the concepts and realize his male privilege that he is carrying in society. And I think that that's so brilliant that, you know, He's 30 and he now has this level of awareness that he can enter the world, um, and, you know, interact with others in a way that most men don't.

Yeah, yeah. Or they armor up, don't they? Oh, it's a good— you know, I have conversations and it's that protective thing. I suppose it's so interesting, Cynthia, the idea of like when you said gender, like this is a topic that I'm not massively well-versed on whatsoever, um, but you— and I was like, you know, it's a whole other topic, it's a whole week-long training, like gender and X, Y, and Z and all of that kind of stuff, um, but I suppose it comes down to what you said, it's entirely about acceptance, like I— and what we mean by gendering somebody, I suppose. You know, I love being, um, like a female, you know. I love having that as my gender, um, and I like some of— but that's because I'm in the position where I can choose. I'd like— I like the fact that I have very female qualities, but I also like the fact that if I want to, I can be very masculine. And so what?

Yeah.

Um, But it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's— I won't go into it because I'll be like drawing your resources. Um, it's such a— yeah, but it's acceptance, isn't it? We get to recognize, recognizing what somebody needs, what somebody decides is right for them, and just be accepting of that at all times.

Yeah, but you know, when I talked about the complexity, right, So just on gender, and I'm not going to break everything down, but look, there's gender and sexuality. They're not the same, but they're very much intertwined in a number of ways. And so what's intriguing is when we talk about complexity, if you kind of think of this as a mathematical formula, right? We talk about simply, you know, somebody's Gender identity. Well, you know, I've seen lists that said there's over 100 different gender identities. The list that I use in my training, I talk about 58 different defined gender identities. You know, the important thing is I only need to remember the one about the person in front of me. We talk about sexuality. Well, there's 29 defined sexualities.

Um, so how?

There's 29 defined sexualities. When we talk about biology, that not only do we have— it's not just XX and XY when we talk about, for instance, our sex chromosomes. There's actually 24 known normally occurring sets of chromosomes, and they're not all Xs and Ys in society. So all of a sudden we've got the, you know, the 29 sexualities, we have the 58 gender identities, we have the 24 different sets of chromosomes. And then when we talk about the way people dress and present themselves, well, there's over 8 billion of us on the planet. Most of us dress uniquely and present to the world in our own unique way. So right there is your mathematical formula for how diverse as human beings we are just on the question of gender.

Yeah. Yeah, and you know what makes me sad about everything that you just said, Cynthia, is that those, those are really special numbers that you've just said. Like, they're amazing, and we should all be unique, but how many people are conforming and they're not allowing themselves to have that uniqueness because society has told them no? And that makes me feel sad.

Well, you know what, Brené Brown talks about this, right? And in some of her video and snippets and and so forth, and interviews, she talks about the difference between fitting in and being authentically yourself.

Yes.

And the problem is most of us— and I'm a victim of that because for 50 years I tried to fit in, but I couldn't because it wasn't authentically me. And so the reality is that most of us are, as you talked about, we're afraid. I call that the FUD factor. F-U-D. That's fear, uncertainty, and doubt. That's what holds us back from— in many aspects, we're afraid of something, we're uncertain of something, or we doubt something about ourselves. I mean, gosh forbid if somebody didn't realize and they today hear that there's 29 defined sexualities and it blows their mind. Well, what else they think that's true do they have to go question? Right. And that's what we are—

we're uncertain.

In doubt about is when we learn a new truth and we accept that new truth, it totally messes up with everything else we think is true. That we know.

Oh, the ground moves. Yeah, the ground completely shifts. And what did they say as well? We tend to, um, I can't remember what the concept is called, but when we are first told something, even if it is wrong, the brain's like, no, that's the truth. And so it's very hard to disprove it, even if we give evidence that disproves it. We have to do a lot of work. Um, wow, you're such a good egg. Thank you so much. Because, I mean, you said it in the, um, in the conversation, it's so difficult to have open conversation. Like, and I'll say this, I'll be completely transparent from my perspective because I am so curious. Um, and I'm assuming it's not just a British thing. But I don't, you know, I always want to be respectful and I would never ever want to say something to offend somebody. And so you tend to reserve and hold yourself back from wanting to connect with somebody for the fear of like saying something the wrong way or asking a question that just wasn't the right question to ask. But then when you said in that conversation, and that links from social media, like what you were saying, we're polarized. So you think, well, I don't want to hurt this person because I've got nothing but love for them. So I better just be quiet. But then you can feel like a drift. So for you allowing me to sit and ask messy questions and just be curious about it is a kindness, and I appreciate it, um, because it is a fear. It's a fear of offending or a fear of hurting that keeps, I would say, many people quiet, and then they're ignorant to it, and then they never know. Um, so yeah, so thank you so much for that because You're welcome. Yeah, you're just a really good sort, Cynthia Fortlage. So, and do you find— do you feel as though you are yourself now? Like you said, you know, you were not authentic until 50. Now does it feel like a homecoming?

Oh, I think the homecoming's long over. I mean, it's been 8 years, um, but I feel very much in my own skin, um, you know, and I make this comparison. I ask folks when I'm doing corporate education and so forth, and I ask them, so, you know, when was— at what age were you when you looked in the mirror and you saw your body and you saw yourself? Like, you saw the person you thought you were reflecting back. And, you know, many of us will do it when we're younger, but we really have, certainly in our early teens, and that there's this moment of kind of recognizing self that gets cemented in. Well, for me, that didn't happen until 52. So the ability to see myself as I've always seen myself was— it's funny when I talk with friends, and I've got some friends that are still— have been friends for over 30 years, and we end up having these, you know, really amazing conversations, and they start to reflect on things in the past and they kind of go, oh, well, remember when you were called— I said, no, no. I said, look, you know, refer to me for who I am, not who I was, because I have all those memories. They're with me. And while I was not called Cynthia and didn't look like this, I was there in that moment. And so it's a matter of realizing that there's this shared experience. Um, that comes from it. And it's really just somebody having to shift. As I become authentic in my identity, they just simply have to just shift this to, again, not who I was but who I am.

Yeah, the person in front of them at that moment.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, absolutely. I love that idea. It's— and I will let you go in a minute, Cynthia. I'm so sorry. Um, that's okay. I have a— I have OCD. Um, I was diagnosed— definitely had it from childhood. Um, diagnosed in my early 20s. I was a wreck, um, through those teenage years, those early 20s. Um, and I find to me it's been my biggest gift, do you know what I mean? Like, that was where I was supposed to go. I was meant to have all of those moments, so on and so forth. That led me to today, uh, in the work that I do. But I find now, like you were saying, you have those formative years that now I'm like 40 very soon. Now I'm beginning to look in the mirror and being like, and learning to love all of those little pieces, like the bits that were bad, that were broken, that were like shameful. And now it's like, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. Like all of those tiny little bits. Like, yeah, yeah, it's like it has to happen in a way, doesn't it? To get there. And then you do find— and you have to then hope that everybody else has the same opportunity to like fall in love with themselves as well and to be able to do it. Like you were saying, in some spaces, some communities, that's very, very hard. Um, so it's a true gift. Yeah. Cynthia Fortlage, the best. So what can we do? What can we do now? So this will obviously go out the newsletter, people will be able to watch it on the recordings. We'll put all of your stuff in the bio and be like, go talk to Cynthia. But what can we have an individual level? What can I do to get this to a billion people?

Well, you know, I think the reality is individually, none of us, including myself, are capable of getting it to a billion people. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think collectively we can do this. And so if it resonates with you, talk about it, share it with others. If you are in a corporate organization and you feel that this resonates with some of the work that you're doing, you know, have me come in, explain it to your staff, have this conversation, you know, and as you said, My favorite is, especially when I'm working with organizations, I say when we get to the Q&A part, I said, just remember, you can ask me any question, including the ones your mother told you might be inappropriate.

I'm sure you can ask.

So I think all of us amplifying in our own way. Again, for me, it is my raison d'être. It is my purpose for being. And again, I feel very blessed and privileged to know that that is my purpose on this planet. That's why I was put here. That's why I've gone on this journey, is to be able to be authentic in teaching acceptance without understanding. And so whichever way you show up that is authentically you, that you can just share the message and create the opportunities to amplify it, then I think right now that's kind of where I'm at. I'm still— if others know how to create a movement globally and reach out to the world, then I could use your help guiding me and helping to get this out here. But I think right now, just amplifying the voices, talking about acceptance without understanding, that's what we need to do, and that's what's going to make Spirit happy. Us realizing that we are so much alike and we have so much in common, even though right now we see each other so differently.

Yeah, that's awesome. Um, and there's a statistic— so when I do my trauma training, they're on about getting the neurobiology of trauma out to everybody. They, they have a statistic that you have to convince 10% of any population um, and that 10% is enough to then change everybody. Um, it will then act as a wave. So if we break it down, we don't want a billion, we just want 10% of a billion, and then that will continue on to do the work. Um, but thank you so much. I truly appreciate you just being here and, yeah, talking about all of this stuff. It's been fascinating, and I really appreciate you.

You're so welcome. Thank you for the opportunity.

Awesome. Well, I'll see you in— I'll see you in the circle. Take care, Cynthia. Thank you.

Bye-bye.