How to End a Conversation

Bidding Farewell to Conversations that Zap our Energy for the New Year

Dec 18, 2024

Striking up a conversation by asking about the weather is a low-stakes way to gain consensus about something most can agree on by just looking out the window. It’s a cloudy, sunny, cold, or rainy day—end of story. The question also invites the other person into a dialogue.

To end a conversation, however, you must do the exact opposite. You need a well-timed conversation-ending segue that signals the following: it’s time to move on or that there will be no immediate resolution to the issue at hand. It can also force a hard pivot to a new way of thinking.

My four favorite segues to end conversations I am not particularly thrilled to be having include: It is what it is, only time will tell, if you like it, I love it, or, in the parlance of Super Gooper Gwyneth Paltrow, I wish you well. Each tells the other person, “I’m done,” and there will be no more conversation on that subject, at least not now.

Since November, it has felt like we have been in dire need of a conversation-ending segue—something that says we will not be rehashing the election results or parsing out what went wrong. Something that says we are turning the page, starting a new chapter, and accepting things as they are rather than as we hoped for them to be.

Here are a few conversations I would like to leave in 2024 and the others I’d like to bring into the new year.

Conversations to leave behind in 2024

Was Kamala Harris the right candidate to defeat Donald Trump?

Much ink and airtime have been dedicated to this question. Since we’ll never know the answer, it feels like Monday morning quarterbacking, thinking about everything we could have done differently to win the big game.

However, what I do know is that before Kamala Harris replaced Biden at the top of the ticket, Democratic voters felt hopeless and directionless. Before her loss in November, pundits praised her flawless and well-executed campaign. They were not wrong to do so. I’d also like to add that Harris stepped in to save a race everyone believed was already lost and to clean up a mess not of her making.

She also had to overcome doubters and haters, assemble a high-powered team, develop a national policy platform, knock on doors, crisscross states, navigate a toxic media environment, AND perform the job she already had as Vice President of the country.

As history and tradition dictates, the current Vice President is next up when it comes to running for President. Had there been an open primary or Kamala Harris skipped over for someone deemed more “electable,” read: white man, the democratic party would have roiled one of its most loyal bases, Black women. I, for one, would not have fallen in line. It would have cost them votes and some of their most faithful foot soldiers. The party understood this as well.

So, let’s do ourselves a favor and leave this conversation behind. It’s not worthwhile and reeks of sexism and racism.

What’s up with White Women? Why did so many of them vote for Trump?

About half of white women voters voted for Trump, and the rest did not—roughly the same as in 2016. And slightly more than 8 in 10 Trump voters in this election were white, roughly in line with 2020. White men’s and women’s voting patterns are not new news. They are consistent.

The real news would have been if white women had broken with history and tradition and voted like Black women this election cycle, but they didn’t.

In the first few months following Trump's victory in 2016, there were conversations, head-scratching, and finger-pointing about white women, but they yielded little insight or strategy. We also never invested real time and resources in determining why white women voted the way they did and whether their minds could be changed. In the 2024 election cycle, white women attempted to mobilize, but it was too late in the game to make a significant impact.

Nonetheless, in the new year, I’d like to focus on the white women who supported Kamala Harris and build on that support. We might not ever get to 94 percent support for white women of a Democratic or woman candidate, but we can begin to chip away at the gap.

Should I leave the Country?

If you were already planning on leaving the country, by all means, exit. If the election results and the potential consequences of having elected an aspiring despot have you packing your bags—stay put.

Friends talk of selling homes, obtaining golden visas, and parachuting to paradise. Again, please don’t go. We need the sane, rational, and joyful people here. If you flee, who will help us resist, rebuild, or stand up for democracy?

Ellen Degeneres and Portia De Rossi left the U.S. for the English countryside almost immediately following the election, only to have their multi-dollar compound flooded shortly after moving in. The lesson: there are mishaps and trouble everywhere–let’s not give up so easily on ourselves and the just future we know will surely come.

Are we on the brink of a gender war?

Honestly, this is one of the most annoying conversations in the ether. Chatter about an emerging 4B movement in the U.S. is a close second. These conversations are both distractions and red herrings to keep us from strategizing and generating big ideas that will move us forward.

As I posted previously, we are not in the beginning stages of a gender war or battle of the sexes.

Women are not fighting with men or engaged in some battle of the sexes. We’re too busy raising kids, caretaking for our elderly parents, making ends meet on less than .84 cents on the dollar, being gaslit at work, fighting off harassment online, trying to save democracy, and everything else in between. We’re tired.

For several years, we have been experiencing an intense and sustained backlash against women’s progress, gains in the workforce and society, independence, and claims to power.

Focusing on faux gender wars misdiagnoses the problem. It obscures the real threats to women’s well-being, such as gender-based violence, pay inequity, racism, sexual harassment, and the lack of bodily autonomy, among other things.

Conversations I’d like to bring into the New Year.

How can we build women’s power and influence?

As you may know, I am obsessed with building women’s power and influence. It’s my jam. I believe the drive for gender equality is, at its core, about power: shifting power, taking power away or from, or redistributing power. Women need social, political, and cultural power in spades to win big on the policies we care about.

In the new year, I want to have more conversations about power–how to get more of it and leverage the power we already have. As writer Alice Walker says, the most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.

How can we leverage and build on what worked this election cycle?

Since the election, our heads have been hanging low. It’s time to lift them and focus on what we did well. Although Harris fell short, she received more than 77 million votes. Despite her late entry into the race, it was competitive. Millions wanted to see a Black woman elected President of the United States. Given our racist and sexist history, this is quite a feat.

We brought joy back into the chat. There’s been so much toxicity, division, and hate-mongering that we lost sight of what all this social change work is for—we want people to feel free, liberated, and joyful in their lives and communities.

The next generation of young women is engaged and voting. We must build on their enthusiasm, find meaningful ways to connect with them and provide them with opportunities to lead.

Black women turned up and showed out this election cycle. However, not enough credit has been given to the strategy and the effort required to keep together a voting Bloc whose support for the Democratic candidate has never dipped below 90 percent. Let’s talk to those strategists and leaders about how they did it so we can apply the strategy more broadly.

What can women in the U.S. learn from the experiences of women in other countries?

Women in the U.S. are not the only ones going through it. Globally, from the Congo to Sudan to Chile and Honduras, women and girls are living under challenging social, cultural, and political conditions. Let’s work to understand the connections better and learn from the resistance and wins in other countries.

Let’s also find out how the countries with model family care policies (Sweden, Finland, and Denmark) or have elected a woman leader to the highest office of the land did it.

What’s my role? What can I do differently? How can I show up differently?

These are all good questions to ask at the start of a new year as you make personal and professional resolutions. To consider your role in social change, peruse Deepa Iyer’s The Social Change Ecosystem. To figure out how to be more present and show up for the communities you love and support, ask colleagues, friends, and people you trust how to do so.

Katherine Goldstein, author of The Double Shift, is writing a new book about community building. It is about building bridges, examining what’s around you, and understanding how you can support where you’re planted. Read it when it’s released.

Do you have any good conversations you want to have in the new year? Please share them with me and the other P10 readers.