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Are you results or process oriented?

Are you results or process oriented?

Regenerative Work regenerative work

Our world is all about results. Did we hit our targets? Did we achieve our KPI’s? How strong were our campaign metrics? Did the action succeed or fail?

Our measurements of success and our motivation become enmeshed with the goal or end product, with something that is never actually here and always somewhere in the past or future.

Regenerative work is about the process as much as the results.

It’s about the quality of our relationships.

It’s about the experiences we are having right here, right now, as much as our desired future.

As Kazu Haga beautifully writes, the spirit of which we engage in the work of transformation will be reflected in the change we create (if you haven’t read his book, you can find it here).

We benefit from understanding that the way we engage with our work, the energy we bring, is also the work.

Happiness & Climate Change

Happiness & Climate Change

happiness and climate changeHappiness & climate change

Do you think you can be happy in the future? I mean really, truly happy?

And what does happy even mean?

It’s a word that gets thrown around a lot, and I think we sometimes get confused about what happiness is.

I was at a workshop on eco-anxiety recently, and I heard a woman saying that she feels we need to give up on this idea of happiness – that we need to accept we can’t have it, that we need to drastically change our lives and just get used to getting by.  Another said we need to swap our cultural obsession with happiness for contentment, which is closer to how I feel but also so…. lackluster? I mean, contentment is nice, but it does sound kind of… blah.

But what is happiness? And how do we reconcile a happy future with the climate crisis?

I don’t think of happiness as an emotion, as much as an underlying state – a result of meeting our needs and living our values.

The conditions for happiness are the same for most of us, with a few differences that are unique to us.  Needs for belonging, connection, community, purpose and fun are intrinsic to all of us – foundational needs for happiness.

And then some of us need more freedom than others, or more stability, or more passion, more creativity and the like.

The struggle arises when we confuse happiness and joy, happiness and laughter, happiness and more.  We think happiness is outside of ourselves. We look somewhere ‘out there’ for it, as if it is a place we reach or a jewel we obtain when we just do the right thing.

Happiness never comes from doing though (note: joy, anticipation, ecstasy all can).

We’ve been sold this lie about happiness most of our lives: that if we just follow the dotted line, go to college, get the right job, follow our passion, find the right person, get the promotion and so on, that we’ll be happy – as if it’s some beautiful, static experience that we get to keep if we just do things right.

But most of us know that it doesn’t work this way.

When we look at happiness as a cultivated state, it doesn’t mean you won’t feel sad, angry, grief-stricken or challenged at times – in fact, I promise you will.  These experiences can’t be avoided, and the more we try, the more we numb – the more we numb, the less happy we are.  So you will feel pain, but underneath it your foundation can still include happiness. This is true, even in the face of climate change.

The conditions for real happiness – belonging, connection, purpose, fun – are also antidotes to the culture of separation and endless growth that brought us to this point in time.

Pursuing happiness also isn’t selfish – aren’t we our most generous, our most loving, our most creative when we’re feeling good?  Aren’t we our most resilient?  I am certain that our happiest lives and our most impactful work are linked.

Why do we think we can change the world by struggling more?

How do we expect liberation when we’re shackled to fear or struggle?

How can we pursue social healing without seeing happiness as at least a possibility?

What do you think? Share your thoughts below or read more on happiness here.

Being Positive Does Not Mean Ignoring Injustice

Being Positive Does Not Mean Ignoring Injustice

Being positive does not mean ignoring injustice.

I’m gonna say this again for those in the back – being positive does not mean ignoring injustice.

There’s an idea in the spiritual/new age world that we shouldn’t follow the news or stay up-to-date with ‘negative’ (read: unjust) things happening, because to do so gives them more energy and it’s not what we want to create.  You know – love and light.

This is the ultimate in ‘spiritual bypassing’ though. To deny somebody else’s lived experience because it makes you uncomfortable and isn’t what you want to create isn’t being positive – it’s the result of privilege and perpetuating oppression & the status quo.

Being positive may mean that we have cultivated a faith inside ourselves of a more beautiful world, one that we cannot see yet with our eyes. It may mean that we seek out good news, because the world as it exists does not feed it to us.

Being positive means while we are aware of the injustice of the world, we cultivate a mindset and practice that allows us to consciously respond to it, rather than react to it.

Being positive means we have allowed ourselves to practice a conscious and active hope.

But being positive never means ignoring reality, and it never means ignoring injustice.

How To Stay Motivated When Change Doesn’t Come

How To Stay Motivated When Change Doesn’t Come

HOW TO STAY MOTIVATED WHEN CHANGE DOESN’T COME

Changemaking is a long game.  Whether we’re working through a social enterprise or business, or we’re an on-the-ground activist or community organiser, it can be hard to stay motivated when change seemingly doesn’t come. We give our hearts and souls to a particular outcome, and when the results are slow to see, we easily become demoralised.

As changemakers, one of the quickest ways we burnout is by confusing our goal and motivation.  A goal is a clear outcome we want to achieve – maybe it’s a policy change; net-zero emissions by 2030, or the end of corporate political donations.  Maybe it’s more of a culture change, with stronger representation of queer and BIPOC people in media, or communities that feel like they belong to one another.  Maybe the goal is for your social enterprise to deepen its impact and create new opportunities.  Whatever it may be – the goal has a clear outcome.

Motivation is what gets us to do the work.  It’s the feeling we have that tells us this is what we need to do, and why.

Often though, we confuse the goal and the motivation.  We do the work assuming that the reason we are doing it is the goal we seek – and when there are setbacks or our work takes longer than planned we begin to burnout.

At this point it’s easy to become that little bit more jaded or angry.   Feelings of tiredness and apathy are common.  We might continue to do the work, but the spark we had before is gone. The work feels heavier. Our hearts are heavier.

Understanding our deeper motivations can help us to move through this.  We cultivate our resiliency in part by building solid foundations within ourselves that call us to the work.

To understand your motivations, think back to when you were first inspired to create a change in the world.  What did you feel called by?  What feelings arose in you?  Take a few moments to really feel back in time, and write down what comes up.  Was it an extrinsic motivation, arising from something outside of you? Was there any internal, or intrinsic, calling that brought you to the work?

And importantly, is that motivation still working for you today?

Our motivations change as we change, and most of us have multiple motivations within us, we just need to know which to tap into.  Below are some strong, renewable motivations, and tuning in to the ones that drive us can help us to stay the course.

  • Service Service is about connection to something larger than ourselves. Maybe it’s to God or whatever you believe to be divine. Maybe it’s to humanity. Maybe it’s the love letter to what you feel we humans could be.  Service is less about the destination and more about the journey. It’s an attitude we can embody in all of our actions and interactions.  How can I serve? How can I serve? How can I serve? This question has such different energy and intention to one of How do I fix this?, and it’s not reliant on external change to exist.
  • Pain-transformed.  Pain-transformed becomes compassion. It is the foundation of empathy, of deep listening, of holding space.  If our pain has been given the space and healing needed to transform, we can use it as our motivation to change the world – to not have others experience what we did, to offer compassion to those who are suffering. Pain-transformed is also what allows us to begin exploring transformative justice and other forms of accountability. Pain that hasn’t yet healed though is not a sustainable form of motivation; if it’s still running the show and driving our reactions, it isn’t transformed enough to drive the work of change.
  • Vision. We all have a vision of a more beautiful world. What would yours look like? Can your vision be your inspiration? Can your vision sustain you with enough hope to keep going, even when it feels that we are a million miles away from it? Can your vision adapt and evolve to co-create with people around you? Can you ground the feeling of this vision in your body, even before you see it with your eyes? Vision motivation needs regular watering, a feeling of being alive in your heart and body in order to continue to do its work.
  • Love: Often we hear people say they are doing the work for their children. What they really mean, is they are doing the work because of love. Love for our children, love for our shared humanity, is a strong and sustainable motivation.  Our desire for those around us and those after us to live in a more just and beautiful world, as well as to honour those who came before us.
  • The Arisings: a more nuanced approach to motivation, subject to change at a whim.  The arisings are those little voices that whisper to us, that tell us we need to do something even when we don’t understand why. It’s our intuition, our gut sense, our connection to something deep within us.  Choosing to regularly check-in and listen to the arisings can be a helpful source of motivation, an intrinsic connection that tells us if we are on the right path, even when we can’t see it.  The difficulty here is in honouring them when they change, and knowing how to listen.
  • Values: When I talk about values in this context, I’m also referring to our sense of what is ‘moral’. Moral obligation is subjective to people, but it means there is something in our values that says this is important.  That we must do this because it is just or right.  This is a more sustainable form of motivation because the desire and foundation of it is within us.  Even though our hearts may ache at how long change takes, we know that our conscience demands we continue.
  • Belonging: Belonging is a powerful motivator. We all crave some form of belonging, no matter how rebellious and independent we may be. True belonging is a space we can be radically ourselves, yet also be part of something larger than ourselves. Belonging helps give us purpose, solidarity and meaning.  We show up, because others show up for us.  We rise, because others are rising with us.  We do the work, because what we co-create together is more magical than what we can do alone.  Tending to the community is form of love in action, and when we’re feeling hopeless, it can help to remember to water the seeds that are in front of us.

When our goals seem impossibly far away, come back to what is true for you right now.  Go within to find your deepest source of motivation. Ask it what it needs to be activated, listen to it, follow it.  “Let us be the ones who plant, even on the days that feel like the end of days” – Omid Safi.

A note on fear: fear can be a useful motivator, in the short term.  Fear activates our fight/flight/freeze response, and sometimes these ‘primal’ responses can be of great benefit. It can encourage us to say yes to opportunities we might miss out on, or our fear for the future may fuel a call to action within us.  However, stress and fear have detrimental long term effects.  Our bodies are not designed to have stress responses permanently activated without some sort of consequence, whether that be physical, mental, emotional or spiritual.  Fear can however be a transformative emotion if use it well.  Can we feel it in its fullest experience, and watch it transform into freedom? Watch it transform into power? Watch it transform into spaciousness?

A further note on mobilisation: the motivating tools we use to mobilise others may be different from what sustains us in the long term, though I believe in a healthy-change-ecosystem our reliance cannot be solely on tools of fear or ‘othering’ to build a movement.

It’s not enough to know what you’re against

It’s not enough to know what you’re against

Most of us know what we are against.  We’re against racism, against inequality, against fossil fuels, against war, against the alt-right, against trans-and-homophobia.  We’re against corporate political donations, we’re against capitalism, we’re against xenophobia, we’re against violence, we’re against the Murdoch media bias, we’re against big oil, we’re against foreign intervention, we’re against offshore asylum centres.

The list of things we are against in changemaking circles is endless – and rightly so.  We’re working to change what currently exists, and that means being aware of the problem and its causes. It’s easy to center our work around this because reality is seemingly centered around this.

But I want to also ask a different question: What are we in service to?  What would a world without ‘the problem’ look like? I’m talking a radically different world… can you imagine what that experience would feel like?

When you picture a world with the solutions to the issues you care about, what do you feel right now in your body?  Relief? Lightness? Tension? Can you even imagine it?

What does this world sound like? Look like? What would your life look like in that world? What role would you play with the freedom to do so?

This imagination exercise isn’t just for fun, it’s for clarity.

Because, here’s the thing – it’s not enough to be against something.  We need to know what we’re for at the same time.

We need to build as we resist.

We need to heal as we end harm.

We need to liberate as we fight.

If we remain solely focused on what we are against, we miss the opportunity of embodying the change we seek.  Our work is not just for the future – it’s for now. If we want others to feel joy or freedom, we must allow ourselves to experience them too.

Knowing our vision – our how, our why, our calling – means knowing where to serve.

Knowing what we’re for allows us to articulate new stories and ideas to those who cannot see them yet.

Knowing what we’re for is the bedrock of hope and inspiration.

So let me know what you are for, comment below, or drop me an email, I’d love to hear.

Notes on burnout and the body

Notes on burnout and the body

Notes on burnout and the body

How well do you listen to your body? Do you understand what it is telling you?  Are we over-extending? Are we under-extending but so afraid of over-extending that we tell ourselves otherwise? Are we being called to serve somewhere new or old?

The body is a site of truth. Our emotional, mental, spiritual bodies all come together and speak through our physical body.  Our physical body can tell us the truth of where these other bodies are at. on burnout and the body

Sometimes we extend ourselves too far, we live in a culture that glorifies endless work after all.  When we listen, our bodies may tell us to rest, to be alone, to be in community, to sing, to dance, to sleep, to make love – when we learn to listen to the cues of the body, we’re listening to and understanding our needs.  Everything we feel, we feel in the body.

Sometimes, however, we feel we haven’t gone far enough.  And, so, we push ourselves in ways that are counterintuitive to what we want and where we are being called, because in the back of our mind is that voice saying we haven’t done enough.  In reality, it’s not that we haven’t done enough – it’s that we haven’t done enough of what matters, of what we are really called for.  We’re exhausted from pushing against all the wrong things. (note: the story of ‘I haven’t done enough’ can also be the sound of violence against ourselves, and distinguishing between what is a true calling and what is a violent mechanism takes time. Listening to the body as well as your mind is the clearest way to determine what is violence and what is not, but more on this later).

This is not to say that when we follow our callings the work won’t be exhausting, rather it won’t be depleting.  Burnout is what happens when we have depleted ourselves of our inner resources, when we have ignored the signs given to us by all of our various bodies and their needs.  We ‘pushed through’, we ‘carried on’, but we also ran out of fuel because we were depleted more than we were ever nourished.

One of the reasons we look at listening to our mental, emotional, spiritual and physical bodies in changemaker resilience course is that the more we follow our true callings, listening to where it feels right for us to be, the closer we are to doing the work that nourishes us.  It will still be hard, there will still be bad days, you will still need to look at other areas of your life, but the first step will have been taken.  And as our callings are an evolving thing, always changing, we develop the skills to listen throughout our lifetime, ending one part of the burnout cycle.

If you want to be the first to hear about the next Changemaker Resilience course when it launches be sure to join the mailing list here.

You can also read more on the culture of burnout in activism and changemaking here.

Notes on a future now

Notes on a future now

Notes on a future now

Every one of us a living thread to the future.  The transformation we seek isn’t something that happens to us, that changes us in an instant or moment of time, rather it is living, breathing, emerging and birthing through us and as us in any given moment.  So how does this idea influence our relationship with change and time?

One of the hardest things we often grapple with is our relationship to time.  The change we seek is visible with our hearts before our eyes, but in a world where truth is determined only by what we can see, and we value most that which is physically present, it can be hard to stay the course in the face of seeming failure or stagnation.  Harder still, is the transformation we seek – to the degree that we seek – likely will not happen within our lifetimes.

I don’t say this to be pessimistic, but rather realistic.  Our work in crafting a more beautiful world is not about reaching utopia, today, tomorrow or even in 1000 years.  It is the work of becoming, of unfolding.  This work is not for us alone – it’s the work of every person, and every generation to come, to craft what is beautiful to them.  No matter how much urgency our work may demand, it isn’t ours to complete.

I once heard Stephen Jenkinson say that every generation has its own spirit work to do.  Our own way to right our relationship with the world, to each other, with ourselves, with our new and old ideas of what is sacred.

Your work and callings will not be the same as someone else’s.  Every arising within us is our calling to the future now.  What is your work? What is arising in you, now, asking to be lived?

Comment below or email me, I’d love to hear.

How much good can you accept?

How much good can you accept?

How much good can you accept?

Most of us think that we can accept unlimited good.  That we would enjoy every ounce of happiness or joy or pleasure there is if it came to us.  Often though, this isn’t actually true. We brush away the compliments given to us, we deny ourselves pleasure and fight our bodies with another diet or a fresh round of botox, we shame human bodies for enjoying sex in a particular way or with a particular person or of a particular frequency, we say “with my luck” meaning things won’t work out, or “it’s too good to be true” or “I’m not good enough” or “that’ll never happen”, or “you’re dreaming”.  We take the world in through filters, many of which deny our experience of good.

Why does this matter in transformative change?

Many of our filters came about not because of something wrong with us, or because this is natural for humans, but because of systems of capitalism and privilege.  It’s easy to remain compliant to the oppression of others when we think that good is a limited or finite resource.  It’s also easy to keep us in the endless loop of buying shit we don’t need, the foundation of capitalism, when we’re consistently told to be unsatisfied with where we are.  Many industries (including wellness), consciously and unconsciously market to our insecurities, fears, and doubts, profiting from the idea of a limited amount of good.

However, if we are serious about building a more beautiful world, we need to be able to accept the beautiful as it arrives, and as it is born.  Change does not just happen to us, but through us, so there is always the simultaneous work of transforming our communal systems while birthing a new way of being within.

You cannot feel bad enough to feel good.  We cannot suffer enough to free others.  And no structure, system, politician, or person can take your pain away from you until you are ready to heal (pain arising from toxic systems is a little different – more on this in a coming post).

While our rage, pain, and grief need space to be honoured, felt, and experienced, as organising principles they frequently end up recreating themselves as opposed to the desired outcome of transformation.

Experiencing our desired outcome – wholeness, liberation, safety – and being open to infinite possibilities of good, while we are working to shift the outer structures has a power that pain-based organising does not possess.

I want to be extra clear on this though, accepting and deliberately cultivating feelings of good in our lives does not mean closing our eyes to injustice, pain, or oppression (to deny that oppression or injustice exists and the forms it takes is not only morally wrong, but the easiest way to perpetuate it).  Ignorance is not the path I’m talking about.

However, if we are not open to the possibility of truly experiencing what it is we seek as we seek it, if we have shut ourselves off from it, how are we expecting to receive it when it arrives? How do we generate and cultivate the experience for others?

Are we allowing the beautiful to be born or are we shunning it away?  What does the good look like in your world?

TOOLS FOR THE ABOVE WORK:

  • What does the good look like in your world? Good shows up in countless ways, including love, joy, pleasure, freedom, compassion, wholeness, healing, fun, laughter, beauty, awe and just feeling damn good. What does it look like in your day-to-day experience? Can you immediately identify areas of your life where good isn’t present?
  • Watch your words. Words have power, or at least the energy we attach to them does.  Spend three days this week watching the way you speak, and write down any possible limiting beliefs that come up (common ones include, ‘it’ll never happen’, ‘with my luck’, ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘I’ve got to be realistic, ‘no-one cares’)
  • Watch your thoughts. Mindfulness and meditation as regular practices help us learn to do this.  In much the same way we watch our words, we begin to watch our thoughts.  Set a timer for once an hour during a different 3 days to the above (or else you can get overwhelmed with watching and tune out), and as it goes off just notice what you’ve been thinking about, and write it down.  Notice any judgments that come up, or feelings of envy, jealousy, lack, being unsupported etc.
  • Watch your actions.  Same principle.  Except we’re also looking at the underlying reason we perform our actions.  Actions can mean anything from the decisions we make, the purchases we buy, the gifts we give.  Ask ourselves was this decision or this action coming from a place of knowing there is enough good for me to experience? Or did it come from a place of lack, or not-having?  Was there any pain or strong emotions influencing this?
  • Dream Bigger. When we don’t think there is enough good in the world, it becomes hard to imagine a life and world in which there is enough.  Scarcity and lack are built into our current systems, yet nature (naturally, without our help) operates in abundance.  We are products of the natural world, abundance is our birthright.  What would infinite good look like for you? Not blind utopian thinking, but a belief that you are enough and can have enough.  Would your work and activism supporting people look different from this lens? Would you approach it in the same way, and do the same work?

Let me know your thoughts on this – I’d love to hear from you.

Interested in changemaker coaching? Work with me. 

NB: For more brilliant work on pleasure activism which runs along a similar line, see adrienne maree brown.

Frameworks of Care: A Guide to Values Led Decisions

Frameworks of Care: A Guide to Values Led Decisions

In a conversation with a friend recently I was asked my opinion on the Australian Government’s response (or failure of, rather) to assist the thousands of Australians stranded overseas, who have not been able to come home for close to a year due to our closed borders, arrival limits and quarantine caps.

While I’m grateful for all the methods above which have kept Australia a unique almost COVID-free paradise in the world right now, I also feel that we cannot leave our own citizens (or anyone, but that’s another story) stranded in an indefinite limbo because of a failure of imagination or lack of political will to allow people home.  That to do so was also a detriment to those of us here, a demonstration of how little we collectively demonstrate care.

Listening to her I was surprised to learn that she felt differently– that the best and most appropriate option was not to charter flights for them or increase quarantine capacity – but rather the primary goal must be to keep the majority safe, even if it meant others were left stranded.

I felt this visceral pulling back in my body until I realised our frameworks for values-based decisions – how we decide what is most important – were different.  We all have frameworks we work our decisions through, influenced by our upbringing, our spiritual beliefs, our scarcity beliefs, our political beliefs and a thousand other factors.  Some of us choose our frameworks consciously, others form unexamined over the years, but all they are in essence is a collection of values and beliefs that we run our decisions and ideas through.spiritual tools for activists and changemakers

Unconscious frameworks are usually made up of the lies we’ve been sold throughout life, usually things along the lines of there isn’t enough, or to be afraid of ‘the other’, or we need to fight to keep what we have, that humans are greedy or naturally bad somehow – they’re based on unconscious (and often unhelpful) belief systems. Intentional frameworks are based on values – virtues we want to embody, and want our choices to reflect.

The frameworks that we use at a personal level also exist at the political and collective level – a set of values through which we make decisions.  Most western countries, including Australia, use a toxic framework, based on prioritising endless economic growth, retaining power, and perpetuating unexamined biases and prejudices.  Most of our current political frameworks lack imagination and prioritise nationalism, fear, and the illusion of security over care, generosity, and a spirit of compassion.

A few years ago I visited Bhutan, a tiny Himalayan Kingdom to learn more about its framework of Gross National Happiness.  At its simplest (and I promise it is more complex than this description), GNH is a framework their Government uses to make its decisions based on creating the conditions for happiness for its people.  Decisions run through a series of questions and scenarios to understand what is in the highest good of its people and land, and to determine the best course of action.

More recently I have been learning about the New Bottom Line from the Network of Spiritual Progressives –a framework of care that looks to shift us away from the old bottom line of profit above all else, to one that judges success by the extent to which our systems maximise justice, peace, and compassion.

So how do we begin to explore the framework we want for our own lives and choices, as well as our communities and governments?

Decision frameworks essentially come down to values – what defining value do you want to embody? Is it care, happiness, compassion, truth, justice, safety, something else completely?  Write out what this value means to you, what it would look like in real-life situations, whether that’s a relationship conflict, or a community decision of how we act together.  What would it look like in its most radical form?

What questions would we then need to ask to ensure we’re embodying this value? Who is impacted by these decisions, and how? Is this value one that aligns with their wellbeing?

We can go further too – what additional values would we want to be covering?  Who shares these values with us, and how would we explain them to others?

For me, I try to base my decisions around care, and if care is not possible, to at least minimise my participation in violence or harm.  Care by my definition is not exclusionary, it doesn’t pick and choose some people over others.  Radical care offers compassion and generosity within its toolkit, as well as accountability and justice.

From a wider lens, Australia – and other western countries – have more need to embody a framework of care than elsewhere, a balancing act long overdue after centuries of our moral neglect at the impact of colonisation, violence, and ecological destruction.  Our current guiding frameworks are deprived of an emotional robustness and lack the imagination that we humans are capable of.

I want to be clear though that embodying our values or changing our decision frameworks isn’t about perfection – it isn’t about being conflict-free, or making everyone happy, or some sort of utopia.  In the case of my example above, realising we were using different frameworks allowed me to be more mindful of my reaction, to cultivate more empathy and understanding as opposed to judgment.   It’s about aligning our vision of the world to our daily lives and community practices.  It doesn’t guarantee success or change everyone else’s opinions or beliefs – but it does begin to sow the seeds of a new world into reality.

Interested in exploring how you’re able to help the world? Check out coaching for changemakers and activists here

I’m Back…

I’m Back…

Spiritual work for a more beautiful worldspiritual tools for activists and changemakers

It seems a bit silly sharing this, but after 8 months away from this page it seems incongruous to simply start posting again without addressing the absence.  

Have you ever felt a calling from somewhere deep inside you?  I have, countless times.  Oftentimes I’ve followed it – it’s led me on great adventures, travelling the world and living overseas, and also to some beautiful romances, including with my current partner who I adore. Other times though, I’ve also ignored this voice.  Ignoring it comes with a cost because it never really goes away, it stays there like a constant reminder of what you know you must be doing and yet are refusing to do.  

I spent many years afraid to share my real voice, to use language and terms that matter to me.  My work has always been spiritual in nature, and although I’ve skirted around it, I’ve also been terrified to say this.  To publicly use words like God or The Universe, or to express my belief in our fundamental goodness or the radical power of love filled me with anxiety.  I was afraid that as soon as I spoke of a deeper way, of a relationship we can cultivate with something larger than ourselves, of its role (life’s role?) in changemaking, that I would be discredited or my work de-valued.   

Many years ago, in my formative teenage years, I had (more than a couple) of stints in a psych ward.  It’s still hard to explain what led me there, but my rage was so all-consuming at that time that I couldn’t see beyond it, and I was, by well-meaning people, often told I was crazy or not normal, that my perception must be warped.  I internalised this message that there is something wrong with me, and that to see the world in a different way was dangerousand risked a deep rejection.  

It’s been 15 years since this time I am still deeply afraid of being seen as crazy.  Embracing more spiritual work has meant facing this fear.  It’s also meant facing the fear that I may not be good enoughand having the audacity to go beyond the doubts of who am I to do this work?”, to teach when I have so much still to learn.   

And so here I am. 

This blog, this page, and the courses and work to follow, are lessons I have learnt and am often still learning.  I do not profess to be perfect, but I do strive to be a living example of the work create and teach.

spiritual tools for activists and changemakers

I believe that humanity is at a choice-point.  We have a choice where we collectively go from here.  We can face our pain, our trauma, our fears, our grief, our power and our privilege, and reckon with the uncomfortableness it demands, to move toward a future that is bolder, more beautiful and more whole.

Or, we can sit in the (dis)comfort of living as we are, ignoring the warning signs given to us every day.  We may delay the inevitable, we may avoid the sharp pains of un-numbing ourselves to our past and present, but the dull, monotonous ache of ignoring life’s callings will continue, and the numbness will be sure to snub our joy and wonder before it does our pain.  

The choice is ours – and I mean that, for you, personally, reading this.  This choice-point isn’t just a collective decision that we have no power in, no agency over.  We make this decision in our own lives every day.  Each one of us is a piece in a jigsaw puzzle, and what we do matters.  How we live, how we honour that which is inside us, how willingly we listen, how truthfully we face reality…the choice is always ours.  

I am an activist and changemaker.  I believe firmly in the power of civil disobedience, non-violence and protest. And yet I also know that the transformative change we seek will not just come from a change in policy or Government, but rather requires of us a radical change of being, a reconnection to our hearts and to each other.   

This page, this work, is spiritual work for a more beautiful world.   

I hope this work and the tools you will soon find are useful.  

Laura

PS: Questions, feedback and topics for discussion can be sent to me through socials and here