How Did We Get Here
It’s been two years since my last post here and so much has happened. In November of 2023 I started working with elected officials to help them stay present, authentic, and brave as they head into the ring. We were headed into the election year of 2024 and so many of my new clients were candidates. They were, in all the ways, running. Running as fast and as hard as they could to please, to convince, to charm, to defend, to protect, and to WIN. They were focused, motivated, and often exhausted. They had to rely on their resilience again and again - it humbled me to realize how vulnerable it is to put yourself out there in so brutal an arena, how brave. Living and working in the scrutiny of the public eye is no joke, and anyone that dares to expose themselves to that level of criticism, rejection, and even hate in the name of service has my respect and my gratitude.
It’s an honor to work with them; politicians get a bad rap. But it’s also refreshing to remember that, whatever our job, our influence, or our privilege, we are all still bringing the same basic arsenal of protection to the game. We are so afraid to be wrong, to make mistakes, to get in trouble. (Well, most of us are. The ones who aren’t are often people that are seeking these positions not for service, but for power. These people, it turns out, don’t want my help.) That fear keeps us from our knowing, from our creativity, and out of flow. Fear is a terrible leader.
That said, as it turns out, Fear is also a great leader - look at who we elected in 2024! Fear beat out Hope, Love, Creativity, Compassion, Expertise, and even (or maybe especially) Facts. Fear of the Other, fear of the future, fear of scarcity, fear of irrelevance - these are the narratives I’ve been seeing a lot lately as we look around and wonder, how in the world did we get here? But I wonder if it’s deeper than that. I wonder if it all comes back to our fear of ourselves. Maybe we are afraid of how we might feel if we acknowledge our uncertainty, if we stand next to our insecurity and doubt and experience the vulnerability of that. Maybe our trauma - both sustained and inflicted - is too much for us to face. Maybe, maybe, we are afraid most of all of our responsibility. Dear Leader can absolve us of that.
Healing work is brave work. In order to create the conditions for healing we must be ready to shine light into dark, sometimes terrible places. The conditions for healing are presence, truth, acceptance, compassion, and leadership. Creating and maintaining those conditions requires courage, commitment, and sustained effort. It isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s easier to scroll or binge a show or drink or smoke or gossip or whip up chaos in our families or communities, pointing fingers and enforcing hierarchies. All this distraction is easier than sitting still with what is, and, like any addiction, it almost works.
So yeah, it feels really important to work with people who are seeking to amplify their voice, to win a seat at the table. We want the people who represent us to create the conditions for our communities, for our country to heal. But we can’t lead anyone else if we can’t lead ourselves. And as we see now so heartbreakingly clearly, if we don’t step up and lead, fear will fill that void.