JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Every week, a guest draws a card from NPR's Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. Melinda French Gates has been through a lot of change in the past few years. She divorced her husband, Microsoft founder Bill Gates. She left the foundation they formed together. And she's focused her work on her own organization, Pivotal Ventures, which champion social progress for women. And she wrote about all of these changes in her memoir, "The Next Day: Transitions, Change, And Moving Forward." Wild Card host Rachel Martin talked with French Gates about her ex-husband showing up in the latest Epstein files, which we have shared elsewhere on our air. But she also talked about moving on from her divorce and building a new life.
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RACHEL MARTIN: What has age taught you about love?
MELINDA FRENCH GATES: Oh (laughter). Oh, gosh. It can extend time. You know, it can go over - what, I mean, is a span of years, right? I have people...
MARTIN: Yeah.
FRENCH GATES: ...Now who I've loved for so long. My parents - I was just with my parents in Southern California. They're 87 and 85, right?
MARTIN: Oh, my gosh.
FRENCH GATES: I love them. They're very healthy. And, you know, I have adult children who I've loved over a long period. I have new granddaughters who are 1 and 3, and I love them. And they're, like, these new little people. And so - and I think of friendships. You know, I have friendships still - my best friend from high school, from the first day of high school, is still one of my closest friends. So I've learned it can absolutely expand across time, across place. I've learned that love is - can be very, very mature, too, if you know yourself...
MARTIN: Yeah.
FRENCH GATES: ...Deeply and your partner knows themselves deeply, and you can admit your faults and be willing to let the other person hold up the mirror as a reflection to you, right? And I've learned that love absolutely takes trust...
MARTIN: Yeah.
FRENCH GATES: ...Absolute trust. And if you have that deep trust, both partners can grow individually and together. And then also trust leads to intimacy. And so, you know, I don't believe there's anything called perfect love. I believe that we all make mistakes, and it's important to, you know, have - say if you've made a mistake and then be held accountable. I said something to my youngest daughter this weekend - we were talking on the phone - that afterwards, I just kind of regretted. It was actually more of a sort of a suggestion, but it wasn't my lane. So to go back to her and say, you know, I regret even saying that. That's up to you whatever you decide to do.
MARTIN: Yeah.
FRENCH GATES: You know? So yeah.
MARTIN: Did it take you more than a minute to learn to trust again? - because that had been broken in your marriage.
FRENCH GATES: Of course. Of course. I thought it might never happen again for me. And that was OK, too. Like, I trusted myself, though (laughter). And if you trust yourself and you love yourself - I have lots of friends - male, female, kids. You know, I thought I was going to live my life possibly by myself but with all those amazing people in my life. So I didn't know if I would ever trust again, right? But I have learned that, that with the right person, you can. And it's baby steps at first, and you build on that, and you see it, and you test it, and then you can find it.
MARTIN: Yeah.
FRENCH GATES: Right? There are lots of good people in the world. I have been so lucky with so many amazing people in my life.
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SUMMERS: You can watch a much longer Wild Card conversation with Melinda French Gates, including her response to Bill Gates showing up in the Epstein files. Just search on YouTube for @nprwildcard. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
