by Heather Plett | Oct 5, 2010 | Uncategorized
Here’s the thing… Sophia won’t leave me alone.
She’s like a kid who won’t stop begging and pleading and stomping her foot until she gets a big red lollipop. But she’s not just an annoying neighbourhood kid who goes home at the end of the day – OH NO – that would be too easy. SHE HAS MOVED IN AND IS TAKING OVER MY LIFE! She doesn’t just want lollipops, she wants everything I’ve got to give!
No, I haven’t mysteriously given birth to a fourth daughter named Sophia, and yet it sure FEELS like this is something that is being birthed in me.
A few months ago, I shared an epiphany about how I felt called into a new space, a new vocation… something I tentatively called “Sophia Leadership”. It was based on a pretty strong sense that what the world desperately needs right now is a whole lot of people (women and men) who will step forward in courage and trust their feminine, spiritual wisdom. I believe that this wisdom can shift the course of leadership and help the world move in a direction toward light and hope instead of darkness and despair.
I believe all of these things, but… a whole lot of doubt and fear keeps drawing me away from that beautiful epiphany. Even though I finally took a BIG step and moved away from my full time job with the intention of more fully committing myself to writing, teaching, and consulting, there was still a huge piece of me that thought “I have to be practical. I have to pay the bills. I don’t have enough skills for this work yet. I won’t find work in Sophia Leadership – at least not right away – so I have to market my other skills in communications, public relations, blah, blah, blah.”
But here’s where things get interesting… You see, every time I let myself follow fear into that tunnel called “practicality and paying the bills”, Sophia finds me and lures me back.
First, there was the horse.
The day after I’d told my boss I was quitting my job (in July), I went on my annual pilgrimage to the Folk Festival. As I often do at some point when the crowds have begun to overwhelm me and I need some quiet, meditative time, I wandered to the edge of the fenced-in area where there’s a labyrinth, some outdoor art, and very few people. As I wandered, I wrestled with just what I was going to birth once I’d walked away from my job. The argument was there in full force… “I’m pretty sure I’m being called to do this Sophia work.” “But that would be foolish! Nobody will get it and you won’t make any money and your family will hate you and… blah, blah, blah.”
Standing by the fence, I watched two horses and riders approach. It was a mother and daughter out for an evening ride. They stopped near me, and we began a conversation. I grew up with horses and have always felt a strong pull toward them. This moment was no exception.
“What are the horses’ names?” I asked. Well… you’ve probably figured out by now… the bigger of the two, the most magnificent horse I’ve seen in a long time, was named Sophia.
“Why did you call her Sophia?” I asked the woman, trying not to let on that this was hugely significant for me. I saw the woman’s eyes light up. “Well, I named her that because I’ve been reading about how Sophia means wisdom and how there were knights in King Arthur’s court who used to worship the goddess Sophia.”
As if that wasn’t enough, the next thing she said sealed the deal. “It’s a good thing my husband isn’t around,” she said with a blush and a sideways glance over her shoulder as if she expected him to vapourize out of thin air. “He hates it when I talk about this stuff and doesn’t want me to talk about it in front of other people. He thinks this goddess stuff and feminine wisdom is a bunch of horse shit.”
And then it came to me, like a lightening bolt… “It is for women like this – women who have been taught not to trust their feminine wisdom – that you are being called into Sophia Leadership.” Gulp.
I wish I could tell you that was the end of the internal arguments, but that would be a lie. Apparently I’m a slow learner, because even after that encounter, I spent the rest of the summer wrestling with what to call my business, whether to be a generalist or a specialist, what kinds of contracts I should look for, etc., etc.
The truth is, I need to pay the bills, and that keeps weighing heavily on my shoulders. I created a generic website. I started accepting contracts that I knew I could do quite easily, but that weren’t really on the path Sophia was leading me down. But then, once again, it seemed Sophia had different ideas.
I was supposed to be working this week, but the contract got taken away. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I breathed a sigh of relief, and began to focus on taking October as my sabbatical/thinking/learning/growing month before jumping into any kind of work.
Which leads me to yesterday, my first day of self-employment. I decided it was time for my annual pilgrimage to my dad’s grave in the town where I grew up (two hours from where I live now). I enjoyed a lovely drive out into the prairies, wandered around the almost-ghost-town where I once lived, spent a little time talking to my dad, and then headed to Neepawa, the nearby town where I’d gone to high school, to find a place to eat lunch.
For reasons I can’t explain, I felt an inexplicable desire to visit the Stone Angel (a monument in the cemetery that was made famous when Margaret Lawrence named a novel after it). I’ve never been a huge Lawrence fan, so the Stone Angel never held much significance to me. I don’t think I’ve visited since high school. But this time the thought wouldn’t leave me alone. I had to visit.
I drove into the cemetery, and before I even realized that I’d reached the monument, my eyes fell to the base of it. Guess what name was there? Sophia. She was the wife of the founding father of Neepawa in whose honour the monument was erected.
I stopped my vehicle, stood in front of the monument, and started to cry. There was Sophia, in beautiful weathered stone, looking down at me and nudging me once again.
As a bit of a postscript to all this serendipity… today, things got even more freaky.
I got a note from my friend Desiree telling me someone she knew online thought she should connect with me because we have a lot in common. She chuckled when she told her we already knew each other. Then I got a note from my friend Lianne, inviting me to join a blog party. One of the other women she had invited turned out to be the same woman who’d told Desiree she should meet me. She said she’d never heard of me before, but had been inexplicably drawn to my blog today (through a link on Jamie’s blog) and then found out both Desiree and Lianne are connected to me.
Her name? Tara SOPHIA Mohr! One of her deepest passions? Convincing women that they should be trusting their wisdom and changing the world. Oh my! Goosebumps!!
For some reason that I don’t fully understand, Sophia chose me for this work and she is NOTHING if not persistent.
I GET IT Sophia! Here’s that big red lollipop, and here’s ME!
So… guess what I’ll be doing for the rest of the month? Hanging out with Sophia and letting her guide me down this path.
by Heather Plett | Oct 4, 2010 | Uncategorized
In her increasingly shaky hand, my grandmother used to paint it on cushions and wall hangings with her beloved liquid embroidery. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”
Of course it is, Grandma, I used to think, but why is such an obvious statement worth painting on a cushion?
Now that I’m over 40, I get it. Today is a beginning. Every day is a beginning. A new chance to get it right, to learn from your mistakes, to show grace, to share beauty.
And this day, for me, marks an even more significant “first day” because it’s the beginning of a long held dream. I am self-employed. I answer to nobody but myself. I get to make myself up as I go along.
I’m practising saying these words. “I am a writer.” “I am a teacher.” “I am a leadership consultant.” “I am a communications consultant.” “I am an entrepreneur.”
I’m not sure yet which will be my favourite elevator pitch. For today, I’ve decided that I don’t have to know for certain. I get to practice for awhile and see what fits.
In a rather fortuitous turn of events, the first contract that fell into my lap was just as quickly taken out of my lap, and I couldn’t be happier. It would have required of me that I jump into work right away this week and not have time to catch my breath. Plus it was old work that I’ve already done, so it would have been mostly about making money and not about the new path I want to forge. So I breathed a sigh of relief and let it go.
Because it has always been my intention to turn the month of October into a sabbatical. I need rest and replenishment. I need time to be in the “neutral space”. I need to be able to wander and think and learn and explore without feeling the pressure to be doing something more productive.
At the same time, though, I don’t want to wake up a couple of weeks from now and realize I’ve wasted all of my time on the internet, so I’m setting some intentions for every day. For today, I started by getting up with the sun and going for a 7 kilometre (4 mile) run. And now I’m going on a pilgrimage to some special places in search of some of the wisdom I often find there. I’ll tell you more about those places when I have returned.
On my way…
by Heather Plett | Oct 1, 2010 | Uncategorized
Today is my last day of work as the Director, Resources & Public Engagement at Canadian Foodgrains Bank. Time to let go of that title, recycle the business cards, and start a new journey.
It’s a full day, with all the packing and wrapping up and saying good-bye. I don’t have a lot of time to process my thoughts or write about them right now, but that will come next week when I’m sitting on my couch, sipping my tea, and letting the transition fully take shape.
For now, I’ll share with you a short piece I wrote as a farewell for our donor newsletter, complete with a picture of me touring a grain elevator in Alberta where generous Canadians had donated grain for the cause of ending hunger. I can hardly tell you how often I was moved by the incredible commitment and generosity of so many. I have definitely been changed by this experience.
As I write this, I am in my last week of employment at Canadian Foodgrains Bank. It is with mixed emotions that I make my departure. The six years I’ve spent here have been truly incredible. I’ve learned so much and met so many fascinating people across Canada and around the world. Though I feel a calling into something new, I leave with some sadness that I will no longer be a part of such an incredible organization.
I will carry with me many incredible memories of the times I have spent with you, the faithful supporters and friends of Canadian Foodgrains Bank. I remember bidding for homemade cottage cheese at the annual auction at Osler, Saskatchewan; gathering pumpkins in the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia; participating in a cattle auction in Abbotsford, B.C.; working at the booth at the annual farm show in Red Deer, Alberta; sitting at the world’s largest picnic table at the annual plowing match in Ontario; attending a growing project harvest in Landmark, Manitoba; speaking to a church group in Charlottetown, PEI where they sell Christmas cards as a fundraiser every year; attending an art show in St. John, New Brunswick; and speaking to educators in Montreal, Quebec. How blessed I have been to be part of all of these incredible experiences!
On my first trip to Africa, I slept in a tent on a farm in Kenya near a herd of goats. The farm was owned by the local church, and so it puzzled us where the goats came from. We were told by the pastor that the goats were the tithes of the parishioners. Many of them couldn’t afford to give money, so they gave of their herds. That story has stuck with me ever since as it reflects what I have seen many of you do as well. You might not be able to write large cheques in support of the work of ending hunger, but you give of your time, your energy, your fields, your grain, your handiwork, your food, your commitment, and your passion.
May you be blessed for the way that you have blessed so many others! Farewell and God be with you.
by Heather Plett | Sep 29, 2010 | Uncategorized
Earlier this week, as I entered my last week in this job, I was hit by a giant tsunami wave of my own failure.
In a series of meetings, I was reminded again and again of all of the things I wanted to accomplish, back in the early days when I was fresh and enthusiastic and just a tad idealistic in this job. New staff kept bringing up the things we should be doing around here, and almost every time they did, I had a flashback reminding me of when I was saying exactly those same things – back when I believed I could change the world. And now, six years later, I’m walking away with the realization that many of those things never happened.
Walking out of those meetings, I felt beaten down and discouraged. My gremlins had a hey-day with this information, dancing a jig and chanting “your team is just as dysfunctional as it always was and you were SO sure you could change the dynamic and conquer the world. And that social marketing plan that you sold to the board and got all that funding for? Yeah, it fell flat on its face when your relationship with that consulting company fell apart. You’re walking away with egg on your face on that one. Oh… and what about that media tour that never happened?”
And then those ugly gremlins got even more nasty… “You suck. Big time. Six years you spent in this job, and just what have you got to show for it? A bunch of good intentions and only minimal successes. You’re going to fail in this consulting business you want to start. And then you’ll go broke and your kids will hate you. Big ol’ loser.”
Blech. What a ball of crap I felt like for the next few hours.
But then the words of Palker Palmer came back to me. “…as pilgrims must discover if they are to complete their quest, we are led to truth by our weaknesses as well as our strengths.”
With those words ringing in my ear, I looked those gremlins right in the eye and said “Hold it right there. Stop your partying. You’re only telling half of the truth and you know it.”
And then I turned to the list of failures and disappointments and said “Okay failure, what have you got to teach me today?”
With the gremlins slinking away into the corner, failure gently sat me down and said “Remember – I’m here as a companion to success. I do not come alone – we work hand in hand as your teachers. Just as you have been going over the list of things you have accomplished in this job, you must also review the list of the ways you’ve failed. It’s the only way you’ll step into the next part of your journey with greater strength and self-awareness.”
One by one, I looked over the list for the things I needed to learn. Some of the things that showed up were:
- I cannot change the world single-handedly. It’s like pushing a bus up a hill alone.
- I was not always true to my own leadership abilities, trying instead to wiggle into a mold that didn’t fit.
- Sixteen people is too many people to lead single-handedly – at least for me. I don’t want to do that again. I want meaningful relationships.
- I don’t think I ever want to lead remote staff again. It’s hard, especially when there are conflicts.
- I am better at leadership, idea-generation, visioning, etc. than I am at human resource management. I get bogged down with details and meaningless conflict.
- I need to trust my instincts more. I knew there were problems in the social marketing plan, and yet I forged ahead and ignored my gut on that one.
- If people don’t want to be led, not even I can change their minds.
- I am not good at maintaining routine. When things start to feel like the same ol’, same ol’ year in and year out, I lose my energy quickly.
- When I had to step away from the creative work I loved and into more of an administrative role, I lost some of my enthusiasm. More creativity, less administration.
Truthfully, I could come up with an even longer list of the things I learned from the success I had in this job, but that list is for another post. Right now I’m learning from failure’s wisdom, and once I took the self-judgement out of the equation, it was a good and healthy learning.
There are elements of this job I no longer want to do. More importantly, there are things that I really shouldn’t do if I am to be true to myself. Another Parker Palmer quote helps me see the wisdom in this clarity.
One sign that I am violating my own nature in the name of nobility is a condition called burnout. Though usually regarded as the result of trying to give too much, burnout in my experience results from trying to give what I do not possess – the ultimate in giving too little! Burnout is a state of emptiness, to be sure, but it does not result from giving all I have: it merely reveals the nothingness from which I was trying to give in the first place.
Note: I welcome your comments, but would prefer not to get a bunch of comments trying to convince me of my successes in this job. I am pretty confident of those things. This post is more about the OTHER things I had to learn than it is about me saying “poor me – somebody please stroke my back and remind me how wonderful I am”. Does that make sense?
by Heather Plett | Sep 27, 2010 | change
My father-in-law, teaching Julie how to use his homemade seeding contraption
There’s a little ball of stress knotted up in my stomache this morning. It doesn’t feel huge or insurmountable, but it’s big enough that a vigorous bike ride on a glorious fall morning didn’t manage to untie it.
It’s not hard to find sources of stress in my life. This is my last week of work in this employment. Tomorrow is my father-in-law’s funeral. And today would be my son Matthew’s tenth birthday, had he lived past birth. It’s a big, messy week.
On top of that, I’m stressing out about a few tasks that need to be completed soon but are feeling a little insurmountable right now. A new website that I was hoping to launch before leaving work, a curriculum for the course I’ll be teaching in November, a couple of reports that my boss wants me to complete before I leave, transition planning for my staff, cleaning out my office – the list feels a little endless.
Unfortunately, overwhelm tends to come hand-in-hand with inertia, so I’m stuck in a place where all I want to do is wander around cyber space, or sit by a river somewhere watching the geese fly south.
September seems to be a month of transitions in our family. Deaths, job changes, going back to school, moving – almost every year something new shows up in September. This year we got an extra dose.
Part of me just wants to be selfish and go off on my own somewhere for a time of “dream-shifting” or “vision-questing”, but life needs to carry on. There are family members who need to be supported through this loss, children who need to be fed, bills that need to be paid, etc., etc.
I am struck by what William Bridges says about transitions. He talks about how, in other times and places, people in transition went out into an unfamiliar stretch of forest or desert where they would reman for a time, removed from the old connections. He calls it “The Neutral Zone” and says that one of the difficulties of being in transition in the modern world is that we have lost our appreciation for the gap in the continuity of existence.
What he says resonates for me this month. We don’t really know how to transition gently. We rush into big changes and expect our hearts and bodies to keep up. As Bridges says, we treat transitions as a “street-crossing”, just trying to rush to the other side of the street to avoid getting hit by a car.
I’m not sure where I’ll find the space for a decent transition (I’ve accepted contracts that mean I’ll have to jump into new work right away), but I am at least aware that I need it and will make a point of finding it. Perhaps it will be in October when I go away for a few days to a retreat/workshop with a woman I’ve dreamed of studying with for a long time. Until then, I carry on and try to take deep breaths and go for bike rides when I can..
