Welcome to Nobody Told Me. I'm Jan Black. And I'm Laura Owens. And we are thrilled to welcome bestselling author Elizabeth Lesser to this episode.

Her books include Broken Open, How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow, and Mero, Love, Loss, and What Matters Most.

Her newest book is called Cassandra Speaks.

When women are the storytellers, the human story changes.

And Elizabeth is the co-founder of Omega Institute, which is recognized internationally for its workshops and conferences in wellness, spirituality, creativity, and social change.

And she's given two very popular TED Talks and is one of Oprah Winfrey's Super Soul 100, which is a group of 100 leaders who are

using their voices to elevate humanity. And it's a very prestigious group. So congratulations on that.

And welcome to the show. Thank you. What a pleasure to be here.

Elizabeth, you have written some wonderful books in the past, but your new book is a little bit different than

those. Talk to us about what inspired Cassandra speaks. I've always been someone who walks these

dual paths. I think a lot of us are like this, but this has been a big thing in my life. I've been

both someone really concerned with the world. I have some activism that I have followed

forever. At the same time, I consider myself a spiritual seeker, someone who's done a lot of work

on myself, who helps other people work quietly in the realms of psychology and spirituality.

I've always wanted to marry these two parts of myself,

the activist, and then I made up a word for it, the innervist,

the person who believes, like, as Gandhi did,

be the change you want to see in the world.

But then there's some really bad stuff in the world,

and I want to go out and

change it. And one of those things has always been, what seems to me, a bad rap women have gotten

forever, back all the way to the stories of Eve and Cassandra and Pandora and things like that,

...