by Heather Plett | May 25, 2011 | inspiring people, Leadership, Sophia, Uncategorized, Wisdom
Before and after the leadership workshop that made me cry (and laugh) I got to hang out with a bunch of young feminists this past weekend. I was too old to participate in the ReBelles gathering, but I could at least volunteer and be inspired by their energy and passion. I worked at the registration desk and the merch table and I served some delicious vegetarian chilli to a bunch of hungry (and wet) feminists who’d come out of the rain after marching on the streets.
I was there for three reasons.
1. I wanted to be inspired by their passion and commitment and was hoping that some of their energy would rub off on me. I think we all have a lot to learn from those younger than us and I was open to the learning.
2. I feel a calling to be a mentor and supporter of young women leaders in the next generation and I want to do what I can to encourage them as they step into their own leadership and power.
3. I know some of the organizers and I am quite fond of them.
Though I wasn’t allowed in the workshops or plenary sessions (they were quite intentional about maintaining the space for women under 35 and I respect that choice), I got what I wanted out of the experience and I’m glad I went.
The truth is, I’ve been discouraged lately by what our generation is doing with feminism and I think it’s time to turn things around again.
As I said when I created Sophia Leadership, on my “About Sophia Leadership” page, the feminist revolution opened doors for women – doors that lead us into the houses of power. We became leaders and politicians and educators and business owners, but to do that, we had to learn to think and lead like men.
The post-feminist movement helped women tap into our sources of power – our spirituality, our creativity, and our intuition – but we didn’t take those things into the houses of power with us. We were mostly busy making the connection between our heads, hearts, and bodies in our own spaces for our own benefits.
We so enjoyed the freedom that the feminist revolution earned for us that we started spending most of our time focused on ourselves, buying all the self-help books we could find, going to all the yoga and spiritual retreats we could afford, and justifying all the choices we made to pamper ourselves instead of being in positions of servitude as our mothers had been.
What we forgot, however, is that along with freedom comes great responsibility.
I firmly believe that it’s time for the next step in the women’s movement. Now it’s time to merge what we learned in both the feminist and post-feminist eras and make some BIG changes. I suspect that it might be the next generation who will do the bulk of the work of ushering in a new era of feminine wisdom, and so I want to support it where I can.
That doesn’t mean, though, that we – the over 40 crowd – have an excuse to go back to our insular world of self-care and self-focused spirituality. Our young leaders may be the ones with energy and they may be the ones to do the turning, but they need us, their mentors, wise women, sages, and crones.
They need us and we need them. I was so glad to be part of a mutual benefit society this weekend.
And here are a few of the things the young feminists taught me:
1. Make your work, retreats, and gatherings accessible to everyone. Instead of gathering with only the elite who can afford spiritual retreat centres, find ways to prepare simple meals, host people in homes, charge on a sliding scale, and make sure the emerging leaders from poor and marginalized groups can afford to participate.
2. Be intentional about including only ethically produced and purchased food and products – things that are gentle on the earth and that weren’t produced by under-paid labourers in faraway factories.
3. Combine art and body movement workshops with political/advocacy workshops. Find ways of blending them in ways that are uniquely feminine.
4. Dare to be passionate. March in the streets. Write manifestos. If things need to be shaken up, SHAKE THEM AND DON’T APOLOGIZE!
5. Be intentional about creating spaces for those you’ve gathered, and don’t apologize to those you’ve excluded. But then honour those who support you from outside that circle and hold a feast for all to celebrate together.
6. Bring in wise women as elders, honour them and let them advise you, but do not let them run the show if you have people in your group quite capable of organizing gatherings.
7. Make the space as safe as you can for emerging leaders, by doing small things like asking the rental facility to ensure the guards on duty while you gather are all women.
8. Don’t leave until you have some clear action items and then follow up to make sure there is MOVEMENT. Don’t let people simply go back to their homes with warm fuzzies forgetting their commitments to positive change.
by Heather Plett | May 20, 2011 | Uncategorized
I’m FORTY-FIVE today! Yikes!
I was going to do something serious and soul-searching in honour of my 45th birthday, but then I got hit with a whack of heavy-duty life circumstances in the last couple of months, and so I said “ENOUGH with the serious and soul-searching, we need a little FUN instead!”
So today I’m focusing on FUN and I am celebrating what makes me ME!
As I’ve mentioned in recent posts, one of the things that makes me who I am is that I am a HAPPY WANDERER. I love to wander. I’ve been doing it for as long as I’ve been able to walk and (like I mentioned in my last post) even completed a 22 mile walkathon when I was six years old. I wander all over my neighbourhood. (I just discovered a magical rugged greenbelt less than a mile from my home!) I wander to interesting places like Ethiopia, Kenya, India, Bangladesh, and all over Europe. (My favourite purchase in my 20s was an international hosteling card.) I wander whenever I go on business trips. (I could tell you the BEST bed and breakfast to stay at in Toronto or Dallas!) I wander every chance I get!
Wandering is so deeply embedded in my DNA that I just signed up to walk 100 km. in the Kidney March, and lately I’ve been dreaming of walking the 800 km. pilgrimage known as the Camino de Santiago.
I used to think that my restless spirit was because I was somehow flawed and couldn’t settle down like “normal” people, but now I know that it is part of my beauty and giftedness. Wandering gives me depth and beauty and a whole lot of stories to share.
In celebration of my inner wanderer (and yours!), I have created a very fun product called A Path for Happy Wanderers.
What is it? Well, it’s an e-course for other people who are wanderers just like me. I suspect that many of you would define yourself that way to, so I expect that it will be PERFECT for you!
When you sign up, you’ll get 12 wandering lessons (once a week) by email that are packed full of fun and inspiring content that will help you embrace your inner wanderer, learn more about wandering as a spiritual path, get tips on photography, art-making and freelance businesses related to wandering, be inspired by stories and photos, and more.
The best part is that I’ve interviewed 12 other happy wanderers (all of whom have incorporated wandering into their careers, businesses, spiritual quests, etc.) and they’ve all shared stories and tips about wandering. You’ll get one interview with each lesson. Here are the amazing people who are participating.
You can find out more about the course and these amazing contributors here.
The cost for all this goodness is only $25, but if you sign up today, because it’s my birthday, I’m going to give it to you for just $20. AND for today $2 from every purchase is going to be donated to the Kidney Foundation in support of my BIG WANDER in September.
Come on and wander with me, won’t you? You’ll be in great company!
by Heather Plett | May 18, 2011 | Uncategorized
They say that some of your best clues about how you should spend your life lie in your most cherished childhood memories. The things that brought you joy as a six year old provide the roadmap to your heart’s desire.
In that case, it couldn’t be more appropriate that I will be walking 100 kilometres in the Kidney March in September AND that I will be releasing a special offering on Friday that focuses primarily on honouring and rejoicing in your wandering soul.
When I was six years old, I did something that I am in awe of to this very day.
I completed a 22 mile walk-a-thon. AT SIX YEARS OF AGE!
There’s a photo of me somewhere (it may have been lost when Mom moved off the farm) at the end of that incredible journey. I’m holding the hand of Walter Paramour (my friend’s dad) and we had both just finished the walk. He was the oldest to finish (in his 60s, I believe) and I was the youngest. If I remember correctly, in the picture I’m wearing a white ruffled blouse (which seems like an odd choice for a day of walking), and homemade polyester pants that are just a little too short for me.
If I can do that at six, surely I can walk 100 km. at forty-five!
Last night after a meeting downtown, I walked most of the way home. Seven kilometres. And you know what I felt as I walked? Pure six-year-old joy. I love to walk, I love to run, and I love to bike. I also like to drive, fly, take trains, ride boats – anything that feeds my wandering spirit – but I especially love it when the wandering happens at a human-propeled pace.
It’s so easy to forget the joy of wandering in our rush-to-the-next-appointment, get-the-kids-to-soccer, get-everything-accomplished-on-my-list lifestyle. We are addicted to action and we forget the beauty of slowing down to a human pace. Walking offers the body and mind time to slow down, to heal from some of the damage too much speed causes in our lives, and to clear the clutter from our overly stimulated minds.
My friend Cath Duncan (with whom I’ll be walking in September) has written beautifully about walking through adversity. Reading her post reminded me just how healing and therapeutic walking has always been for me. I remember, in fact, the time I was on my way to a group therapy session at a rape crisis centre, and when the niggling feeling told me I really didn’t want to be part of the group, I just walked right past the centre and kept on walking. Instead of group therapy, I spent my evening walking. I walked and walked, all over the beautiful old tree-lined neighbourhood I lived in. As I walked, something in me shifted and my troubled heart began to heal.
In the following weeks, it was walking and journaling that helped me work my way through the healing process after my rape. For some, group therapy might have been the right thing, but for me, my feet helped me find the path to healing.
Do you have a story about walking through adversity? Over at kidneyraffle.com (the amazing fundraising site for our walk) we’re gathering stories and we’d love to hear yours. Click on the button below to find out more. Rumour has it there may be a prize or two available for people who submit stories!
p.s. I would LOVE to have you sponsor my journey! You can do it here, or you can wait to do it through kidneyraffle.com between June 7 and 9 and be eligible for some amazing prizes.
by Heather Plett | May 17, 2011 | Uncategorized
Today is one of those days when I wrestle with being “enough”.
It’s predictable, really. Whenever I have to deal with something that makes me feel less than enough (today it is that ugly beast called “finances”), my gremlins want to do a happy dance all over my failings and remind me of all of the other places I am less than enough.
Not good enough at keeping an ordered household.
Not good enough at making sure my children have matching socks to wear every day.
Not good enough at making money.
Not good enough at supporting my mom through cancer.
Not good enough at being an attentive mom and loving wife.
Fortunately though, I don’t have to be “good enough”. I just have to be “enough”.
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” That’s my favourite Bible verse. I need truckloads of grace right now. Plus a reminder that God prefers it when I admit my weaknesses instead of trying to hide them. There’s more to work with when I’m not trying to prove myself.
I AM enough. I don’t have to be good enough. I don’t have to have all my finances in order, or fill my daughters’ drawers with clean and perfectly matched socks. I just have to show up every day, willing to accept grace, and willing to let God do something in my life.
by Heather Plett | May 16, 2011 | journey, Uncategorized
A man walks through a doorway.
It seems simple enough. “Just the facts Ma’am.” Just a man. Just a doorway.
Except that it is NEVER just a man or just a doorway. There are stories stuck like glue to both man and doorway.
Is it a man whose exit marks the abandonment of a family? Is it a doorway in a home that they really couldn’t afford and now his wife is left with mounting bills and three kids to feed?
Is it Nelson Mandela stepping through the doorway of a prison into freedom and into his world-changing destiny?
Is it one of the men who stepped through the doorway into the holy of holies at the ancient churches of Lalibela while I had to stand outside because I was the wrong gender?
Is it Neil Armstrong making history by stepping out of the doorway of the spacecraft and onto the surface of the moon?
Every man has a hundred stories. Every doorway has a hundred more. Every person impacted by the action has another hundred through which they interpret the walking, the doorway, and the man.
We forget that sometimes. We want a person’s actions to mean exactly what we interpret them to mean. We want the words we read (or write) to mean the same thing whether they’re read by us or a person across the world.
We want everyone to understand the world through OUR stories and we neglect to try to understand how theirs differ from ours. Thinking we are right, we impose our beliefs, our ethnocentricities, our fears, and our boxes on them.
But it doesn’t work that way. Your doorway never looks like my doorway. Your fears never look like my fears. Your stories were shaped by different circumstances.
Today I seek the grace to not judge or belittle other people through the lenses of my own stories, and to embrace the beauty of a tapestry of stories threaded throughout the world.
by Heather Plett | May 13, 2011 | Uncategorized
Today is another in a long series of grey, sometimes drizzly, sometimes windy days. This morning I feel like a caged animal, longing for the space beyond the clouds, beyond the grey.
I feel easily caged. It’s part of my nature. Put too many boundaries around me (office walls, too much structure, not enough time on my schedule to wander, too many rules or limitations), and I get so restless I could SCREAM. I pace the cage, I rail against the machine, I get really, really cranky.
I know this about myself, and yet I keep expecting something different. I keep thinking I should WANT to fit into the cages that seem to make other people happy, I should LIKE sitting still for awhile, I should be THANKFUL for the office walls and structures that box me in. Oh the “shoulds” I have dumped on my head! I’ve tried so hard to fit into the ordered worlds that seem to make other people happy. And yet I can’t. It just doesn’t work for me.
It’s the same way in the world of business. Even though I am thrilled that self-employment gives me more opportunity to wander, to sit in the middle of a labyrinth to do my work, or to choose the library, a coffee shop, or my tiny basement studio as my creative space for the day, I still find myself trying to force myself into some kind of box.
I should be able to fit my business into a box, shouldn’t I? All the business books tell us to be specific, to have a crisp clean elevator speech, to have a niche market, to KNOW what we offer the world and to be able to communicate it in simple clean language.
But every time I try one of those boxes, I start to get really, really restless and I want to bust out of the box. Every time I try to define myself as one thing – “writer, communications consultant, teacher, creative midwife, facilitator, leadership coach, transformation guide” – I start going a little crazy and my body fills with angst.
And then I do that thing I do when I assume everyone else is figuring it out except for me – I assume there must be something wrong with me. I beat myself up a bit, and I try a little harder to fit into a box.
But the boxes NEVER FIT!
Because I am a wanderer. An explorer. A scanner (in the words of Barbara Sher).
I am a creative thinker. A box-buster. A questioner. An outside-the-lines-colourer.
And you know what? I’m proud of that and I don’t want to beat myself up over it any more. I want to BE WHO I AM and build a business out of that instead of trying to find some model that doesn’t fit.
Because of that, two things will be happening in the coming weeks:
1.) Next week (on my birthday), I will be releasing a new product that I absolutely LOVE because it is so true to my heart. It is about the beauty of being a wanderer and I’m SO happy that other wanderers have agreed to help me with it. OH MY GOSH this is going to be fun! I’m celebrating what makes me a wanderer, sharing it with you, and hopefully helping you to celebrate your own box-busting, colouring-outside-the-lines, happy wanderer nature too.
2.) Within a month or so, I plan to migrate my blog over to my heatherplett.com url. I have loved Sophia Leadership, but it has begun to feel like another one of those boxes. Not nearly everything I want to write about or create or sell is about feminine wisdom or about leadership. It’s time to just brand MYSELF and release the products and services that emerge out of my gifts instead of trying to squeeze all of my energy and creativity into a brand that doesn’t fit. I’ll still write about leadership and feminine wisdom now and then, but that won’t be the whole she-bang. Being a WANDERER is part of my brand, and so I will celebrate my burning need to wander from one idea to the next.
I’d love to hear from you if you have any ideas. For example, let me know what your favourite things are about visiting my site. What would you like to see more of? What things would you buy from me if I created them? What e-courses would you like to see me teach?
