Excerpted from the book Daring to Be Ourselves: Influential Women Share Insights on Courage, Happiness and Finding Your Own Voice by Marianne Schnall. Copyright © 2010. Excerpted with permission from Blue Mountain Arts.

Over the course of my career as a freelance journalist, I have had the great pleasure and privilege of talking to many of the world’s most interesting and influential women, from actresses to activists, comediennes to poets, recording artists to Nobel Laureates. In my new book, Daring to Be Ourselves: Influential Women Share Insights on Courage, Happiness and Finding Your Own Voice, I decided to bring together some of the most inspiring and empowering quotes from these interviews, broken into topical spreads and addressing a range of issues like equality, overcoming adversity, aging, beauty, finding balance and being more connected to the earth. My hope is that the book conveys the important message that when we dare to be ourselves — when we embrace our power, speak our truth, and believe in our dreams — we can change the world. The following excerpts are a sampling of some of the amazing women, themes and reflections featured in the book.

Together, Women Are Strong

If we’re by ourselves we come to feel crazy and alone. We need to make alternate families of small groups of women who support each other, talk to each other regularly, can speak their truths and their experiences and find they’re not alone in them, that other women have them, too…. It makes such a huge difference.
– Gloria Steinem

Sisters: talk to each other, be connected and informed, form women’s circles, share your stories, work together, and take risks. Together we are invincible.
– Isabel Allende

What Message Would You Most Want to Instill in Young Girls?

You are more powerful than you know; you are beautiful just as you are.
– Melissa Etheridge

We need to help them really internalize the message that good enough is good enough. We don’t need to be perfect. We’re not supposed to be perfect; we’re supposed to be complete. And you can’t be complete if you’re trying to be perfect.
– Jane Fonda

Speaking Our Truth

Give voice to what you know to be true, and do not be afraid of being disliked or exiled. I think that’s the hard work of standing up for what you see.
–Eve Ensler

It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.
–Madeleine Albright

Thoughts on Today’s Feminism

I get very frustrated when I hear women saying, "Oh, feminism is passé," because I think feminism means empowerment. Men can be feminists, too! Many men are feminists. We need feminism. It’s not against men; it’s about the empowerment of women. It’s the respect of women–giving women equal rights, the same opportunities.
–Annie Lennox

It doesn’t matter what word we use, if it has the same content, it will be treated in the same way. There are other words–there’s "womanist," there’s "mujerista," there’s "women’s liberationist"–all mean the same thing and they get the same ridicule. I think we just need to choose what word we feel comfortable with that says women are full human beings, and whatever that word is, it will get a lot of opposition. But it will also attract a lot of support. But this is a revolution, not a public relations movement.
–Gloria Steinem

Our Most Difficult Times Can Open Our Hearts

We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. It may even be necessary to encounter the defeat so that we can know who we are. So that we can see, "Oh, that happened, and I rose. I did get knocked down flat in front of the whole world, and I rose. I didn’t run away; I rose right where I’d been knocked down." That’s how you get to know yourself.
–Maya Angelou

Caring for the Earth

It’s time to do something about [the environment]. And if we don’t do it now it’s going to be too late…. I think people get scared that they’re not going to be able to do it perfectly, they’re going to be criticized, they’re going to be like, "Well, I’m not totally green." Well, you know what? At this point, we don’t care. Just a shade of green is enough right now. Move a little bit closer toward this. Because the more people start moving closer and closer to it, that’s something that collectively makes a difference.
–Cameron Diaz

We Are Beautiful Just as We Are

I always thought that people told you that you’re beautiful–that this was a title that was bestowed upon you, that it was other people’s responsibility to give you this title. And I’m sick of waiting, people! I think that the world is pretty cruel to women in what it considers beautiful and what it celebrates as beauty. And I think that it’s time to take this power into our own hands and to say, "You know what? I’m beautiful. I just am. And that’s my light. I’m just a beautiful woman."
–Margaret Cho

We’re changing ourselves to fit the world instead of changing the world to fit women.
–Gloria Steinem

Owning Our Power

Get over the feeling that the two words don’t go together–women and power. The fact is, if we don’t put the two together and don’t understand how power changes complexion in the hands of women, then we’re not going to make it. We have to own our personal power.
–Jane Fonda

In my opinion, the most important thing as a woman leader–and I learned this early through a whole bunch of great women who were in my life (and men, I have to say)–is that if you have a position of leadership and power and you don’t use it in a different way, then you’re wasting it. So when people used to say to me when I was the first woman president of PBS, "Well, you know, does that mean that as a woman you’re going to be a different kind of president?" And I would say, "Well, I hope so!"
–Pat Mitchell

What is Your Wish for the Children of the World?

Just be what it is that you are, and that is just fine. You don’t have to be what you’re not in any way. Live that and live that fully, and that is where you discover ecstasy. You can’t really have ecstasy as something other than yourself.
–Alice Walker

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Excerpted from Daring to Be Ourselves: Influential Women Share Insights on Courage, Happiness and Finding Your Own Voice by Marianne Schnall. Copyright © 2010. Excerpted with permission from Blue Mountain Arts.

Watch a slide show excerpt from "Daring to Be Ourselves" at The Huffington Post: Finding Your Own Voice: Quotes from Cameron Diaz, Gloria Steinem and Other Uncommon Women

This excerpt was also cross-posted at The Women’s Media Center.

About the Book

As a freelance journalist, Marianne Schnall has interviewed many of the world’s most interesting and influential women. In Daring to Be Ourselves, she brings together for the first time the most inspiring and empowering quotes from these interviews. The result is a compelling collection of insights and words of wisdom from women such as Maya Angelou, Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem, Madeleine Albright, Jane Goodall, Melissa Etheridge, Cameron Diaz, and many others. A diverse group of women of all ages and backgrounds is included in the book–from actresses to activists, comediennes to poets, recording artists to Nobel laureates. Their voices come together as one as they speak out on a variety of important issues, like equality, overcoming adversity, aging, finding balance in life, taking care of the earth, and more. Thought provoking, enlightening, and even humorous at times, this book is a valuable resource, and makes a perfect gift, for women and girls everywhere.

Full list of women included in Daring to Be Ourselves:
Madeleine Albright * Isabel Allende * Maya Angelou * Sandra Bernhard * Margaret Cho * Cameron Diaz * Eve Ensler * Melissa Etheridge * Jane Fonda * Carol Gilligan * Jane Goodall * Charreah Jackson * Annie Lennox * Elizabeth Lesser * Wangari Maathai * Courtney Martin * Pat Mitchell * Kathy Najimy * Natalie Portman * Gloria Steinem * Loung Ung * Alice Walker * Kerry Washington * Betty Williams

For more information, www.daringtobeourselves.com.

Marianne Schnall is a widely published writer and interviewer. She is also the founder and executive director of Feminist.com and cofounder of EcoMall.com, a website promoting environmentally-friendly living. Her interviews with well-known individuals appear at Feminist.com as well as in publications such as O, The Oprah Magazine, Glamour, In Style, The Huffington Post, the Women’s Media Center, and many others. Through her writings, interviews, and websites, Marianne strives to raise awareness and inspire activism around important issues and causes.

For more information, visit Marianne’s web site at www.marianneschnall.com.

In her final year as California’s First Lady, Maria Shriver turns public attention to Alzheimer’s advocacy at her influential California Governor & First Lady’s Conference on Women.  Reflecting on an interview with Shriver, author and Feminist.com founder Marianne Schnall explores the personal stories and experiences behind Shriver’s decision.

For Maria Shriver, a passion for public service and activism comes naturally. She is the daughter of Sargent Shriver, a Democratic presidential candidate in 1972 and the first director of the Peace Corps, and Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the founder of the Special Olympics and sister of President John F. Kennedy and Senators Robert and Ted Kennedy.

She follows in esteemed footsteps, but Maria Shriver has become a trailblazer in her own right. She is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author. Assuming the mantle of California First Lady in 2003, when her husband Arnold Schwarzenegger became the state’s 38th governor, she took a leave from her job as a journalist for NBC News. Yet in her time away from a successful broadcasting career, Shriver has managed to transform the office of First Lady by approaching it not simply as a title, but as a powerful platform to make a difference, particularly in the lives of women.

Shriver has created several programs to empower and assist women throughout California under a banner called WE. Launched in 2003, the California Governor & First Lady’s Conference on Women has grown into one of the most influential women’s meetings in the world, attracting more than 30,000 attendees and more than 100 world opinion leaders. This year’s conference, from October 24 to 26 in Long Beach, will feature an eclectic lineup of journalists, entertainers and leaders that includes Mary J. Blige, Campbell Brown, Deepak Chopra, Linda Ellerbee, Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Arianna Huffington,  Donna Karan, Billie Jean King, Matt Lauer, Robert Redford and Diane Sawyer.

For this year’s conference Shriver will incorporate another cause she cares deeply about, Alzheimer’s advocacy. Leading a March on Alzheimer’s and Candlelight Vigil on October 24, she hopes to raise funding and awareness about the debilitating disease, which currently affects over five million Americans. Shriver explains that she wanted to begin the conference with a focus on service “because I was raised by two incredible servants of the public good, and I’m passionate about women and families. I’m passionate about Alzheimer’s.”  The disease strikes an especially personal cord, as her father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s seven years ago.  She says, “Back then I didn’t know really anything about the disease—I knew that President Reagan had been diagnosed, but that was really about all…. My brothers and I and my mother had no idea what our father would go through.” When she tried to gather information, she found “a very bleak and dark landscape out there—people didn’t talk about it.

So Shriver returned to her own journalistic instincts to create and share information and resources about the disease, beginning with writing the children’s book, What’s Happening to Grandpa? Says Shriver, “I had written two previous children’s books about issues that people found difficult to talk about [on dealing with death and mental disabilities]. And it was a way to really process for myself the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s.”  Her children’s book led to“The Alzheimer’s Project,” a four-part documentary she produced on HBO in 2009 accompanied by a website, DVDs and printed materials. Shriver says that the documentary has become HBO’s “most successful and biggest television event ever with over nine million media impressions.” And she adds, “I think that was a big turning point for Alzheimer’s. It coincided with the increase in numbers and brought an issue out of what I would call the ‘dark room’ and into the living room.” In 2009, Shriver testified before the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, offering advice to families and caregivers who are affected by Alzheimer’s.

Shriver calls Alzheimer’s a “mind blowing disease,” in every sense of the word. “To see somebody who might have been the smartest person you know, who might have been the best speaker you have ever laid eyes on, who might have had an illustrious career, and they look like that person—they’re walking around as that person—but they’re not that person, it really does blow your mind.”

The March on Alzheimer’s (at which Leeza Gibbons and Peter Gallagher will emcee and Jane Fonda, a WMC co-founder, will warm up marchers with stretching exercises) also allows Shriver to spotlight the connection between women and the disease.  “Seventy percent of the people who develop Alzheimer’s are women, and the vast majority of the people caring for people with Alzheimer’s—and mind you Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, stroke victims—are also women.” Coinciding with this year’s conference she will also be releasing The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Takes On Alzheimer’s, which is a new installment following up last year’s groundbreaking study on women as half of U.S. workers, A Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything.

Focusing this year’s report on Alzheimer’s reflects her belief that “this disease needs more money, more conversation, more adjustments by all of our leading institutions than perhaps any other in American life.”  The disease disproportionately affects women “not just as the person living with the disease, but women are the primary caretakers of the elder generation.” As both caregivers and patients, she says, “we need help! We need help from our businesses where we work, with flex hours. We need help from our government, which is the largest employer in the nation. We need to have a conversation and ask ‘where are our priorities?’”

For Shriver, it’s part of another important dialogue: a “national conversation about aging,” observing that “we don’t know, and particularly women don’t know—the right way to age.” She says, “We’re told what maybe we should wear in our fifties or sixties or seventies, but not how we should act, how our brains will work.” Shriver also believes that further studies of the brain are necessary, calling the mind “the new moon.” She adds, “If President Kennedy could launch a space program to explore space and land a man on the moon, we should be launching a program, to launch the clues, the answers, to the human brain.” The next frontier involves “how we think, how we remember, how we love, how we process information.” The answers to these questions, and to Alzheimer’s and many other diseases, “are inside the brain and the mind. I am interested in all of those subjects and how they interconnect.”

Shriver, who says she is also a big believer in “allowing people to change,” will be facing a major life transition herself when her husband leaves office at the end of the year and she ends her First Lady stint—though she will certainly continue to use her powerful voice to mobilize and inspire women. “The goal of the Women’s Conference, under my direction, has really been to empower women to be architects of change. If you want to be an architect of change by raising great kids, God bless. If you want to do it by raising money for your kid’s school, great. If you want to build a garden—whatever it is.”  She says, “Women like myself—they’re complicated, and they have a lot of different interests and qualities within them.” She adds, “Women somehow get portrayed as one type. You’re either a feminist or you’re not. You’re a working woman or you’re not. I’m raising two girls, and I say to them, ‘I need you to be strong and soft. You can be smart and beautiful…You can be all of these things.’ The more we give each other examples of that, the more honest we are with each other, the little bit easier it is to use your voice and step out.”

For more information on the March on Alzheimer’s and to register online, click here. To read Marianne Schnall’s extended interview with Maria Shriver, click here. The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author alone and do not represent WMC. WMC is a 501(c)(3) organization and does not endorse candidates.

Photo credits: TOP – TOO Right , Maria Shriver: a march and candlelight vigil to raise awareness about Alzheimer’s will begin her 2010 Women’s Conference.

A new report about women’s changing roles in society that has been sparking conversations across the country was at the center of Maria Shriver’s California Women’s Conference this past Tuesday. As one of the threads throughout its programming, the conference discussed the findings of The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything–the "seismic shift" since women have quietly become half of the American workforce.

Tuesday’s conference–which was web cast at the Women’s Conference website included a diverse range of speakers, from Caroline Kennedy to Cindy McCain, Alicia Keys to Richard Branson, and Katie Couric to Eve Ensler. A panel facilitated by David Gregory included Senior White House Advisor Valerie Jarrett, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, political analyst Amy Holmes, and ABC Senior National Correspondent Claire Shipman. The website, which features excerpts from the report and writings of well known personalities, is interactive. A community forum prompts site visitors for their input: "A National Conversation has been ignited and you are at the center of it: What do YOU think women want?"

Shriver, an experienced journalist and current First Lady of California, says she started thinking about the study when last year’s Women’s Conference sold out in just a few hours, with standing-room-only workshops on such topics as empowerment, activism, and entrepreneurship. "I wondered what was going on," Shriver mused in the report’s preface. In answer to questionnaires, women said "they feel increasingly isolated, invisible, stressed, and misunderstood. …We decided we need to learn some new, hard facts about today’s American woman. …How does she want to live her life moving forward?" Shriver brought her ideas for a sweeping study to John Podesta, former Clinton Administration chief of staff and president of the Center for American Progress. The resulting $2 million project includes a national poll sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and Time magazine.

Shriver says that the fact that women now make up half of all American workers "changes everything in our country–it changes how we work, it changes our children’s school schedules, it changes our relationship with men, it changes laws in government, and it changes what businesses need to do to retain the American worker today." Yet according to the report, our leading institutions–be they government, business, faith based or in the media–have all failed to adapt to the changing paradigm of the American family.

An important finding in the report is how much men and women actually see eye to eye. Equal numbers report the same stresses in daily life and similar goals when it comes to issues like money, childcare and balancing work and home life. They share the belief that government and business have failed to adjust to their needs. Shriver says that "men seem to be in agreement with these issues that women have traditionally been very out in front on–whether it’s child care, the need for flexible hours, the need for paid family leave–and I think that that’s really exciting because this is no longer a woman’s movement, this is a smart American policy."

In hopes of stimulating actual policy changes, The Shriver Report has been delivered to Fortune 500 top executives, Congressional leaders and committees, senior White House advisors as well as President Obama. On "Meet the Press" a week ago, Jarrett pointed out that the Obamas have always talked openly about the challenges of balancing work and family in their own lives. She said the administration will look at "what are the best practices in the private sector" that can be adapted to give employees flexibility in government and around the country. In an interview discussing The Shriver Report on NBC News, President Obama revealed personal details of his own negotiations with Michelle over work and family and added, "When I think about policy, I’m constantly thinking about how can we strengthen families, how can we provide more resources, greater flexibility so that women can thrive, because I think if women are thriving everybody’s going to be thriving."
Though The Shriver Report itself noted the lack of stories reflecting these topics in the media, since the report has been released it has generated a flurry of coverage. (See Gloria Steinem’s essay, It’s Not a Man’s World or a Woman’s Nation.) A week ago, I joined a press conference Shriver and Podesta held specifically for bloggers, hoping to foster continued coverage and discussion online. The full report can be purchased as an eBook or read online at awomansnation.com, and their website encourages visitors to "stay informed" by joining their mailing list, Twitter and Facebook pages, as well as "join the conversation" taking place at the Women’s Conference site.

Shriver says, "We are really interested in the feedback. That’s why we’ve developed several web sites to try to build a community of people." She adds, "We have power in our voices and in our numbers. People want to ask for flex time–you can point to studies that are in the report that talk about smart business practices like [those of] Deloitte, Hewlett Packard and so many other businesses." Progressive businesses, she says, have learned "how to retain women in the workforce, and how to retain men as well, who are increasingly interested in their caring roles as opposed to just their breadwinning roles."

John Podesta adds, "We hope that people will read this report … and create a real conversation about what this means to America, and what it means for both men and women to create strong and happy lives and families."

This article originally appeared at The Women’s Media Center.

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Marianne Schnall is a writer and interviewer, founder of Feminist.com (a partner of Fem2.0), and co-founder of the environmental site EcoMall.com.