Description of the video:

SCARPINO: I’m going to ask you another broad question. This is going to require a little bit of setup for the people who are going to listen to this recording or read the transcript. In October of 2011, I had the privilege to interview Manfred Kets de Vries at the ILA meeting in London. To get ready to talk to him I did the same thing I did to get ready to talk to you. I read a great deal of what he had written, and he wrote an article that was actually published in 1994 titled “The Leadership Mystique.” I ran across a sentence in that article that just stayed in my head for weeks after I read it and so I tried it out on him. And this is what he said. He said, “All of us possess some kind of inner theater and are strongly motivated by a specific inner script. Over time, through interactions with caretakers, teachers, and other influential people, this inner theater develops. Our internal theater, in which the patterns that underlie our character come into play, influences our behavior throughout our lives and plays an essential role in the molding of leaders.” So, the question that I, it’s the same question I asked him and he looked at me and he said, “You’re putting me on your couch, aren’t you?” And I said, “You caught me.” But here is the question, using his term “inner theater,” can you tell me about your own “inner theater,” particularly about early experiences or individuals that shaped your character?

WHEATLEY: Well, I think he may be describing using the term inner theater what I’m describing by: We create the world through our perceptions.

SCARPINO: Yes.

WHEATLEY: And in my own development, learning as a Buddhist, which is now the foundation of everything, we talk about it as understanding how we have created our perceptions with the realization that whatever that inner theater is, it’s all made up. It’s all made up and you can change it through discipline and practice and awareness. So I would say that my inner theater or what I was projecting onto the world as a youth was filled with a lot of self-doubt at the same time of getting a lot of approbation from people. I was always told I was brilliant. I never understood that, but I also must say I always had a feeling of being very special and that I was going to do good work.

SCARPINO: Your parents made you feel that way or people you knew?

WHEATLEY: My grandmother did. My grandmother was the . . .

SCARPINO: Tell me about your grandmother.

WHEATLEY: Well, she was the very active world citizen, speaker, writer, fundraiser for Palestine in the State of Israel.

SCARPINO: What was her name?

WHEATLEY: Her name was Irma Lindheim. She was one of those great Edwardian ladies.

SCARPINO: British National?

WHEATLEY: No, no. She’s American, old New York family.

SCARPINO: No, okay; old New York.

WHEATLEY: Jewish. And she was a strong feminist as many of the Edwardian women were. So she was the first Jewish woman in the Army Corps during World War I. She was the first woman to study for the rabbinic, to become a rabbi.

SCARPINO: Did she actually become a rabbi?

WHEATLEY: No. She became an educator, studied with John Dewey.

SCARPINO: Oh my.

WHEATLEY: So I was brought up with all of her stories of feeling this is a very big world filled with very great people and I’m going to be one of them in some way. Then there was my British father who was always, “Don’t give yourself, everyone’s the same, everyone’s bad, don’t give yourself airs.” It’s called the tall poppy syndrome in Australia and New Zealand; like, you know, don’t think you’re better than the rest of us. So I had that dichotomy. I got a lot of, though, compliments or I guess more than compliments. I got a lot of encouragement from my professors who would sort of indicate that I was coming up with a new idea, and that’s when I developed a little bit of confidence in that area of being able to see things differently than most.

SCARPINO: So you had a grandmother who was independent, bold. . .

WHEATLEY: Powerful role model.

SCARPINO: . . .intelligent, and a dad who said. . .

WHEATLEY: No, incredible role model.

SCARPINO: . . . don’t let your bloom stick out above other people’s?

WHEATLEY: That’s right. That’s right.

SCARPINO: So how do you think that tension shaped you as a person?

WHEATLEY: I think I had a lot of, I internalized both messages.

SCARPINO: We have the amazing ability to do that, don’t we?

WHEATLEY: We do. And it took many years to get over the negative ones. And the whole British side of me—because I am quite British—I was raised really in this British home, but post World War II, which had a whole other level of, whole other quality to it. But the British are excellent at cutting down each other and other people through humor, and I had to work consciously to stop that ability. I did go to school in London, University College for a year, and I really related to my English family much more than my Jewish family at that time. And I had to get over this feeling of we’re all bad, we’re all equal; therefore, you cut people to the core with your humor. I was very good at that and I didn’t like that at all.

SCARPINO: Your mother was Jewish.

WHEATLEY: Yes, New York Jewish.

SCARPINO: Your father was Anglican.

WHEATLEY: Yes.

SCARPINO: So in addition to living with the tension between a strong grandma and a dad who had the gift for cutting people down, you also lived in a family . . .

WHEATLEY: Well, my father, I want to give him credit. He was an incredibly hardworking mechanic, ran a foreign car service, was a very generous, caring person who’d been brought up in post Victorian World War I England so it was all completely repressed in him. And I really feel for what a good person he was and how hard it was for him to express emotion because of his upbringing; completely repressed emotional life.

SCARPINO: Do you think it’s important for people to learn how to express their emotions?

WHEATLEY: Well, of course. Because we’re not talking heads here. We’re people.

SCARPINO: How about your mother?

WHEATLEY: My mother was a very hardworking activist in her own right. I was brought up, I guess you would call it, working class at this point, but the distinctions weren’t true then. I remember reading a survey of women college presidents who were all my age and they were talking about they were brought up in what we would now call a working class family. You went camping on vacation. You didn’t have a lot of stuff and it was fine. But you went to a good school. We got encouraged. I always got encouraged to be educated and that came from the Jewish side of my family, for sure, and to make a difference in the world and to serve. I really credit my Jewish side for all of that encouragement. My grandmother, I remember at the age of six, telling me, “Well you have to write that Meggie.” So she was always interested in my ideas, always, and I’ve tried to do that with my own grandchildren.

SCARPINO: Your grandmother encouraged you to write?

WHEATLEY: She encouraged me to write. She wanted to know what I was thinking. She didn’t treat me as a child. She would really have serious conversations with me from a very young age, and I remember those.

Description of the video:

SCARPINO: I’m going to ask you another broad question. This is going to require a little bit of setup for the people who are going to listen to this recording or read the transcript. In October of 2011, I had the privilege to interview Manfred Kets de Vries at the ILA meeting in London. To get ready to talk to him I did the same thing I did to get ready to talk to you. I read a great deal of what he had written, and he wrote an article that was actually published in 1994 titled “The Leadership Mystique.” I ran across a sentence in that article that just stayed in my head for weeks after I read it and so I tried it out on him. And this is what he said. He said, “All of us possess some kind of inner theater and are strongly motivated by a specific inner script. Over time, through interactions with caretakers, teachers, and other influential people, this inner theater develops. Our internal theater, in which the patterns that underlie our character come into play, influences our behavior throughout our lives and plays an essential role in the molding of leaders.” So, the question that I, it’s the same question I asked him and he looked at me and he said, “You’re putting me on your couch, aren’t you?” And I said, “You caught me.” But here is the question, using his term “inner theater,” can you tell me about your own “inner theater,” particularly about early experiences or individuals that shaped your character?

WHEATLEY: Well, I think he may be describing using the term inner theater what I’m describing by: We create the world through our perceptions.

SCARPINO: Yes.

WHEATLEY: And in my own development, learning as a Buddhist, which is now the foundation of everything, we talk about it as understanding how we have created our perceptions with the realization that whatever that inner theater is, it’s all made up. It’s all made up and you can change it through discipline and practice and awareness. So I would say that my inner theater or what I was projecting onto the world as a youth was filled with a lot of self-doubt at the same time of getting a lot of approbation from people. I was always told I was brilliant. I never understood that, but I also must say I always had a feeling of being very special and that I was going to do good work.

SCARPINO: Your parents made you feel that way or people you knew?

WHEATLEY: My grandmother did. My grandmother was the . . .

SCARPINO: Tell me about your grandmother.

WHEATLEY: Well, she was the very active world citizen, speaker, writer, fundraiser for Palestine in the State of Israel.

SCARPINO: What was her name?

WHEATLEY: Her name was Irma Lindheim. She was one of those great Edwardian ladies.

SCARPINO: British National?

WHEATLEY: No, no. She’s American, old New York family.

SCARPINO: No, okay; old New York.

WHEATLEY: Jewish. And she was a strong feminist as many of the Edwardian women were. So she was the first Jewish woman in the Army Corps during World War I. She was the first woman to study for the rabbinic, to become a rabbi.

SCARPINO: Did she actually become a rabbi?

WHEATLEY: No. She became an educator, studied with John Dewey.

SCARPINO: Oh my.

WHEATLEY: So I was brought up with all of her stories of feeling this is a very big world filled with very great people and I’m going to be one of them in some way. Then there was my British father who was always, “Don’t give yourself, everyone’s the same, everyone’s bad, don’t give yourself airs.” It’s called the tall poppy syndrome in Australia and New Zealand; like, you know, don’t think you’re better than the rest of us. So I had that dichotomy. I got a lot of, though, compliments or I guess more than compliments. I got a lot of encouragement from my professors who would sort of indicate that I was coming up with a new idea, and that’s when I developed a little bit of confidence in that area of being able to see things differently than most.

SCARPINO: So you had a grandmother who was independent, bold. . .

WHEATLEY: Powerful role model.

SCARPINO: . . .intelligent, and a dad who said. . .

WHEATLEY: No, incredible role model.

SCARPINO: . . . don’t let your bloom stick out above other people’s?

WHEATLEY: That’s right. That’s right.

SCARPINO: So how do you think that tension shaped you as a person?

WHEATLEY: I think I had a lot of, I internalized both messages.

SCARPINO: We have the amazing ability to do that, don’t we?

WHEATLEY: We do. And it took many years to get over the negative ones. And the whole British side of me—because I am quite British—I was raised really in this British home, but post World War II, which had a whole other level of, whole other quality to it. But the British are excellent at cutting down each other and other people through humor, and I had to work consciously to stop that ability. I did go to school in London, University College for a year, and I really related to my English family much more than my Jewish family at that time. And I had to get over this feeling of we’re all bad, we’re all equal; therefore, you cut people to the core with your humor. I was very good at that and I didn’t like that at all.

SCARPINO: Your mother was Jewish.

WHEATLEY: Yes, New York Jewish.

SCARPINO: Your father was Anglican.

WHEATLEY: Yes.

SCARPINO: So in addition to living with the tension between a strong grandma and a dad who had the gift for cutting people down, you also lived in a family . . .

WHEATLEY: Well, my father, I want to give him credit. He was an incredibly hardworking mechanic, ran a foreign car service, was a very generous, caring person who’d been brought up in post Victorian World War I England so it was all completely repressed in him. And I really feel for what a good person he was and how hard it was for him to express emotion because of his upbringing; completely repressed emotional life.

SCARPINO: Do you think it’s important for people to learn how to express their emotions?

WHEATLEY: Well, of course. Because we’re not talking heads here. We’re people.

SCARPINO: How about your mother?

WHEATLEY: My mother was a very hardworking activist in her own right. I was brought up, I guess you would call it, working class at this point, but the distinctions weren’t true then. I remember reading a survey of women college presidents who were all my age and they were talking about they were brought up in what we would now call a working class family. You went camping on vacation. You didn’t have a lot of stuff and it was fine. But you went to a good school. We got encouraged. I always got encouraged to be educated and that came from the Jewish side of my family, for sure, and to make a difference in the world and to serve. I really credit my Jewish side for all of that encouragement. My grandmother, I remember at the age of six, telling me, “Well you have to write that Meggie.” So she was always interested in my ideas, always, and I’ve tried to do that with my own grandchildren.

SCARPINO: Your grandmother encouraged you to write?

WHEATLEY: She encouraged me to write. She wanted to know what I was thinking. She didn’t treat me as a child. She would really have serious conversations with me from a very young age, and I remember those.

Description of the video:

SCARPINO: I’m going to ask you another broad question. This is going to require a little bit of setup for the people who are going to listen to this recording or read the transcript. In October of 2011, I had the privilege to interview Manfred Kets de Vries at the ILA meeting in London. To get ready to talk to him I did the same thing I did to get ready to talk to you. I read a great deal of what he had written, and he wrote an article that was actually published in 1994 titled “The Leadership Mystique.” I ran across a sentence in that article that just stayed in my head for weeks after I read it and so I tried it out on him. And this is what he said. He said, “All of us possess some kind of inner theater and are strongly motivated by a specific inner script. Over time, through interactions with caretakers, teachers, and other influential people, this inner theater develops. Our internal theater, in which the patterns that underlie our character come into play, influences our behavior throughout our lives and plays an essential role in the molding of leaders.” So, the question that I, it’s the same question I asked him and he looked at me and he said, “You’re putting me on your couch, aren’t you?” And I said, “You caught me.” But here is the question, using his term “inner theater,” can you tell me about your own “inner theater,” particularly about early experiences or individuals that shaped your character?

WHEATLEY: Well, I think he may be describing using the term inner theater what I’m describing by: We create the world through our perceptions.

SCARPINO: Yes.

WHEATLEY: And in my own development, learning as a Buddhist, which is now the foundation of everything, we talk about it as understanding how we have created our perceptions with the realization that whatever that inner theater is, it’s all made up. It’s all made up and you can change it through discipline and practice and awareness. So I would say that my inner theater or what I was projecting onto the world as a youth was filled with a lot of self-doubt at the same time of getting a lot of approbation from people. I was always told I was brilliant. I never understood that, but I also must say I always had a feeling of being very special and that I was going to do good work.

SCARPINO: Your parents made you feel that way or people you knew?

WHEATLEY: My grandmother did. My grandmother was the . . .

SCARPINO: Tell me about your grandmother.

WHEATLEY: Well, she was the very active world citizen, speaker, writer, fundraiser for Palestine in the State of Israel.

SCARPINO: What was her name?

WHEATLEY: Her name was Irma Lindheim. She was one of those great Edwardian ladies.

SCARPINO: British National?

WHEATLEY: No, no. She’s American, old New York family.

SCARPINO: No, okay; old New York.

WHEATLEY: Jewish. And she was a strong feminist as many of the Edwardian women were. So she was the first Jewish woman in the Army Corps during World War I. She was the first woman to study for the rabbinic, to become a rabbi.

SCARPINO: Did she actually become a rabbi?

WHEATLEY: No. She became an educator, studied with John Dewey.

SCARPINO: Oh my.

WHEATLEY: So I was brought up with all of her stories of feeling this is a very big world filled with very great people and I’m going to be one of them in some way. Then there was my British father who was always, “Don’t give yourself, everyone’s the same, everyone’s bad, don’t give yourself airs.” It’s called the tall poppy syndrome in Australia and New Zealand; like, you know, don’t think you’re better than the rest of us. So I had that dichotomy. I got a lot of, though, compliments or I guess more than compliments. I got a lot of encouragement from my professors who would sort of indicate that I was coming up with a new idea, and that’s when I developed a little bit of confidence in that area of being able to see things differently than most.

SCARPINO: So you had a grandmother who was independent, bold. . .

WHEATLEY: Powerful role model.

SCARPINO: . . .intelligent, and a dad who said. . .

WHEATLEY: No, incredible role model.

SCARPINO: . . . don’t let your bloom stick out above other people’s?

WHEATLEY: That’s right. That’s right.

SCARPINO: So how do you think that tension shaped you as a person?

WHEATLEY: I think I had a lot of, I internalized both messages.

SCARPINO: We have the amazing ability to do that, don’t we?

WHEATLEY: We do. And it took many years to get over the negative ones. And the whole British side of me—because I am quite British—I was raised really in this British home, but post World War II, which had a whole other level of, whole other quality to it. But the British are excellent at cutting down each other and other people through humor, and I had to work consciously to stop that ability. I did go to school in London, University College for a year, and I really related to my English family much more than my Jewish family at that time. And I had to get over this feeling of we’re all bad, we’re all equal; therefore, you cut people to the core with your humor. I was very good at that and I didn’t like that at all.

SCARPINO: Your mother was Jewish.

WHEATLEY: Yes, New York Jewish.

SCARPINO: Your father was Anglican.

WHEATLEY: Yes.

SCARPINO: So in addition to living with the tension between a strong grandma and a dad who had the gift for cutting people down, you also lived in a family . . .

WHEATLEY: Well, my father, I want to give him credit. He was an incredibly hardworking mechanic, ran a foreign car service, was a very generous, caring person who’d been brought up in post Victorian World War I England so it was all completely repressed in him. And I really feel for what a good person he was and how hard it was for him to express emotion because of his upbringing; completely repressed emotional life.

SCARPINO: Do you think it’s important for people to learn how to express their emotions?

WHEATLEY: Well, of course. Because we’re not talking heads here. We’re people.

SCARPINO: How about your mother?

WHEATLEY: My mother was a very hardworking activist in her own right. I was brought up, I guess you would call it, working class at this point, but the distinctions weren’t true then. I remember reading a survey of women college presidents who were all my age and they were talking about they were brought up in what we would now call a working class family. You went camping on vacation. You didn’t have a lot of stuff and it was fine. But you went to a good school. We got encouraged. I always got encouraged to be educated and that came from the Jewish side of my family, for sure, and to make a difference in the world and to serve. I really credit my Jewish side for all of that encouragement. My grandmother, I remember at the age of six, telling me, “Well you have to write that Meggie.” So she was always interested in my ideas, always, and I’ve tried to do that with my own grandchildren.

SCARPINO: Your grandmother encouraged you to write?

WHEATLEY: She encouraged me to write. She wanted to know what I was thinking. She didn’t treat me as a child. She would really have serious conversations with me from a very young age, and I remember those.

Description of the video:

SCARPINO: I’m going to ask you another broad question. This is going to require a little bit of setup for the people who are going to listen to this recording or read the transcript. In October of 2011, I had the privilege to interview Manfred Kets de Vries at the ILA meeting in London. To get ready to talk to him I did the same thing I did to get ready to talk to you. I read a great deal of what he had written, and he wrote an article that was actually published in 1994 titled “The Leadership Mystique.” I ran across a sentence in that article that just stayed in my head for weeks after I read it and so I tried it out on him. And this is what he said. He said, “All of us possess some kind of inner theater and are strongly motivated by a specific inner script. Over time, through interactions with caretakers, teachers, and other influential people, this inner theater develops. Our internal theater, in which the patterns that underlie our character come into play, influences our behavior throughout our lives and plays an essential role in the molding of leaders.” So, the question that I, it’s the same question I asked him and he looked at me and he said, “You’re putting me on your couch, aren’t you?” And I said, “You caught me.” But here is the question, using his term “inner theater,” can you tell me about your own “inner theater,” particularly about early experiences or individuals that shaped your character?

WHEATLEY: Well, I think he may be describing using the term inner theater what I’m describing by: We create the world through our perceptions.

SCARPINO: Yes.

WHEATLEY: And in my own development, learning as a Buddhist, which is now the foundation of everything, we talk about it as understanding how we have created our perceptions with the realization that whatever that inner theater is, it’s all made up. It’s all made up and you can change it through discipline and practice and awareness. So I would say that my inner theater or what I was projecting onto the world as a youth was filled with a lot of self-doubt at the same time of getting a lot of approbation from people. I was always told I was brilliant. I never understood that, but I also must say I always had a feeling of being very special and that I was going to do good work.

SCARPINO: Your parents made you feel that way or people you knew?

WHEATLEY: My grandmother did. My grandmother was the . . .

SCARPINO: Tell me about your grandmother.

WHEATLEY: Well, she was the very active world citizen, speaker, writer, fundraiser for Palestine in the State of Israel.

SCARPINO: What was her name?

WHEATLEY: Her name was Irma Lindheim. She was one of those great Edwardian ladies.

SCARPINO: British National?

WHEATLEY: No, no. She’s American, old New York family.

SCARPINO: No, okay; old New York.

WHEATLEY: Jewish. And she was a strong feminist as many of the Edwardian women were. So she was the first Jewish woman in the Army Corps during World War I. She was the first woman to study for the rabbinic, to become a rabbi.

SCARPINO: Did she actually become a rabbi?

WHEATLEY: No. She became an educator, studied with John Dewey.

SCARPINO: Oh my.

WHEATLEY: So I was brought up with all of her stories of feeling this is a very big world filled with very great people and I’m going to be one of them in some way. Then there was my British father who was always, “Don’t give yourself, everyone’s the same, everyone’s bad, don’t give yourself airs.” It’s called the tall poppy syndrome in Australia and New Zealand; like, you know, don’t think you’re better than the rest of us. So I had that dichotomy. I got a lot of, though, compliments or I guess more than compliments. I got a lot of encouragement from my professors who would sort of indicate that I was coming up with a new idea, and that’s when I developed a little bit of confidence in that area of being able to see things differently than most.

SCARPINO: So you had a grandmother who was independent, bold. . .

WHEATLEY: Powerful role model.

SCARPINO: . . .intelligent, and a dad who said. . .

WHEATLEY: No, incredible role model.

SCARPINO: . . . don’t let your bloom stick out above other people’s?

WHEATLEY: That’s right. That’s right.

SCARPINO: So how do you think that tension shaped you as a person?

WHEATLEY: I think I had a lot of, I internalized both messages.

SCARPINO: We have the amazing ability to do that, don’t we?

WHEATLEY: We do. And it took many years to get over the negative ones. And the whole British side of me—because I am quite British—I was raised really in this British home, but post World War II, which had a whole other level of, whole other quality to it. But the British are excellent at cutting down each other and other people through humor, and I had to work consciously to stop that ability. I did go to school in London, University College for a year, and I really related to my English family much more than my Jewish family at that time. And I had to get over this feeling of we’re all bad, we’re all equal; therefore, you cut people to the core with your humor. I was very good at that and I didn’t like that at all.

SCARPINO: Your mother was Jewish.

WHEATLEY: Yes, New York Jewish.

SCARPINO: Your father was Anglican.

WHEATLEY: Yes.

SCARPINO: So in addition to living with the tension between a strong grandma and a dad who had the gift for cutting people down, you also lived in a family . . .

WHEATLEY: Well, my father, I want to give him credit. He was an incredibly hardworking mechanic, ran a foreign car service, was a very generous, caring person who’d been brought up in post Victorian World War I England so it was all completely repressed in him. And I really feel for what a good person he was and how hard it was for him to express emotion because of his upbringing; completely repressed emotional life.

SCARPINO: Do you think it’s important for people to learn how to express their emotions?

WHEATLEY: Well, of course. Because we’re not talking heads here. We’re people.

SCARPINO: How about your mother?

WHEATLEY: My mother was a very hardworking activist in her own right. I was brought up, I guess you would call it, working class at this point, but the distinctions weren’t true then. I remember reading a survey of women college presidents who were all my age and they were talking about they were brought up in what we would now call a working class family. You went camping on vacation. You didn’t have a lot of stuff and it was fine. But you went to a good school. We got encouraged. I always got encouraged to be educated and that came from the Jewish side of my family, for sure, and to make a difference in the world and to serve. I really credit my Jewish side for all of that encouragement. My grandmother, I remember at the age of six, telling me, “Well you have to write that Meggie.” So she was always interested in my ideas, always, and I’ve tried to do that with my own grandchildren.

SCARPINO: Your grandmother encouraged you to write?

WHEATLEY: She encouraged me to write. She wanted to know what I was thinking. She didn’t treat me as a child. She would really have serious conversations with me from a very young age, and I remember those.

Description of the video:

SCARPINO: I’m going to ask you another broad question. This is going to require a little bit of setup for the people who are going to listen to this recording or read the transcript. In October of 2011, I had the privilege to interview Manfred Kets de Vries at the ILA meeting in London. To get ready to talk to him I did the same thing I did to get ready to talk to you. I read a great deal of what he had written, and he wrote an article that was actually published in 1994 titled “The Leadership Mystique.” I ran across a sentence in that article that just stayed in my head for weeks after I read it and so I tried it out on him. And this is what he said. He said, “All of us possess some kind of inner theater and are strongly motivated by a specific inner script. Over time, through interactions with caretakers, teachers, and other influential people, this inner theater develops. Our internal theater, in which the patterns that underlie our character come into play, influences our behavior throughout our lives and plays an essential role in the molding of leaders.” So, the question that I, it’s the same question I asked him and he looked at me and he said, “You’re putting me on your couch, aren’t you?” And I said, “You caught me.” But here is the question, using his term “inner theater,” can you tell me about your own “inner theater,” particularly about early experiences or individuals that shaped your character?

WHEATLEY: Well, I think he may be describing using the term inner theater what I’m describing by: We create the world through our perceptions.

SCARPINO: Yes.

WHEATLEY: And in my own development, learning as a Buddhist, which is now the foundation of everything, we talk about it as understanding how we have created our perceptions with the realization that whatever that inner theater is, it’s all made up. It’s all made up and you can change it through discipline and practice and awareness. So I would say that my inner theater or what I was projecting onto the world as a youth was filled with a lot of self-doubt at the same time of getting a lot of approbation from people. I was always told I was brilliant. I never understood that, but I also must say I always had a feeling of being very special and that I was going to do good work.

SCARPINO: Your parents made you feel that way or people you knew?

WHEATLEY: My grandmother did. My grandmother was the . . .

SCARPINO: Tell me about your grandmother.

WHEATLEY: Well, she was the very active world citizen, speaker, writer, fundraiser for Palestine in the State of Israel.

SCARPINO: What was her name?

WHEATLEY: Her name was Irma Lindheim. She was one of those great Edwardian ladies.

SCARPINO: British National?

WHEATLEY: No, no. She’s American, old New York family.

SCARPINO: No, okay; old New York.

WHEATLEY: Jewish. And she was a strong feminist as many of the Edwardian women were. So she was the first Jewish woman in the Army Corps during World War I. She was the first woman to study for the rabbinic, to become a rabbi.

SCARPINO: Did she actually become a rabbi?

WHEATLEY: No. She became an educator, studied with John Dewey.

SCARPINO: Oh my.

WHEATLEY: So I was brought up with all of her stories of feeling this is a very big world filled with very great people and I’m going to be one of them in some way. Then there was my British father who was always, “Don’t give yourself, everyone’s the same, everyone’s bad, don’t give yourself airs.” It’s called the tall poppy syndrome in Australia and New Zealand; like, you know, don’t think you’re better than the rest of us. So I had that dichotomy. I got a lot of, though, compliments or I guess more than compliments. I got a lot of encouragement from my professors who would sort of indicate that I was coming up with a new idea, and that’s when I developed a little bit of confidence in that area of being able to see things differently than most.

SCARPINO: So you had a grandmother who was independent, bold. . .

WHEATLEY: Powerful role model.

SCARPINO: . . .intelligent, and a dad who said. . .

WHEATLEY: No, incredible role model.

SCARPINO: . . . don’t let your bloom stick out above other people’s?

WHEATLEY: That’s right. That’s right.

SCARPINO: So how do you think that tension shaped you as a person?

WHEATLEY: I think I had a lot of, I internalized both messages.

SCARPINO: We have the amazing ability to do that, don’t we?

WHEATLEY: We do. And it took many years to get over the negative ones. And the whole British side of me—because I am quite British—I was raised really in this British home, but post World War II, which had a whole other level of, whole other quality to it. But the British are excellent at cutting down each other and other people through humor, and I had to work consciously to stop that ability. I did go to school in London, University College for a year, and I really related to my English family much more than my Jewish family at that time. And I had to get over this feeling of we’re all bad, we’re all equal; therefore, you cut people to the core with your humor. I was very good at that and I didn’t like that at all.

SCARPINO: Your mother was Jewish.

WHEATLEY: Yes, New York Jewish.

SCARPINO: Your father was Anglican.

WHEATLEY: Yes.

SCARPINO: So in addition to living with the tension between a strong grandma and a dad who had the gift for cutting people down, you also lived in a family . . .

WHEATLEY: Well, my father, I want to give him credit. He was an incredibly hardworking mechanic, ran a foreign car service, was a very generous, caring person who’d been brought up in post Victorian World War I England so it was all completely repressed in him. And I really feel for what a good person he was and how hard it was for him to express emotion because of his upbringing; completely repressed emotional life.

SCARPINO: Do you think it’s important for people to learn how to express their emotions?

WHEATLEY: Well, of course. Because we’re not talking heads here. We’re people.

SCARPINO: How about your mother?

WHEATLEY: My mother was a very hardworking activist in her own right. I was brought up, I guess you would call it, working class at this point, but the distinctions weren’t true then. I remember reading a survey of women college presidents who were all my age and they were talking about they were brought up in what we would now call a working class family. You went camping on vacation. You didn’t have a lot of stuff and it was fine. But you went to a good school. We got encouraged. I always got encouraged to be educated and that came from the Jewish side of my family, for sure, and to make a difference in the world and to serve. I really credit my Jewish side for all of that encouragement. My grandmother, I remember at the age of six, telling me, “Well you have to write that Meggie.” So she was always interested in my ideas, always, and I’ve tried to do that with my own grandchildren.

SCARPINO: Your grandmother encouraged you to write?

WHEATLEY: She encouraged me to write. She wanted to know what I was thinking. She didn’t treat me as a child. She would really have serious conversations with me from a very young age, and I remember those.