I was once invited to shepherd an organization’s healing journey after a major rupture had occurred.
When I arrived, battle lines had been drawn & seeds of discord had been planted. But building rapport with & listening to more than 2/3 of the staff allowed me to unearth deeply rooted & widely understood (albeit generally unspoken) truths, fears, hurts, hopes & dreams — all of which happen to be some of my favorite alchemical tools.
So from there, we mapped out a vibrant path forward that included practice spaces, community learning, peer coaching, and inner work — all risky investments that called for deep trust, in me & in each other. But unfortunately, the harm was so fresh & defenses were so high that the leadership team was unwilling to fully embrace the type of work needed for organizational transformation, even when the resistance to change came at the expense of a critical funder relationship.
By the end of my time there, the emergent plan was derailed no less than 7 times out of fear, discomfort, & risk aversion. Surrendering to the moment, I finally chose to move on — the group’s readiness was simply misaligned with the work that I was proposing.
Several months later, I checked back on the organization only to find that they’d downsized to 1/3 of the original team.
As a Black & multi-racial woman, an autistic person, a survivor, & a mama to a child with disabilities — I hold intimate knowledge of what it means to be impacted by unconscious habits of anti-Blackness, ableism, misogynoir. And after more than two decades in the game, I know how much it hurts to be harmed in spaces that purport to be for people that look like you, by folks who come from where you come from.
Unfortunately, I also know the shame that comes from realizing you’re the one who may have caused pain or deepened a rupture.
But I also know when those harms are really ‘red herrings’ masking & distracting us from tending to the deeper issues lurking under the surface, such as historical trauma that has been embedded in the cellular DNA of an organization, or the intergenerational trauma that we individually carry from our grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother.