by Heather Plett | Jun 24, 2010 | Uncategorized
My apologies to the beautiful creatures who have been killed, covered in oil, or forced to watch their habitat be destroyed by this massive oil spill.
My apologies for being complicit in a system that is so tolerant of an addiction to oil that we allow oil companies to rape and pillage your habitat.
My apologies for all of the times my own greed, laziness, or assumption of entitlement have contributed to this broken system that forgets that all of creation relies on each other for survival.
My apologies for neglect, for turning a blind eye, for giving in to the ease of consumption.
My apologies for not challenging the system, for allowing it to move in this direction, for valuing “things” over life, for putting my own comfort and ease of living over your well-being.
My apologies for not trusting my own ability to have even a small influence in the radical change that is needed to help this planet be healed from the hurt we have caused.
My apologies and my deepest regret.
May your hurt serve as a beacon for us in this darkness of greed and self-indulgence.
May your suffering not be wasted.
May we reach deep in our hearts and learn from this massive mistake.
May we all find better ways of co-existing on this amazing planet crafted by the Master Artist.
Thank you, beautiful creatures, for teaching us the value of the fragile yet vibrant eco-systems we so often take for granted.
by Heather Plett | Jun 23, 2010 | parenting
When we birth our children, we also birth a protective instinct that bubbles up in us and can nearly consume us in those dark times when our children may be in danger. It’s the Mama (or Papa) Bear gene. Mostly it lays dormant until the tiny seed of a child begins to grow in us.
I remember a time early in my pregnancy with my first daughter. I was about to dart across the street, dodging traffic, when I stopped myself short. I couldn’t budge. The Mama Bear instinct forced me to stand on the sidewalk waiting for a more safe opportunity. It caught me by surprise to realize that I couldn’t do it quite as carelessly as I once did. Suddenly I was responsible for someone other than myself and that felt serious.
As the children get older, it becomes more and more clear that we cannot protect them from everything. They will get hurt, they will fall down and skin their knees, they will be betrayed, they’ll have their hearts broken – and all we can do is offer them a safe place to land. It tears your heart out when you watch it happen. Sometimes, in fact, it feels like the pain is deeper than if you were the one getting hurt or betrayed.
This week, we found out that the soccer coach that was supposed to be coaching our daughter’s team was arrested for child molestation and child porn. He allegedly took advantage of one of the girls on the soccer team – quite possibly someone we know. We are all heart sick about this.
At the beginning of the season, when we went to the meeting to be introduced to the coaches and team members, this particular coach took the parents aside and said “if you’re ever in a pinch and need someone to give your daughter a ride to a game or practice, give me a call and I’d be happy to help out. Especially if you’re a single parent and you just can’t juggle everyone’s schedule – I know what it’s like to go through a divorce. I’m there for you and your daughters.” At the time I remember thinking “he’s either a really nice guy or he’s a little creepy – I’m not really sure which.”
It’s sickening now to think that he was setting us up to trust him with our daughters. He seemed sincere at the time and though I found his offer a little odd, there was nothing that screamed “child molester” about him. (He left the team shortly after that meeting, so that was the only time I encountered him.)
Every day we have to make decisions and help our children make decisions – is this person trustworthy? Is this activity safe? Mostly, I tend to lean toward trust rather than fear. I don’t think it does anyone any good to be forever living in fear of everyone we meet. But there are those times when trust is the wrong choice, and for that girl, who was (allegedly – I have to remember “innocent until proven guilty”) molested when her dad had to leave the soccer field early and she’d gotten rides home from the coach, trust may never feel like an option again.
And even for my daughters, who are very aware of what’s going on, trusting adults in positions of authority has become less of an automatic assumption.
Oh, sometimes I wish the world were a simpler place.
by Heather Plett | Jun 21, 2010 | journey, Leadership
Michael Chender, ALIA
“Bring your vulnerability, your tenderness, your fear. Bring your questions – bring the things that puzzle you. Be prepared to hold ambiguity – to sit with the ‘not-knowing’. Open your heart and your mind to yourself and to the other people in the room.”
That may not be exactly what Michael Chender (one of the founders of ALIA) said in his opening speech, but it’s the way that I remember it. I wrote this in my notebook: “Wow! An opening speaker who welcomes our vulnerability!” His speech has stayed with me ever since.
How often have you sat in any workshop (especially one focused on leadership) and been told that your vulnerability is a valuable place to start? The leadership training I’ve received in the past tends to focus on strengths, confidence, vision – certainly not vulnerability. That’s for weaklings.
I think it was about that time at ALIA when I felt the tears well up in my eyes and they stayed pretty close to the surface for the remainder of the day. In the past, when I’d followed my intuition and used my vulnerability as an asset in my leadership, I had almost always been faced with resistance and blocks and my own fearful gremlins. And almost every time, I’d tucked my courage and convictions away and gone back to putting on my “confident and unshakeable leader” face.
The challenge didn’t stop with Micheal Chender. Later that same day, at the beginning of our “Leader as Shambhala Warrior” workshop, Meg Wheatley’s first question to us was “What breaks your heart?” Really? What breaks my heart? This is the starting place for a journey toward warriorship? Indeed it was! The things that break our heart are the things that drive us forward – that give us purpose, vision, and strength to carry on.
During the week at ALIA, the term “strong back, soft belly” came up often – especially during meditation practice. When you sit in meditation, you are taught to sit with your back straight and strong and your stomach relaxed and vulnerable. This is not just a statement about posture – it’s a statement about how we are encouraged to live. Every day. Our strong backs remind us to have courage and strength in the face of adversity and fear – to hold firmly to our values. To be warriors. Our soft bellies remind us to make ourselves vulnerable to each other – to show compassion and extend understanding and forgiveness to ourselves and others. To open our hearts.
Today was one of those days when my “strong back and soft belly” were put to the test. In more than one situation, I was in the position to extend compassion to people who needed it, and yet at the same time was required to establish boundaries and to maintain an unwavering commitment to protecting and serving as a warrior for other people who were being negatively impacted by the same difficult situations. If I said I was completely successful, I would be lying (I had to fight hard not to let fear and anger play the parts they wanted to play), but I did my best and, with a combination of prayer, meditation, and turning to other people for support, I made it through the storms to the other side.
Sometimes, we choose either strong back OR soft belly and forget that we can hold both at the same time. Sometimes we treat people with too much kindness and forget that they also need us to hold firm to the boundaries in our relationships. Other times, we put up strong walls to protect ourselves or others and forget that compassion is also necessary.
I say this to you… Bring your vulnerabilities. And bring your strength too. It’s what every good warrior (and a true “Sophia leader”) does.
(Yes, in case you’re wondering, I’m thinking that the next step in the journey is taking me toward “Sophia Leadership”.)
by Heather Plett | Jun 17, 2010 | art, beginnings, change, Creativity, fearless, journey, Leadership
I don’t remember the question that we were supposed to discuss at our table group, but I remember where it lead us. One of the women at the table was the newly appointed head of a women’s program at a university. She was wrestling with where she needed to lead the organization after the departure of its founder.
She’d had an a-ha moment that week and had come to realize that what was ironically missing in the program was a truly feminine approach to leadership. It was modeled too closely after traditionally masculine styles and needed to evolve into something new. I think it was during our conversation that she had the even deeper realization that she had, in fact, been hired because her background in engineering made her well skilled at thinking like a man.
What she said touched me in a place so deep I didn’t even know it needed touching. “Yes!” I said. “YES! That is a systemic problem! I see it everywhere! It’s the major flaw of the feminist movement – that it poured so much of its energy into getting us access into men’s role and teaching us to adopt men’s wisdom and leadership styles that it forgot about what it SHOULD have put energy into – raising the value of women’s voices, women’s roles, and women’s wisdom and leadership styles.”
Spilling out beneath my words were so many memories of the times I’d tried to introduce things like “feeling checks” into staff meetings, or clay molding into annual visioning exercises – the many times I’d intuitively felt compelled to introduce a more feminine style of leadership. BUT almost all of those times I’d been met with so much resistance that I’d simply given up and fallen back on old models. Oh, I could write a book about the times when I let the fear hold me back from what had always come so naturally. Too many times I saw those things dismissed as frivolous, or “just a silly girl’s ideas”.
During the course of our conversation, something rather magical happened. I don’t think I realized just how magical it was until it was done. There were markers at our table and a paper tablecloth. As I so often do when I’m sitting in a meeting, I picked up a marker and started to doodle. The man at the table asked “can I add something to your art work?” and I said “oh certainly!” And then, with a gesture, I invited our other two tablemates to join in the fun.
It seemed innocent enough, but it was transformational. Soon, we were all animated and energized in both our conversation and our art-making. Each of us added our unique flare to the tablecloth and each of us built on something the other had done. At one point – though I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it – the man at the table tried to put a square black border around the area where we were making art. Something bubbled up from within me and I resisted, scribbling all over his border as he drew. The other women joined and soon we had spilled over the border into every direction. Defeated, but with a good sense of humour, the man happily added to the “outside the box” art. (To be fair, at another point, I ruined a sun that the man was trying to create by prematurely drawing a line around it.)
By the end of the discussion, we’d filled the whole tablecloth with art, and we’d helped the leader of the woman’s program realize some of the steps she’d need to take when she got home. On top of that, I think each of us at the table had a unique a-ha moment that emerged from both the art and the conversation.
Mine didn’t fully evolve until later. I knew that something significant had happened, but I didn’t at that point know just HOW significant. Some day I think I will look back at that collective doodle art and remember that it represents the moment my life changed.
Because, my dear friends, that moment was the culmination of so much wrestling, so much thinking, so much struggle to find my focus, my truth, my place of belonging. Remember the necklace metaphor – how it wasn’t the struggling that untangled the necklace but the slipping from my hands and dropping to the floor? Well I think that moment was the “dropping to the floor and untangling my truth.”
What am I talking about? I’m talking about THE VERY THING that I’ve been grasping for. For years now I’ve known that my greatest energy comes from sharing wisdom – through facilitating workshops, writing, public speaking, etc. – about the things I’ve learned about creativity and leadership. I’ve known that somewhere in all of that lay the nugget that would lead me into the next phase of my vocation. Only… I couldn’t seem to find the right shaped nugget to fit me. It all seemed too general, too vague – too unfocused. I thought I found a few times, but it never felt quite right.
And now, after a week at ALIA, and especially a remarkable moment of doodling, I have clarity that I’ve never had before. The purpose that is evolving for me is TO TRANSFORM LEADERSHIP THROUGH FEMININE WISDOM! There it is! Bringing more creativity, compassion, art, soul, and holistic truth to leadership. AND helping those people who think their feminine passions and gifts – art, spirituality, motherhood, body wisdom – do not make them qualified for leadership recognize that the world needs them to help in its transformation.
It’s simple and yet it makes so much sense. Look around you – wars, oil spills, climate change, oppression – isn’t it clear that we have a leadership crisis on our hands? Isn’t it clear that the old models aren’t working anymore? It’s time for a new model and I believe that new model includes a much bigger space for feminine wisdom. I’m not saying that all the male leaders need to be replaced by women – I’m simply saying that both men AND women need to learn to trust their feminine wisdom more.
It’s an idea as old as the Bible, and yet as often forgotten and marginalized as so many other truths in the Bible. Sophia. Wisdom. FEMININE wisdom. It’s what Solomon wrote so many sonnets about. It’s the feminine wisdom of God.
THAT is the power I’ve been called to stand in, the wisdom I’ve been called to share. It’s time to get busy sharing it!
How will this evolve? I’m not quite sure, but I am excited. I know this… I am not really “fumbling for words” anymore. This is something new and it will need a new space. Maybe it’s “leading with your paint clothes on” or maybe it’s “sophia leadership” or maybe it’s something else I haven’t thought of, but I’ll be spending the summer thinking about it and hopefully by September something will have emerged.
Hang on for the ride, because it will most definitely be colourful and exciting!
by Heather Plett | Jun 15, 2010 | fearless, journey
We might think that knowing ourselves is a very ego-centered thing, but by beginning to look so clearly and so honestly at ourselves—at our emotions, at our thoughts, at who we really are—we begin to dissolve the walls that separate us from others. Somehow all of these walls, these ways of feeling separate from everything else and everyone else, are made up of opinions. They are made up of dogma; they are made of prejudice. These walls come from our fear of knowing parts of ourselves. – Pema Chodron
A couple of days before leaving for ALIA, I had a “dark night of the soul”. I had just facilitated a full day visioning/strategic planning exercise with my local staff and I walked away feeling completely depleted. I had put together what I thought was a great day of connecting, creating, and visioning, that included a nice mix of body, mind, and soul. We did some body movement stuff, played with clay and scissors and paper, had a great lunch together, and did some good ol’ fashioned brainstorming.
It went relatively well, but some time in the mid afternoon, this enormous sense of failure washed over me. It wasn’t anything specific that happened, or anything anyone said, it was just this really heavy, dark presence in the room – my own gremlins, I suppose – telling me “This isn’t working. You’re losing people. You’re not accomplishing anything with all your creative ideas and gobbledy gook. They want to see RESULTS. GOALS. ACTIONS PLANS. You should have stuck with a neat and tidy strategic plan in square boxes on a spreadsheet.”
That night, I was feeling wounded and depleted, but I didn’t do the wise thing and just spend time in soulcare. I started out that way, and thought I was doing okay, but I wasn’t really listening to the signs well enough. Against my better judgement, I did some reading I shouldn’t have – reading about how to dream big, bust out, and be a firestarter. Oh what foolish timing. It resulted in an all-out panic attack. “I can’t do this. I’m not a leader. I’m a fraud. I don’t have enough focus. My creativity is pointless. My ideas are shitty. I should just stick to the easy stuff where the risk of failure is so much less.”
And then it moved from there to “What the hell am I doing flying halfway across the country to spend a week at an Authentic Leadership institute? I’m not a good leader and I don’t deserve it and I’m wasting my organization’s money and I won’t fit in there and nobody will want to have me as part of their group because I won’t have any wisdom to share. I should give up on this leadership thing, because almost all of the people I lead would happily tell you I suck at leadership and should have become a mechanic instead. Except that I wouldn’t make a good mechanic either, ’cause I’m pretty pathetic at everything I try.” You know where these things go, right? You’ve been there too, right? PLEASE tell me you have… just humour me and play along so I won’t feel so much like a neurotic weakling.
Because I knew she would hold my fear gently, I sent a panicy pain-filled email to my dear friend Christine, and she did exactly what I expected her to do – exactly what I would have done if I’d received the same kind of email. She said, (I paraphrase) “take a deep breath. You KNOW that you are in the right place, doing the right thing and ALIA is EXACTLY where you need to be. And remember… it is no big surprise that you’re going through all kinds of whacked out emotions and fears, given the fact that you are still healing from the river of pain you’ve waded through this Spring.”
And, of course, even before I got her response, I started feeling better. Just putting those fears in writing and trusting them to a friend shrunk them into a manageable size. She was right, and when I took a deep breath, I knew that all was well with the world.
It didn’t take long after arriving at ALIA that I found myself in tears – but this time for a different reason. This time it was because my whole body knew that I was in the right place. Not only that, but all of the things I had been learning, all of the things I’d been writing about, all of the things I had been leading my team through on that visioning session were the RIGHT THINGS. Here I was surrrounded by people who were trying and tripping and dreaming and creating and sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing at the very same things I was trying to do as a leader.
A few days into ALIA, I was in my module on Leader as Shambhala Warrior and we were talking about fear. Meg Wheatley led us through an exercise in which we sat facing another person, and for 5 minutes, one person would ask the other person “what are you afraid of?” When the other person answered, the first person would say “Thank you. What are you afraid of?” In doing this, we dug deeper and deeper into our real fears.
At first, I said the expected things. I was scared of failing, scared of hurting people, scared of not being a good enough mother. But then some surprising things started to come up. “I am afraid that I will never again get the chance to feel the freedom I felt when I jumped out of an airplane.” “Thank you. What are you afraid of?” “I am afraid that I won’t be able to teach people what it feels like to have that kind of freedom.” And then, just before the five minutes was up, “I am afraid of my own power.”
And there it is, the bottom line. I am afraid to be powerful. I am afraid to step into the power that the Creator has available to me. I am afraid to serve goodness and justice and beauty and wisdom in the bold and powerful way that I might be called toward. As Pema Chodron so wisely says, I am afraid of knowing parts of myself. Because then more will be required of me.
“Thank you. What are YOU afraid of?”
