Last week was tough. It was one of those weeks when it felt like every story that was shared with me was a tough one.
To start with, we’re afraid my Mom’s cancer may have come back. Nothing is confirmed, but she’s not been well and the symptoms seem to point back to cancer.
Then, at the beginning of the week, my friend Wes died… and then came back to life. He collapsed and his heart wasn’t beating on its own for over half an hour. Thanks to a quick response from his wife (who gave him CPR for 5 minutes) and a lot of hard work from the EMTs who arrived in the ambulance, he was brought back to us. After a few stressful days in a coma, he’s on the road to recovery.
That story turned back toward hope, but other stories I’m surrounded with are still firmly rooted in pain. Like the friend whose mom is in a psychiatric ward because of severe depression. And some other people very dear to me who are grappling with some of the challenges of parenting teens.
I’ll admit that I had some moments of meltdown in the middle of the week, when I just couldn’t focus on my teaching work because life felt so fleeting and hard.
Mostly, though, I felt grounded and supported. In the middle of the pain, there were some beautiful stories of hope, community, and transformation.
I’ve been through a lot of hard weeks in my life. We all have. One of the things we all know is that sometimes life is a struggle.
After being a student of struggle for a lot of years, here’s what I’ve learned about surviving the hard weeks.
1. Be soft. Let your vulnerabilities show. Find a friend who will honour your tears. Don’t try to be a hero by hiding your hurt. When I was hurting the most, my friend Diane sent me the following quote from Mark Nepo. “One of the most painful barriers we can experience is the sense of isolation that the modern world fosters, which can only be broken by our willingness to be held, by the quiet courage to allow our vulnerabilities to be seen. For as water fills a hole and as light fills the dark, kindness wraps around what is soft, if what is soft can be seen. So admitting what we need , asking for help, letting our softness show— these are prayers without words that friends, strangers, wind and time all wrap themselves around. Allowing ourselves to be held is like returning to the womb.”
2. Be quiet. Find time in the middle of the struggle to sit quietly with yourself and your God. Meditate, pray, go for walks, or just sit and stare at a tree. You are NEVER so busy that you can afford to live without some quiet contemplative time.
3. Show up. When friends are hurting, show up. You don’t have to have the right words, or know just the right thing to do to help them, just show up. You’ll both feel better after some time together. This week was all about showing up for people – walking along the river with a friend, sitting in the hospital waiting room with other friends, playing dominoes with my mom, and having breakfast with a family member. I’m not one of these people who knows just what meals to cook or which groceries to drop off in times of need (I usually serve as delivery person for my husband’s famous pot of chilli when friends are in need of food), but I’m pretty good at listening and just being present. I can tell you from the many times that friends have shown up for me that every person who shows up is valued.
4. Find community and BE community. A remarkable thing happened when Wes’ heart stopped – a powerful community came together to pray for him, to support the family, and to just be present. I looked around the packed waiting room at the intensive care unit and realized that every person in the room was there because they love Wes. I can’t say enough about how valuable it is to be part of community. We need each other! We are not meant to live through our pain alone. We are meant to fill waiting rooms with the people who love us.
5. Be broken. It’s okay – you don’t have to be strong all the time. You can find your strength in other people and in your faith. That doesn’t mean that you’re a weak person. It means that you are a LUCKY person to have the people who’ll surround you and help you walk through the tough spots.
6. Share stories. The world is healed through shared stories. Stories connect us to each other and build bridges across the divides. When we invest in each other’s stories, we invest in each other’s lives. Hearing someone else’s story let’s me know that I am not alone. Sharing a story offers healing for both the listener and the storyteller.
7. Be kind to yourself. Cut yourself some slack if the laundry doesn’t get folded on you’ve ordered take-out for the third night in a row. Go ahead – take a hot bath instead of doing the dishes. If that’s what it takes to get you through, you have to give yourself permission to let go of the expectations you normally place on yourself.
If we change the definition of wealth to the number of great conversations we’ve had, then my annual income is well above average.
In the last week alone, I have corresponded with interesting people in the Philippines, Turkey, western USA, Sweden, Vancouver Island, and many places in between. Almost every day, I have a heart-opening Skype call or two with people in different time zones from me. I am indeed a rich woman.
This morning I was looking through my past writing, and I came across this piece that I wrote last year as a guest post for my friend Sherri Garrity. It reminded me once again of the importance of connecting with our “joy people”. (As a side note, Sherri is one of my joy people, and we’re cooking up something interesting together that may or may not include mandalas and horses.)
Networking, or Connecting with your Joy People?
“I hate networking. It gives me hives.”
That’s what I would have told you at the beginning of this self-employment journey. It was one of the things I dreaded most about self-employment. I got so stressed out about it that it almost kept me from making the leap from my job into my business.
My friend Desiree laughed. “What do you mean you hate networking? You met me on Twitter, didn’t you? What do you think you were doing when you started chatting with me?”
“But that’s different,” I said. “That was just about making friends with someone I felt drawn to. That didn’t have any of the ickiness of networking because I wasn’t trying to get you to hire me or buy something from me.”
“It’s time for a little re-framing,” she said. (Desiree’s a straight-shooter – it’s what I like about her.) “Change your definition of networking. Instead of thinking about networking, start thinking about how you can attract your joy people.”
Joy people? I was skeptical. How would attracting joy people help me build my business? It sounded like a nice way to make friends (seeking out people who add to the joy in my life), but what did that have to do with business?
Setting Desiree’s advice aside, I went to a few of those business club meet-and-greets, where your primary goal is to get your business card into the hands of as many people as possible. They weren’t horrible (a lot of people are genuinely nice, quite frankly), but I walked away wondering what was the point of handing my business card to a bunch of plumbers, construction contractors, printers, and mortgage brokers. I was trying to build a business as a writer, retreat facilitator, and communicator – none of the people around the table were looking for the kind of services I was offering.
I kept going though, because I thought that’s the way you’re “supposed” to network when you’re starting a business.
And then one day, at one of those luncheons, when people were going around the table handing out business cards and stroking each other’s backs for bringing them business, I thought “these are not my joy people.” It’s not that they weren’t good people (and probably someone else’s joy people), they just weren’t MY joy people.
It took me awhile, but I finally took Desiree’s advice. No, let me rephrase that… I finally realized that the stuff I was doing all along, making friends with people online and in person who felt like MY people, with similar interests and passions as me, wasn’t just a sideline to building my business it WAS building my business.
It all started with an e-book. I had this bright idea that I would gather wisdom from a bunch of people I admired (my joy people) and I would compile it into an e-book. This wasn’t a money-making venture, but rather it was a way to attract people to my blog and get them to sign up for my newsletter. In the end, 21 wise and wonderful people contributed to the e-book, and the thing I hadn’t fully anticipated was that these people would all take pride in the book themselves, and they’d tell all of THEIR joy people and suddenly the word would spread much further than I could spread it myself.
In less than two weeks, more than 500 people had signed up for my newsletter and downloaded the e-book. I suddenly had 500 people on an email list that hadn’t even existed before. That was 500 people who were interested in what I was putting out into the world – a whole lot more than I’d ever meet at business club meet and greets.
Then I had another bright idea. I’d attended ALIA (Authentic Leadership in Action) the year before (when I was employed and someone else was fitting the bill) and it was the kind of place that attracted a whole lot of my joy people. These are big-thinking, world-changing people who believe in social justice, beauty, art, music, dance, community, creativity, and leadership – all things I’m passionate about. I dreamed of going again this year, but knew I couldn’t afford it, what with giving up a steady salary and training budget and building a new business.
I put on my best creative, entrepreneurial thinking cap and came up with an idea. I emailed the executive director and suggested a trade – I would offer them my communications and social media expertise to help promote ALIA if they would cover the cost of my registration.
Not only did they like my idea, but they came up with something even better than I could have imagined. They wanted me to interview faculty members about their ideas for ALIA’s theme, “Change for Good”. In other words, I got to speak with some of the most creative thinkers in the world (these are top notch people, most of whom have several published books and have consulted all over the world) in advance of the conference!
Talk about attracting my joy people! These were the kind of joy people I’d only DREAMED of connecting with when I’d started imagining this new business. These were the kind of people who made any attempts at networking at a local business club seem pointless and a waste of my energy.
Suddenly “joy people” was starting to make sense. I was building my business and my contacts in a way that brought me great joy and connected me with people who were part of that joy.
Yesterday was a powerful day. One of those days that leaves you vibrating with energy when it’s all over.
In the morning, I was a guest in a design class in the School of Art at the University of Manitoba. My friend ‘Segun teaches design there. He’d asked me to share the manuscript for my memoir with his students, so that they could design it as one of their assignments. My visit to the classroom was for the purpose of giving them feedback on their designs, so that they have some experience in working with a client in the design process.
I expected to see design concepts on a screen. I wasn’t expecting to hold copies of MY BOOK in my hands. Wow! What an amazing feeling that was! And these weren’t ordinary designs – they were all beautiful! The students are in their third year of art school, so their talent is exceptional. Suddenly my long time dream of becoming a published author began to feel like a very real possibility.
The book (at this point, at least) is called Butterfly at the Grave. Here are some of the possibilities of what it might look like.
What felt especially powerful about the morning was the way that these students had so tenderly treated my words and ideas, honouring them with art, photography, and beautiful treatment of text. Each one of them explained the way they’d interpreted my words and translated them into art, demonstrating a real sensitivity in their approaches.
In return, I held their creations tenderly in my hands, gave them gentle (and hopefully helpful) feedback, and encouraged them in their pursuit of art.
The afternoon was similar in some ways, and yet very different. As a board member of UNPAC (a feminist organization that works to empower and advocate for women), I’d been asked to serve as a mentor for our Changemakers program. In this program, women are mentored to become leaders in their communities. The target audience is largely marginalized women who live in the inner-city.
I sat with three of the women for most of the afternoon. Throughout the course of the program, they have to work on developing some personal project that they are passionate about – either some business idea that they want to grow, or a community leadership role they want to take initiative on. I served as their advisor, giving them feedback on their ideas and helping them bring more clarity and focus to their plans.
I listened deeply, trying to give each woman the tender and honest respect and encouragement that they need. I would like nothing more than to see these women succeed in their plans.
After our smaller advisory circles, we all joined in a closing circle to offer our final thoughts for the day. There are few things I like more than sitting in a circle of women – especially when those women are talking about stepping into leadership in new ways.
I’m sure that people who saw me on the bus on my way home wondered why I was smiling the whole time.
I was smiling because I’d been touched by so many people throughout the day. First there were the students who’d tenderly held my dream in their hands (and I’d tenderly held theirs in mine), and then there were the women (most of whom have lived difficult lives where trust can not be assumed) who trusted me enough to let me hold their dreams for even a brief moment and offer ideas on how to shape them.
It all felt so very powerful.
This is the way that dreams grow. We plant seeds, add dirt, and then we have to trust other people to help us water those tender shoots when they start to grow.
This is the way that communities grow. We honour each other, give helpful feedback, take risks in trusting each other, and believe in each other’s projects.
This is the way that love grows. We share, we listen, we help, and we give, until each of us shines more beautifully than we did before.
Last week was full of teaching. LOTS of teaching. In four different subject areas.
I taught six hours of writing for public relations, six hours of effective facilitation, six hours of tools for social media visibility, and two and a half hours of creative discovery.
And in between all of that teaching, I had to create curriculum for all of those courses – from scratch. And I had to mark papers for two of the courses.
That, my friends, is some serious teaching exhaustion.
And then, on Friday evening, at the end of it all, I had to muster the energy to go on the radio to talk about some of the teaching I do (on mandalas, creativity, and community-building). By then, my head was spinning with all of the subject matter my head has been dabbling in. (To hear the interview, click here, enter March 16th at 8 pm, and then wait about 15 minutes before my interview starts.)
Needless to say, I had to spend much of the weekend recovering my energy. Fortunately, the weather was lovely, and I had a chance to wander in the woods, walk the labyrinth, do some mandala journaling outside, and have a wiener roast in celebration of my youngest daughter’s tenth birthday.
Yes, I was exhausted and needed to fill my tank, but underneath that exhaustion was an even stronger current, helping me to sustain the energy to carry on.
More than anything, I feel deeply privileged.
I am privileged:
– to be part of the learning journey of so many interesting students.
– to be able to “pay it forward” and share the wisdom that I’ve gained from many wise teachers who’ve inspired me on my own learning journey.
– to have students who come from all over the world (in one class, there are 8 countries represented) to study in Canada.
– to be able to dive deeply into topics that interest me, so that I can learn enough to inspire my students.
– to be on the receiving end of many, many stories.
– to have had so many vast and interesting experiences and learnings in my life that I can now be qualified enough to teach.
– to be able to help people find their unique paths in the world.
– to learn as much from my students as they learn from me.
– to have this much variety in my life to keep my inner “scanner” happy.
– to sit in circle with interesting people and find community in the classroom.
This is a good life.
It’s exhausting, and some days are very, very hard. But most days, it’s a privilege to teach.
This weekend, when I wasn’t wandering around outside, I finished making personalized mandala journals for the people who’ll be participating in Mandala Discovery. Happy that I soon get to connect with another circle of interesting people in yet another course, I poured a little love and goodness into each journal. It was a privilege to make special gifts for each person and know that they will soon be in my life, and I will get to sit in another circle (albeit a virtual one) and hear more stories. I only hope that receiving these journals is as special for them as making them was for me.
After finishing the journals, I edited the following video where some of the wise women who I got to learn from each week in my Creative Discovery class (that is sadly now over) share their experience. Watch it, and you will understand just how privileged I am.
I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity. – Oliver Wendell Holmes
I have watched the buzz around Invisible Children’s KONY 2012 campaign with interest. It was my teenage daughter who first alerted me to it. Like many teenagers all over the world, she was pumped up about it and wanted to wear the bracelet, hang the posters, and know that she was part of a movement that was stopping an evil man and fixing problems for the children he’d brutalized.
I validated her passion, and then I suggested that, if she really wanted to know how to help people in Uganda, she should speak to people who’ve grown up there – like my friend Nestar – and find out more about what the issues are and how a teenager in Canada can support them.
The last thing I want to do is pour cold water on my daughter’s passion… but… there are many complexities that KONY 2012 ignores. Complexities like… What are the root causes of war? What have people in Uganda already done to try to resolve the situation? How might a campaign like this feed into the dangerous colonialism that North Americans too frequently fall prone to when it comes to the way we want to “fix” problems in other countries? What if the world isn’t really as black and white as the film would have us believe and we can’t simply resolve problems by doing away with bad guys?
The problem is, complexity doesn’t trend on Twitter. You can’t fit it onto a bracelet and sell it to millions of teenagers.
Complexity involves time and effort and frustration and commitment and chaos and depth and… a whole lot of things that make it tough to fit into a marketing plan.
This is an issue I’ve struggled with for a long time, starting with my work as a communicator for a non-profit organization working with partners all over the world to respond to hunger. It’s not easy to explain the complexities around why people are hungry. There is no simple cause and effect that can be fixed by throwing a few dollars at it or sending a letter to the government or wearing a t-shirt. Hunger is about conflict and HIV/AIDS and gender and politics and corruption and… the list goes on and on. To make any long term difference so that people are able to access food on a regular basis instead of becoming reliant on aid agencies, you have to dive into the complexity and dare to get your hands dirty.
Try as I might, I just couldn’t boil those complex messages down to a simple catch phrase. It wasn’t for lack of trying, though – I made several videos when I was working there, and none of them went viral. They didn’t have cute, cherubic children in them, and I didn’t promise an African child I would stop the bad guys who killed his brother.
As anyone in n0n-profit will tell you, though, it’s the simple “give money and you can fix a problem” messages that get the donations and support. “Sponsor a child” or “buy a goat” or “stop a bad guy” paint simple problems with simple solutions and they bring in money. People want to know that their $30 donation will mean that a child can sit down to a meal every day, or that evil will be arrested. Send out a photo of that child whose life has been “fixed”, and it’s an easy sell.
But none of this is simple. You can’t fix all of the complex problems that children face – marginalization, conflict, lack of education, etc. – with your $30 donation (and I’m not suggesting that those organizations who use this type of marketing would ever make such a claim). I wish it were so, but it’s not.
It’s not much different in the work I now do in personal development, facilitation, and teaching. On a regular basis, students ask me for simple answers – templates to ensure they’ll get top grades, rules for writing, etc.. “It’s not that simple,” I say. “This is not a black and white world.”
If I could sell simple, my business probably would have taken off like wildfire. But I can’t sell simple any more than I could create simple videos about how hunger can be resolved. I live in a complex world, and I can’t authentically tell you that anything I offer will fix your life or your community or workplace. I live in a world where babies die, where loved ones attempt suicide, where people loose their jobs, where fathers get killed by tractors, where people who love each other sometimes hurt each other, and where dreams don’t always come true.
I don’t sell magic. I sell hard work and deep dives and surrender and journeys through chaos – nothing that fits into a 140 character tweet. My work is to invite you on the journey through complexity.
Fortunately, though, I believe, as Oliver Wendell Holmes says in the quote at the top of this article, that there is a deeper kind of simplicity on the other side of complexity.
That simplicity is the place where God resides.
It’s about Love – the simplest (and yet most complex) concept in the world.
It’s about the kind of love that “passes understanding”. It’s love that’s been through the battlefield of complexity and lived to tell the tale. It’s love that knows that there is no black or white, but just a lot of shades of grey. It’s love that recognizes that to really help people who are hurting we have to sit in the hurt with them and not try to fix it. It’s love that dares to get messy and dares to forgive.
It’s also about surrender. And trust. And forgiveness. And community. All of those are simple words, but none of them are simplistic. They don’t exist without the complexity.
I have had the honour of doing mandala sessions with several people who, after working their way through the mandala discovery process, have found a path through complexity to a new place of simplicity. I get to witness the a-ha moments as something new arrives that brings them closer to their centre, closer to Spirit, closer to truth, closer to simplicity. It might not make me millions, but I wouldn’t trade this kind of work for anything that fits cleanly on a marketing plan or is easy to sell in 140 characters or less.
This is the hero’s journey we’re talking about – Theseus’ path through the labyrinth, hanging onto a thread. It’s not simple. And yet it takes us to the deeper simplicity on the other side of complexity.
Several years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Angelina Atyam, an amazing woman whose daughter was abducted, along with her schoolmates, several years ago by Joseph Kony’s army in Uganda. Atyam joined together with other mothers to form Concerned Parents Association and began lobbying for the return of their children. They challenged the government to reconsider its strategy against the LRA. At one point, she even had the opportunity to meet with the President of Uganda.
Clearly feeling threatened by the work of CPA, the LRA sent a message to Atyam that they would return her daughter if she would stop her public relations campaign against them. Atyam countered with an offer to do so if all the girls from St. Mary’s were freed, but the LRA refused it. Her family was appalled that she had turned down the offer, but as she wrote in Marie Claire, “getting my child back would be absolutely wonderful, but if I accepted the offer, I would be turning my back on all the other families. I’d destroy the new community spirit we had created–the hope of getting all the boys and girls back.”
Eventually, her daughter was found and returned to Atyam. By then, the daughter had given birth to two children fathered by the commander of the army. One son went missing in the raid that rescued Atyam’s daughter, but a few weeks later, after he’d wandered in the bush alone with no food for weeks, he was found. Atyam began raising her grandchildren so that her daughter could go to school.
The part of the story that sticks with me the most is what Atyam shared about forgiveness. At one point she realized that she was full of bitterness and that she could not work effectively for peace if she didn’t first experience forgiveness. Working hard to forgive her daughter’s captors, she went to the village where the mother of the commander of the army lived. She told the other women that she did not hold her personally responsible for what had happened to her daughter. She said she forgave the woman and her son for the horrible things that had been done to her family.
That, my friends, is complexity. It’s messy and uncomfortable and courageous.
That’s the kind of complexity that is missing from the KONY 2012 video. Uganda’s challenges will not be resolved by a lot of well-meaning white people wearing wristbands. Uganda’s challenges will be resolved by mothers standing up to evil and then digging deep into their hearts for forgiveness and love.
That love that Angelina Atyam extended to the mother of her daughter’s abductor and that helped her raise the grandchildren who’d been fathered by a murderer? That’s the simplicity on the other side of complexity.
* I would rather teach people to think beautiful thoughts than to create grammatically correct sentences.
* I believe that beauty and justice are inextricably intertwined and I want to bring more of both into the world.
* I believe that the greatest inventions, discoveries, and solutions emerge when people start asking the right questions.
* I believe that you have to ask a lot of questions in order to get to the right ones.
* I am happy when I can help bold creativity blossom in those around me.
* A little part of me shrivels up inside when I find myself stifling creativity with too many rules and judgements.
* I am easily distracted by colourful markers and clean white paper.
* I believe that personal leadership is more important than positional leadership.
* I choose community over team, circle over hierarchy, and family over corporation.
* I believe that shared stories open doorways to transformation.
* I am less productive when I haven’t had time for deep contemplation and equally deep play. The two go hand in hand.
* I believe that our differences are important but that they should not divide us.
* I delight in making new connections with people whose ways of looking at the world intrigue me. I am open to letting them change me, if it’s for the best.
* I am committed to hosting and being part of more conversations and inquiries that follow spiral patterns (moving inward to deeper wisdom) rather than linear pathways.
* Deep and soulful listening is often the best gift I can give anyone, and so I strive to keep my mouth shut and my ears open more often.
* I believe in walking lightly on this earth, and hope to some day use fewer resources for my own personal gain.
* I want to be open-minded and open-hearted and to live with delight as my constant companion.
* I believe that vulnerability and truth-telling can serve as catalysts for deep relationships and profound change.
* I believe that in order to create one great work of art you have to be prepared to create at least 100 mediocre ones first.
* I believe that time spent in meditation, prayer, and body movement is never time wasted, and I hope to some day live like I believe it.
* I believe that God created each of us to do good work and that we cheat our Creator and our world when we let our self-doubt and fear keep us from doing it.
* I want to bring more colour and light into otherwise dreary spaces.
* I strive to be more courageous tomorrow than I was today.
* I believe in daily transformation, continuous learning, and growth that doesn’t end until the day I exhale my last breath.
* I am committed to doing my best work, which is at the intersection of creativity, leadership, community, and story-telling.
