Gloria Steinem Instagram – When Julie Taymor called to say she would like to option my book, “My Life on the Road,” I just said yes, you can do anything you want. I think she is the great filmmaker of our time, the rare person about whom I hear myself saying the word genius. Have you seen “Across the Universe” or “Frida”? I rest my case. However, I didn’t have a clue how she could make a movie out of a book that covers at least eight decades and two continents. It is as intimate as my story of having an abortion, and as public as two Marches on Washington a half century apart. I didn’t know – but I just had faith. She has done this by emotional connections and genius visuals. My favorite is a Greyhound Bus through time. Different people – and different ages of the same person, me included – sit next to each other and talk to each other. They also see different places, faces and highways out of the window. I have faith in this movie because sharing our stories is the most ancient and true way of learning – we haven’t been sitting around campfires for millennia for nothing – and I hope this will entice you into sharing yours in this Talking Circle. Even the Internet is a giant campfire. At its best, it is teaching us that we are all passengers on Space Ship Earth. COVID19 is making us feel an intimacy out of shared suffering, and we are learning that Earth is our shared Mother — as Alice Walker says, “Her blue body, everything we know.” There’s another reason I’m glad that this movie is out there, due to the creative financial forces behind it, any money it makes will support girls and women around the world. #TheGloriasMovie – available for purchase and included with Prime video on September 30.