Oral History Program Mikaela Shafer Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 12 July 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Mikaela Shafer Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 12 July 2019 Copyright © 2022 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Beyond Suffrage Project was initiated to examine the impact women have had on northern Utah. Weber State University explored and documented women past and present who have influenced the history of the community, the development of education, and are bringing the area forward for the next generation. The project looked at how the 19th Amendment gave women a voice and representation, and was the catalyst for the way women became involved in the progress of the local area. The project examines the 50 years (1870-1920) before the amendment, the decades to follow and how women are making history today. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Shafer, Mikaela, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 12 July 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Mikaela Shafer Circa 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Mikaela Shafer, conducted on July 12, 2019, at the Stewart Library, by Lorrie Rands. Mikaela discusses her life, her memories, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Sarah Taylor, the audio technician, is also present during this interview. LR: Today is July 12, 2019, we are on the phone with Mikaela Shafer who is in Olympia, Washington. I am in the Stewart Library Special Collections. I am Lorrie Rands, conducting the interview, and Sarah Taylor is with me as well. Alright Mikaela, thank you so much for your willingness to sit down and do this. I can’t tell you how grateful I am. Let’s just start with where and when you were born? MS: Okay, well, I was born in Berlin, Germany in 1986 on May 1st. LR: Okay, there’s a story there. Why were you in Berlin? MS: My dad’s an Army Ranger, and before he became a Ranger I guess he was just in the Army, and he was stationed in Berlin. Originally my mother wanted to stay behind in California, where she’s from, but then she got I guess lonely or she wanted to be back with my dad. So my two older siblings and my mom, who was pregnant, flew into Germany and that’s where I was born. Then I guess I was only a couple of months old and we left and he was re-stationed in Hawaii. LR: So you were only in Germany for a few months, how long were you in Hawaii? MS: I was in Hawaii until I was around ten years old, and that’s when my dad became an Army Ranger, and we were stationed in Fort Benning, Georgia. That’s where the Ranger base is. 2 LR: So what are some of your memories of being in Hawaii? MS: Hawaii was an awesome place to grow up. We lived on the base so it was really safe and we had all of the kids to play with. I just remember running around barefoot a lot and eating guavas off trees. It was your typical Hawaii upbringing I guess, in the safety of a military base so you could really just run wherever you wanted and knew that you were safe. LR: So were you on Ford Island? MS: I was on Oahu. We lived in Schofield barracks out there, it’s in Wahiawa. LR: Alright. Did you go to school on the base or was there a school on the island that you went to? MS: I went to school on the base. My siblings went to high school off the base, but I was still in elementary school so I just went to the military school. LR: Do you have any memories of that? MS: The only thing I remember about school there was my teacher’s name was Mrs. Ikihara and I just remember her being like the nicest, sweetest teacher ever and obviously I still remember her name. She was my kindergarten teacher but she still pops up in my memory randomly. LR: Okay, so you mentioned you have some older siblings, how many siblings do you have? MS: I have two biological siblings and then two step-siblings who I was raised with. My older brother is named Joshua and my older sister is Winona. They were both 3 born and raised in Hawaii, so besides a little stint in Germany, they’ve lived in Hawaii their whole life. LR: Oh, so are you the oldest or the youngest? MS: I’m in the middle. My step-siblings are both younger than me and then there’s me in the middle, but for the most part, I’ve always been the baby of the family. I milk it. LR: Nothing wrong with that. Alright, so you mentioned that you were ten years old when you left Hawaii for Fort Benning, what are your memories of Fort Benning? MS: I honestly don’t recall very much, and that’s kind of the simplified version of where we’ve lived. My parents divorced when I was four, I went back and forth from them my whole life so I was in Hawaii for a year, and then with my mom, and then back to Hawaii, and then Fort Benning, and then Virginia, Florida, and Oregon. It’s because I bounced around so much I don’t really remember much of any place in particular, just little tidbits. LR: That makes sense. So where did you end up going to school? If you really didn’t have a base, if that makes sense, what was school like for you? MS: I went to sixteen different schools from kindergarten to high school, so there really wasn’t a base. LR: My question is, and I know you don’t have any other basis for comparison, but do you find that that was something that helped you in your life or was that a hindrance? 4 MS: I think growing up I felt like it was definitely a hindrance, I had a lot of social anxiety and just anxieties in general because I was always the new person and I was really shy and so it was hard for me to make friends. I was just a very quiet, introverted child. Life with my dad was pretty stable when I was living with him, but with my mom, she has substance abuse issues so it was always like a little rocky going back and forth in those environments. I feel like that gave me definitely some anxiety as a kid. As an adult now, I feel like it’s definitely been something that’s helped me a lot. I can relate to all different types of people and environments, I adapt quickly now, and I feel like it’s made me a more empathetic person and more willing to reach out to people who I feel like need to be reached out to. At the time, it was definitely something that I hated and I hated for a long time, but now that I’m older, I appreciate that I have those experiences. LR: Thank you for that. So I’m curious, as you were growing up, what women did you look up to as a role model, or that you remember just looking up to? MS: I can’t remember having any role models in particular. I was very much a book nerd and read a lot. I was left alone as a kid a lot, my dad was either stationed overseas and my mom wasn’t really stable so I just had piles of books all the time that I read constantly. But one person in particular, I remember when I was in high school, I had this ceramics teacher named Mrs. Hubbard and she was the only person who kind of stopped to ask me about my life and tried to understand why I was so introverted and really helped coax me out of my shell. She would let me have extra time in the ceramics studio and she basically reached out almost as a therapist and would let me have time there to just create art and get all 5 these feelings out that I couldn’t communicate in any other way. That really impacted me a lot. I think it helped me get out of my shell, it helped me figure out what I needed to do for myself. Around that time I was like fourteen, fifteen, and I’m starting to get out of my shell and realize that I am holding onto all these feelings and I need to help myself. I actually ended up leaving home and moving to California by myself, and getting my own apartment, a job, and everything at the age of sixteen. I think that was instrumental in freeing myself, because I had a lot of, I guess with the anxiety comes the depression and things like that. I never had access to proper therapy dealing with all of the things that I experienced at my mother’s house, so having that ceramics teacher show me, “Hey these feelings are normal and you need to release them,” and taking the extra time with me that was definitely huge for me. LR: Thank you. You mentioned that you read a lot of books, was there a book in particular that just, you know, caught your attention? That you found was helpful? MS: Absolutely, one-hundred-percent. Tom Robbins’ Still Life with Woodpecker. I still remember stealing that book off my mom’s shelf when I was probably ten-years-old, when I’d first moved back onto the mainland, and it’s a very inappropriate book for a child, but I read it and it completely changed my world. “The world can be magical and mysterious and weird,” like it was a very exciting book. To this day, I’ve probably read it forty times. I’ve pretty much read all of Tom Robbins’ books, but that book in particular just completely changed my world and I 6 recommend it to everyone every time someone’s like, “What book should I read?” I’m like, “Tom Robbins’ Still Life with Woodpecker, read it right now!” LR: I have actually never heard of it so now I’m excited to look at it. Thank you for sharing that too. So with all of the craziness of your life up until you were sixteen, were you encouraged to pursue an education? MS: I was very much your typical latchkey, unattended child, so there was never any encouragement to stay in school or pursue education, but I’ve always craved knowledge. I’ve always been the one that took myself to the library, got my own library card, and checked out the books. In Oregon, that’s the last place I lived was Oregon as a teenager, they have all these free boxes and I would scour the free boxes for books. I just always wanted to learn more. I’ve always been very emotional and empathetic so a lot of my learning wanted to be about environmental studies. When I did leave home, I ended up leaving to stay at a tree sit before I went to California. I never really had anyone encourage me, in fact, I think my family told me or teachers told me that, “You’re poor and you can’t afford an education so you need to get a job and figure out how you’re going to do this yourself.” I’ve always been like, “Alright, how am I going to do this myself?” So it’s always been on me and not other people. LR: Okay, so you’re sixteen and you’ve decided to move to California and be on your own. Not many sixteen-year-olds would even consider doing that, so how did you, how did you accomplish it? You’re still a minor, how were you able to get an apartment and get a job? 7 MS: When I left home, first I lived in a tree sit for a little bit and then I hitchhiked to California and I actually slept on the beach for a couple of weeks. Then I met some other teenagers who had also run away from home and they lived in these- - it’s going to sound crazy if you’ve never experienced it before, but we built our own houses in the woods for like the first almost year I lived there. So it was probably like twenty of us that we built these shanties in the forest of Santa Cruz, outside the university. When I turned around seventeen, we all pooled our money together and we rented a house, so there’s probably ten of us that all rented a house together. Of course the older ones were eighteen and older, they were on the lease and then we just split up the rooms. I had two other girls sleeping in my room and we just made it work. We made like our own little co-op I guess. LR: I can’t think of how to ask this question, but being on your own, it sounds like you always seemed to know where you could go to have support. So you said after a year you finally got into a house, were you working, were you trying to go to school? MS: Yeah, so I actually took classes at Cabrillo Community College in Santa Cruz. That’s where I was going to school, and working just any odd jobs I could do, babysitting, I worked in a crafters’ studio, I picked blueberries. I even, at one point, worked on a medicinal cannabis farm, and because I was so tiny, I’m like really petite, they have those big field drums, and they would put me in there and I would stomp the trimmings down to make oils. That was my job. So any odd job I could get I pretty much did it and I dumpstered food. Moving to Santa Cruz, I think, was very helpful because it has a large community of teenagers who had 8 left home from situations they needed to get out of and we just made a community together. We all pooled our resources and helped each other out in all the punk-rock crafty ways we could. LR: Right. How do you think that experience helped you as you’ve gotten older, and now as you look back, how do you think that has helped you in your life? MS: I think that experience was instrumental in, not only saving me, but making me the adult I am. Like it’s given me, for one, lots of great writing material, but it’s fostered this extreme independence in me and proven to me that I’m strong and that I can get through anything. There was definitely a lot of trials and scary moments in that time of my life, hitchhiking alone as a young girl, but it was also a lot of fun. I’ve got tons of pictures that I can send you of the people that I lived with, like things we would do. I’ve always been very political, or I’ve wanted to be involved or help the world in some way. I always try to make sure that people understand that I didn’t leave because I did drugs or go into some bad environment. I left and was part of really amazing political communities and they were all really young teenagers who also ran away and were really passionate about wanting to save the world. So we did a lot of stuff like Food Not Bombs or tree sits or just political activism. It was a positive runaway environment. So I think that that was also a good experience as well ‘cause I got to be involved in just activist events that were really important to me and I felt like made a difference, while I was also learning how to become an adult. LR: You mentioned some organizations you were a part of that I didn’t quite catch. 9 MS: Things like Food Not Bombs, have you ever heard of it? LR: I haven’t, no. That’s really cool. MS: Food Not Bombs is an organization that selects food that’s going to go to waste from restaurants or grocery stores because you know cans that are bruised grocery stores just throw away food. Food Not Bombs goes and collects all that food and then gets together at someone’s house and cooks meals for the homeless or anyone that wants to come eat. What we would do is we would go around and essentially dumpster food, bring it back to our house that we had rented together and cook a giant meal We would have bread, soups, salads, fruit salads, and all kinds of stuff that we would cook and then go to the park and serve it for free to anyone who needed food. LR: Out of curiosity, did you ever get in trouble for taking that food from the dumpsters or did they not care? MS: For the most part they didn’t care. A few businesses ended up just offering it up, so that we didn’t have to get it from the trash, but for the most part they didn’t care. The only time we actually got in trouble, cause we would take the food on our bicycles and we would build bike racks and we would pile up these pots and pans and dishes on our bikes. A police officer did not like that we were serving free food to the homeless and he gave us all bicycle traffic tickets, and because I was a minor and I didn’t have anyone to represent me, I ended up having to go to juvenile court and I had to do community service for getting an infraction of not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign on my bicycle. But that’s the only time, 10 and I would have willingly done community service. I got to volunteer at a Head Start for low income families and I loved it, so jokes on them. LR: Yeah, no kidding. So during this time, you were going to community college but did you have your high school diploma or did you get your GED? MS: Yes, I got my GED before I had left and I was already in an alternative school for that when I left because I had gone to so many schools. They had to put me in the alternative program just to get me caught up in everything. It was a really great kind of hippie alternative school in Eugene, Oregon. LR: What was it like going to the community school during this time? MS: I loved it because I was on my own and I had freedom and I didn’t have to take care of anyone and I didn’t have to feel like a burden. I liked the school and it was honestly kind of like the best time of my life. Because we had lived next to Santa Cruz University, I would drop into classes there as well. You could literally just walk into a class and sit down and listen, and not have to get like college credits. So I would do that, I would find cool classes that I wanted to go to like political history classes or environmental studies and I would just sit in the back and listen. LR: That is really cool. Did you end up getting a degree from that school? MS: I did not. Actually, I never finished college. Because I had been working so much I really wasn’t able to finish, and then I got pregnant when I was eighteen and that kind of changed the course of my life as well. 11 LR: Right, has a way of doing that. In that two years that you were there, are there any other stories that you’d like to share? MS: I mean, there’s a lot that happened in that time. I did try reconnecting with my mother at one point but it didn’t really go so well, she suffers from alcoholism and substance abuse so she’s not the easiest person to try to reconnect with. There’s just a lot of hitchhiking to different places and experiencing different things. LR: This is a question purely for me, as a parent of teenagers, but hitchhiking, I mean, as a teenager, did you feel comfortable? Was there, I mean... MS: For the most part I had great experiences. There was only a couple scary experiences and I had, luckily, a friend with me. But there really was no other way for me to get around. Spending even like a hundred dollars on a bus ticket seemed like a million dollars when you’re trying to do everything on your own. I would not be comfortable if my kids hitchhiked. My mom, I didn’t hear from her for years and I didn’t really speak to her until I was around twenty-one, and I didn’t see her in person again until my youngest daughter was one year old. That was six years ago. I don’t think she knew what I was doing. My dad, I had talked to him recently about how he felt about me being off on my own and he said that he always trusted that I would make the right choices, so I’ve always been like the most insanely responsible kid. I took care of myself, I learned how to cook so I could cook my own dinners. I’ve just always been responsible so he just trusted that I was doing the right thing for me. He said, “Like any other sibling, I would’ve called the cops right away,” but he knew that I needed to do this and be on my own. 12 LR: Okay, so you mentioned when you were eighteen you got pregnant, what happened after that? Did you stay in California? MS: No. So I was going to move to Portland and I had gotten a ride to Portland and I was visiting a friend and I met my ex-husband at a party. He is from Baltimore, and he was telling me about how amazing Baltimore is. I wanted to go to the East Coast, seems really exciting, so we actually hitchhiked across the country to Baltimore together. Out there, I got a job as a bicycle messenger and was planning on going back to community college out at Baltimore or to go and try to get into MIKA, which is a college institute out there. But shortly after moving there, I found out I was pregnant and I put my work mode into high gear and I was like, “Right now I need to provide for this child.” I figured out what my passions are and I just got started taking any workshops or online classes, anything I could find that would help me get to where I am now, that I could provide for my kid. We ended up getting married and we were together for twelve years. But after that my focus was on making a career and making sure that I could provide for my child. LR: What were some of those passions that you discovered? MS: My passions have always been community building, and bringing people together, and making a difference wherever I live. I feel like there’s a lot of need for people who genuinely care about their communities so I wanted to find a way that I could help wherever I live and use my skills, which I found I’ve always been really good at networking, and marketing, and writing so I just focused in on those skills. It took a little trial and error, I had a lot of different jobs, freelance 13 writing or working in telemarketing, and trying to figure out what and how I can help and figuring out what I definitely didn’t like, telemarketing. We ended up moving back to Portland shortly after our second daughter was born, but I guess I should back up a minute. The child that I was pregnant with, she ended up passing away when she was nine days old, so that also changed the course that I was on. We already had a nursery set up and I was like on this path to motherhood and it was suddenly taken away and we decided that we would try again to have another baby and so then we had our second daughter. After that, I realized that Baltimore really wasn’t a good place to raise a child so I wanted to go back to Portland. So we moved to Portland and that’s where I really started to figure out how to use my skills and I started doing event promotion, and writing more, and getting involved in the community. We were only there for a couple of years before he got a job transfer to Ogden, and that’s when we moved to Ogden, about nine years ago. LR: And when you moved here, where did you live, to Ogden? MS: On Brinker Avenue, next to Kaffe Mercantile. LR: Okay, you said that your husband came here for a job opportunity, where did he work? MS: He works for a company called Universal Cycle, and at the time, Ogden City was recruiting outdoor companies, and QBP and Universal Cycle work together so they both ended up relocating to Ogden. They were both here for five years for their contract that they were under, so that is how we ended up in Ogden. I’ve 14 never even heard of the city until then. But it seemed really exciting, it seemed like a really cool place to raise our daughter so we took the opportunity and moved. LR: Okay. So when you first moved here, what did you think of the city? I mean, was there a culture shock? MS: I think there was a positive culture shock. My first experience in Ogden, we actually flew in to look at houses during Harvest Moon, so my first day in Ogden ever, I go downtown and it’s this huge, adorable festival and I was like, “Well, okay, this is like perfect for raising a kid,” and just like the architecture of the houses and everyone was so friendly. Having gone from Baltimore to Portland, where people are very cliquey and it’s very much a big city mindset, you walk straight you don’t make eye contact, and then going to this little town where everyone is saying, “Hi, where’re you from? Welcome,” it was the strangest culture shock ever, it was like a made up land. So I was very excited to move here and to get settled in and I instantly fell in love with the town. I think not having any stability growing up and not having that family life that I wanted, Ogden was the perfect place to recreate that and build that for my children and for myself as well. LR: That is fantastic, thank you. So how did you come up with the idea for Indie Ogden? MS: Well, the first thing I noticed when I moved here is I could not find any events in a central place. I joined a bunch of groups but none of them were promoting what 15 was happening locally. I couldn’t find information, a clear, central spot for finding out about local businesses, people, things that are happening, and news. So I originally started the blog just to share what I was finding out and then as I’m meeting people in town and they’re like, “Yes, we need this.” I’m finding more and more cool people, and I’m finding out about all these really cool events. I’m posting more and more, and it really snowballed really quickly and so I just dedicated myself to that and I found that that was my way that I could impact my community in a positive way and be a part of my community at the same time. LR: You have to forgive me, I don’t know a lot about the Indie Ogden except for what my boss has talked to me about. I only recently moved to Ogden so it’s still new to me. MS: Oh, well welcome, it’s awesome. LR: Isn’t it a magazine now? MS: It is a magazine now. LR: Okay, so how did that come about? MS: Well, I guess when the blog first started, it was just a blog about me and my daughter and our adventures in town. Within a few months it morphed into I was interviewing local businesses that I wanted to learn more about the town and how this town exists and no one knows about it. I just started doing interviews and writing more and more, and people were asking if I knew any other cool events so I started an events calendar. After a year, or at least probably six months, I had people signed on who were guest blogging and guest writing for me. Then at 16 the one year anniversary, we had so many people there and we gave out these joke awards and realized, “Wait, we could really make an awards ceremony,” so that launched the Indie Ogden awards. We’ve had seven Indie Ogden awards so far and they always sell out; they’re huge events where we give awards out to everyone, from Best Local Volunteer to Best Local Restaurant and anything in between. So as the blog has evolved, we saw a need for a tangible publication that could be held. When I was leaving Ogden, I really wanted it to become that and I knew that I was moving soon so I wanted to find someone that could do that. It just so happened that someone originally from Ogden was moving back to Ogden from Portland, and in Portland he had run a magazine and he was looking for people to be involved in an Ogden magazine. We got connected together and I handed Indie Ogden over to him and he produced the magazine, and he’s been doing really great, it’s on its second issue now and I love it. LR: That’s fantastic. I actually saw the newest issue of Indie Ogden a couple of weeks ago and it never occurred to me that it had actually turned into a magazine, was that always something that you were thinking about in the back of your head as you were starting this blog? Or was that just a happy coincidence? MS: A few years ago, it’s something that I really, really wanted and I actually tried; I had a publishing company come and start a newspaper with me but they didn’t want to use Indie Ogden’s name so that was kind of a bummer. But we did have a newspaper called the Ogden Source that we ran and we just took content from Indie Ogden and used our writers and created this newspaper that was actually mailed out to houses. We had it for about six months but the printing was just too 17 high and we didn’t have the right investors. So it’s been something that I really wanted to do. I’ve always wanted the magazine style just because I personally love magazines, I collect them, I bring them home, I love when they’re local. I have every single Wasatch Eats magazine still on my bookshelf because I just love reading local magazines. But it’s a huge undertaking, and I work full-time and running Indie Ogden, it was not something that I could do on my own. I just couldn’t wrap my head around how to even start that. It was really great that someone who has that experience came in and was so passionate and he really hit the ground running and just took off, and I don’t even understand how he did it but he made it happen. So it’s very exciting to see. It’s a little bittersweet because I wish I was there and a part of it still, but I’m really, really proud that something I created is being carried on in this form that I’ve always wanted. LR: That’s awesome. So as you were working and getting the Indie Ogden started, what were some of the challenges that you faced? MS: In the beginning, I feel like there weren’t a lot of challenges. I did have some naysayers. There was like a funny incident where I had a troll, he was writing just really awful things about me; that I’m not part of the predominant religion so I don’t really have a right to write certain things or like talk about Ogden because I’m not a local. I ended up reverse looking up his IP address and he worked for a local law firm and I contacted him directly, you know I confronted him about it and I was like, “Listen, we’re all just trying to love Ogden here,” and he left me alone after that. It’s always been a really positive experience. I really haven’t run into too many roadblocks, Ogden has always been very welcoming and accepting 18 and excited about new projects and ideas. I mean, with the Indie Ogden awards, I thought that it would be years and years of work to get it going but after the first one, which was kind of like the tester, people were kind of feeling it out and seeing. But every single one after that was sold out and getting sponsorships for it was super easy, people volunteered. It was always well-attended and well-loved and well-received. I think as long as your intention is good, Ogden sees that and they want to be involved and they want to embrace it. LR: Right. I love that. You mentioned that you were also working full-time, what were you doing? MS: So I do a lot of marketing and writing. I worked at the Standard Examiner for a little bit and then I got hired by a company called Even Stevens to run their marketing. That was something that catapulted me and gave me the clout that I needed to pursue the passion of running my own marketing business. So from there, I have my own freelance clients that I work with. I work from home full-time now so I’m able to make my own hours and choose my clients. It’s mainly marketing, social media, advertising management, creating digital ads for people, and helping them turn their social media from something that’s talking at people to creating community conversation. I think my main focus is showing the benefits of creating community online and how businesses should be using their social media for good to create conversation and positive interaction and not just “buy, buy, buy, sell, sell, sell.” I taught a bunch of blogging classes and digital marketing classes and social media classes to small businesses, using everything I learned to teach them to use resources for free to empower them to 19 utilize their social media presence, and their blogs, and their websites to build their business and get new clients and keep money flowing through but still keep it community-minded and positive. LR: So the social media aspect, I noticed you’re a part of a few social media communities, if I’m saying that right? MS: Yeah, what kind of community? LR: There’s the Ogden Rad Ladies, did you help create those or have you helped create those types of things? MS: Yeah, so I actually created the Ogden Rad Ladies and that’s another thing that I created once I started the blog and moved here. As a mother, it’s really hard to make new friends. You don’t really go out to the bars, you don’t party, so I wanted to create something where local moms could get together with our kids and other local like-minded moms that are involved and artsy and want to take their kids everywhere and experience everything. It started originally as the Ogden Rad Moms, and it was just moms getting together but the more we started to do stuff in the community the more other women wanted to be involved who didn’t have kids. So I changed it, and the group has been around for as long as I’ve lived in Ogden, so it’s nine-years-old now as well. After about three years, I turned it into the Ogden Rad Ladies and from there it really grew. We have some basic ground rules which are: you always keep it in positive, we’re here to encourage other women to be their best selves and to be involved in the community, and you have to engage in the group either in-person or on the 20 Facebook page. So we started hosting the Rad Lady Potluck, so every month a different woman hosts at her house and we get together, we bring potluck dishes and wine, and we just meet each other in-person and create real connections. After a few years of the Ogden Rad Ladies being involved, as anyone could be involved in it, we started getting requests for spin-off groups so we allowed women in the group to start their own groups utilizing the Ogden Rad Lady name. They could use the same rules that we have and so we have like a pickle ball group and a craft team and a babysitting exchange group. I think we have around thirty-five different subgroups. I got all of my best friends there. If you ask any Rad Ladies, they will probably say the same thing. It’s been just a really amazing place for us to make connections, I mean, we’ve done everything from helping women get out of abusive relationships to showing up to court with women to helping women start their own businesses, just everything you could think of we’re there to support each other. If you have a project you’re doing, you have two-thousand Rad Ladies backing you up. A couple of years ago, we actually got contacted by Facebook, they were hosting the first ever Facebook Communities Summit and they were inviting something like a hundred different admins from Facebook communities around the country to come to Chicago to take a weekend long intensive workshop to help us learn how to better serve our communities. They actually sent three of the Rad Ladies admins, myself and two others, to Chicago, put us up in a hotel, we got to listen to Mark Zuckerberg speak, and we had two days of literally like six-hour long back to back workshops; learning everything from how to support women in your 21 community to how to successfully host an event to conflict resolution and just anything you could think of ‘how to.’ All these really cool workshops that we got to be a part of, and that reaffirmed what we were doing. When we came back, that’s when we really solidified the ground rules for the group and really started running the group with intention. LR: That’s just amazing. So as you were working full-time, you’re trying to get things up and running, how did you balance your home-life with your work-life? MS: I think I’m a lot better at it now that I’m in a different relationship, but a key for me is to always have family time. We have set days and times that it’s just us, we put our phones down and we hang out as a family. I think the easy thing with Indie Ogden is that a lot of the things that I did with Indie Ogden were family-oriented. So if I’m covering like the Ogden Marathon, the whole family was with me. But spending time with my family is very, very important and I think no amount of work is worth neglecting it. I always make sure to take time out to connect with them. Also, I drag my kids everywhere with me. LR: You say, “kids,” so you have more than just one? MS: Yes, I have two children. I have an eleven year old and a six year old. LR: Okay. What prompted you to leave Ogden. MS: It’s really a crazy string of events. Most of my family lives out in the northwest, in Oregon. After my dad retired from the military, he stayed in Oregon and my brother and sister ended up moving back to the northwest. My dad’s originally from the northwest so all of his family lives out here. As my kids are getting older 22 and I’m a single mom now, but at the time, I had been really wanting to reconnect with my family and to be closer to them. My dad and I have a great relationship and when my oldest daughter passed away, we got close and since then, I mean, he’s one of my best friends so I really wanted to be close to him because it was getting exhausting driving out all the time to see him. It was a very hard decision to make, I had been thinking about it for a year but I didn’t know how to do it, or if I wanted to do it, or if I would love it. I knew that I couldn’t afford Portland and I didn’t really want to move to a big city anyway. Then my current partner, he was telling me that he really wanted to get out of Utah and experience something different, ‘cause he’s from there, and through a series of random events he ended up getting a job offer in Olympia, Washington, which is only an hour and a half from Portland. But I was like, “I own my house, I own this business,” and then just like that my friend Ashley, who’s a realtor, she was like, “Hey, you know, I have this couple that’s looking to buy a house like yours,” and I was like, “That’s funny because I was thinking about selling my house.” So I sold my house like within hours and then I was like, “You know, I have Indie Ogden too, it’s like my baby and I’m so involved in the community, I wouldn’t want to leave it,” and then I ended up meeting that publisher who happened to be moving back to Ogden. It was just so many green lights that were telling me that it was my time to go back to the northwest and that this was the right decision, that I couldn’t ignore it. He worked for Georgia Pacific, and we ended up, all-expense paid, moving us out here and, that’s how I ended up here. 23 LR: You mentioned that you work from home now, are you finding ways to still be civically involved in your community? MS: I have. My whole goal moving here, I was like, “If I’m moving out of Ogden, I want to have the same impact that I had in Ogden or here in Olympia.” I wanted to be involved, I wanted to just have that same community that I had in Ogden, so I made a series of goals as soon as I came out here and I met with the local tourism industry and the Downtown Association. I joined the Chamber already, and I already started working with a local marketing firm to get some local clients. I even started an Olympia Rad Moms group and we had our first meet up last week. We had ten moms for a local barbecue, probably around ten, fifteen children actually, there was a lot of children. So I really made it a huge effort to jump right into the community here. I’ve already started Indie Olympia so I’m recreating what I did with Indie Ogden here in Olympia and it’s been really wonderful. I’ve met all of my neighbors and I’ve met some great business owners and I really hit the ground running here in Olympia. It took me years to figure it out in Ogden, but now I have a system down of how I can be involved and what works and what my community needs. LR: How do you think education—and when I say education, I’m meaning of any kind because you found ways to gain an education without necessarily going to college. So how do you think education empowers women? MS: I think it’s the main way to empower yourself. I’m constantly learning, I’m always taking new classes, I’ve signed up for several classes at the community college 24 and here. I think learning never stops and we are never fully educated about any topic, there’s always room for growth. I think people get scared by the word education because they think that they can’t pursue what they want to do and they can’t accomplish what they want to do without paying a lot of money or finishing college or doing things the normal way. But because I had like such an unusual upbringing and I was thrust into adulthood so young, I’ve learned that education is what you make it. There are so many resources and opportunities out there just waiting to be taken and I think it’s incredibly important to empower yourself. You never know, and I know a big part of me, leaving my previous marriage was education learning, that maybe I wasn’t happy because the relationship that I had wasn’t healthy, like even simple things like that. I get really passionate about education because I think that you can learn something new every single day. It can be the simplest things like learning a new recipe, learning a new language, there’s infinite amounts of things to know and learn. LR: Right, thank you. So I have two more questions. As you look back and think about your own daughters or younger women, what is some advice that you would give young women of today who are trying to get a start? What is some advice you would give them? MS: A big one for me is never let anyone feel like you’re not enough. I think so many times men, especially, will try to undervalue women and it can make you feel like you’re not good enough. Just trust that you are and keep going after what you want in life. Trust your gut, I think intuition instincts is a really big thing and if I 25 feel uneasy about something, I try to listen to that and figure out why. I think we need to listen to ourselves more as well. LR: I have a final question but before I ask that, is there any other story, any other memory you’d like to share? Or experience? MS: Oh my gosh, that’s so hard. LR: I know, it’s not fair. MS: Five years ago, someone interviewed me about my upbringing and I just spewed out all these traumatic experiences that I’ve had and my life story became this sad story and I was reading it back and I’m like, “Wow, that’s sad, I really had a hard life.” But now that I’m older, I’m looking at those and it’s in a very different light. I’m so thankful for the life that I was given and those traumatic experiences because it’s made me this resilient, strong, creative individual. I have a lot of stories to tell, but I think the stories that I want people to hear are what I’m doing now and not so much the traumatic experiences that have happened. LR: No, I do understand. The final question is a question that we’re asking everyone that we interview, and it is how do you think women receiving the right to vote shaped or influenced history, your community, and you personally? MS: That is a big question. I mean, how hasn’t it shaped our community? It’s kind of a double-edged sword because I am Native American and Native American women did not actually earn the right to vote until I think it was 1924 in Utah. LR: I did not know that. 26 MS: But I think for me personally, voting, it makes me feel like my voice is heard and it’s the simplest way that you can be a part of your community without having to be the community leader. I think it’s a way for us to make a real change that’s not exhausting. I think that that’s really empowering because women are exhausted and sometimes the only energy we have left is filling out the ballot. Just having the opportunity to have an effect or choice is empowering when our society is constantly taking every aspect of our empowerment away. It always feels like a little rebellious when I’m voting, even today, I feel like I’m doing something that I’m not supposed to, like I’m getting away with something every time I vote. I think Ogden, especially Utah, would be a very, very different place if women were not allowed to vote. Especially the past few years women have really been making their voices heard in Utah and it’s making Utah better and better every year. LR: That’s great. Now I have another question. To be honest I don’t know a lot about the Native American experience and I learned something from you. I didn’t realize that Native American women couldn’t vote until 1924. Do you know if there was a reason for that? MS: It’s because up until the 1920s, Native Americans were not considered American citizens. LR: Did they have to become American citizens or were they finally just, “Okay, duh, you’re an American citizen.” ST: Did they have to go through a process? 27 LR: Yes, did they have to go through a series of tests? I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this. MS: So I think, just nationally, they became U.S. citizens. Before that, I’m not sure what they were called. But even after becoming citizens, some states didn’t even allow Native Americans the right to vote until the 1960s. In fact, Utah, I just looked it up, was one of the states that didn’t allow Native Americans to vote until 1962. But in 1924, they gave Native Americans American citizenship. There was a name for that law that was passed, I can’t quite remember what it was, but in some states like Utah, if you were Native American and you lived on a reservation, they didn’t consider you a resident of the state. Utah was one of those states, and not until 1950 six or seven, Utah passed a legislation that allowed indigenous people on reservations to vote and then around 1962 it finally went through. It was called the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, but women especially didn’t have access because, you know, women. I’m sure it took even longer than that because, I mean, reservations on Utah are not that great, just like in Arizona or the Dakotas, so even having access to a voting booth probably didn’t happen for a long time after that.