Beyond Survival, Holiday Guide

Before the Gathering (Preparation):

1. Map Your Default Role - Write down the role you typically play in family dynamics (maybe...hero, scapegoat, peacekeeper, invisible one, rebel or simply the qualities of your role). Just naming it reduces its power over you.

2. Create Your Circuit Breaker - Choose one pattern you want to interrupt. Just one. Maybe it's saying setting boundaries and saying "no." Practice your alternative response out loud, alone, 10 times before you go. Your nervous system needs the rehearsal.

3. Build Your Courage Buddy - Identify one friend or family member who might be ready for change too. Text them: Will you be my courage buddy for the holiday. Can I text you everytime I disrupt “x” pattern and will you celebrate with me.  Then, ask if they want to do the same for themselves. Courage is stronger with a witness - and it helps your brain  change faster.

During the Gathering (Remember the 72-Hour Threshold):

1. The Bathroom Reset - When you feel yourself slipping into old patterns (and you will), excuse yourself. In the bathroom, do 5 slow breaths with longer exhales. This reset literally tells your nervous system: "We're safe enough to try something new."

2. The Pattern Interrupt - When the familiar dynamic starts (Mom criticizes, Dad withdraws, sibling deflects), try ONE different response. Maybe it's silence instead of defending. Maybe it's "That's interesting" instead of arguing. Small disruptions create big ripples.

3. Conflict as Connection - When conflict arises (not if, when), try saying: "This feels important. Can we slow down and really hear each other?" You're not avoiding conflict—you're dancing with it.

After the Gathering (Integration):

1. The Debrief That Matters - Within 24 hours, write down: Where did I activate? Where did I stay present? No judgment, just data. Your nervous system is learning.

2. Celebrate the Tiny Wins - Did you pause for 3 seconds before responding once? That's a new neural pathway being born. Your brain needs you to acknowledge it.

The Non-Negotiables:

• You cannot do this alone. Your brain won't let you.

• Progress isn't linear. You'll regress. That's not failure—it's data.

• Small disruptions create big changes. Don't try to transform everything all at once.

• When you change your dance, you give everyone permission to change theirs.

Remember: You're not broken. Your patterns aren't character flaws. They're just neural highways that served you once. Now you're building new roads. It takes time. It takes practice. It takes courage.

And courage, thankfully, is contagious.

Start with one step. Just one. Your nervous system—and everyone connected to it—will thank you.

Courage is Contagious, too

When Courage Becomes as Contagious as Fear: Dancing with Nervous Systems…

Your patterns, Your family patterns, Your organization's patterns—the ones driving you crazy, the ones depleting you, the ones creating burnout, the ones you swear you'll change but somehow never do—they're not accidents. They're defaults - the patterns you organically reinforce without intentional disruption.  These familiar patterns are like highways in your brain, and in the brains around you. And here's the kicker: your brain regresses to these highways or old patterns under conditions that should feel opposite but aren't— stress AND familiarity. This is ideal if you like the patterns and want to keep them, but can feel like torture if you have worked hard to change them and have been seeing results. 

The Physics of It All

From a physics perspective, integrity means all parts working together in unified coherence. When we push out parts—voices, truths, uncomfortable realities—we're not necessarily morally compromised (though maybe that too). We're structurally unsound.

Those pushed-out parts? They become your blindspots. And, blindspots are naughty because they sneak up on you. They're the things you defend before you even know what you're defending. Or the things you react to before you even realize you are reacting. Like when someone suggests changing a holiday tradition or meeting time and everyone gets instantly defensive but can't explain why. (Spoiler: rebellion of “x” is still a reaction, because on its own it is not, yet, creation of something new.)

For the Change Agents I work with…

If you are drawn to work with me you are committed to changing patterns in yourself as well as the lives and world around you for the better...everyone I work with is a change agent. 

Now let's be real about care and social change work. It is undervalued and systematically exploited in a capitalistic society in order to maintain focus on material things and to maintain fear.  Non-profits, for example, by their legal design are literally organized for burnout. Underpaid because "mission." Overworked because "passion." Scrutinized on spending while being asked to save the world on fumes. This is often true for any adjacent social change or caregiving profession. 

So how do we start building new paths for social change, and working together. We need to plant seeds inside what already exists to build something new. We can’t for example, just shift from capitalism to mutual aid, we have to build bridges even beyond what benefits mutual aid offers from our current structures to new structures. This on an individual level means, for example, a lot of change agents need to adjust their relationship to money and the value of their work in the current system to create a new one. This also means we need to practice building community and collaboration in new and sustainable ways to co-create new foundations for these new patterns and new structures!

The Uncomfortable Truth About Collaboration

Here's what nobody wants to hear: You cannot collaborate without participating in conflict.

From a physics perspective, collaboration requires all parts. If we're avoiding conflict, we're excluding parts. Pushing them out. Creating blindspots. Losing structural integrity.

The trouble is we are not taught to do this and don’t even know where to begin, even when we know there is a challenge to address.

Your Practice Ground

You need a space to experiment where:

• You can BE curious and grow “data” on patterns

• New patterns can be tried without perfection

• Conflict can happen and be practiced

• Your nervous system can activate without YOU abandoning ship

• Your not doing it alone. You are sharing and celebrating one another’s little steps

• Someone holds the container so you don't snap back to the default that isn't working

Because here's the thing about disrupting patterns: The familiar will ALWAYS pull you back. Always. It's not a moral failing. It's physics. It's neuroscience. It's being human. So we have to make the new patterns familiar through repetition in every part of our life. 

What Actually Creates Change

You know what doesn't work? Trying to think your way into new patterns while your nervous system is hijacked. Under activation, you WILL regress to patterns you learned before age three. Not because you're weak. Because you're human with a human brain.

What does work?

1. Recognize the activation is coming Both under stress AND in familiar settings. It's not if, it's when.

2. Build your dirt paths with repetition New neural pathways need practice. Again and again and again. Until they're strong enough to compete with the highways.

3. Get external support You cannot see your own blindspots (that's literally what makes them blindspots). You need someone outside your system's activation pattern to hold the container while you try new moves.

4. Make courage contagious When you change your pattern, you create permission for everyone to change theirs. 

The Dancing Lesson

Those "problematic" patterns? They're not enemies to defeat. They're dance partners showing you where your nervous system is stuck.

The question isn't: How do we eliminate our dysfunction?

The question is: How do we develop the agility to dance with whatever comes?

Because if we can learn to dance with activation—to be with it, face it, move with it—we can do anything. Even transform systems that insist on their own sickness with the patterns they depend on. Your nervous system agility becomes everyone’s possibility.

Togethe, we can make courage more contagious than fear.

The Non-Negotiables:

• You cannot do this alone. Your brain won't let you.

• Progress isn't linear. You'll regress. That's not failure—it's data.

• Small disruptions create big changes. Don't try to transform everything all at once.

• When you change your dance, you give everyone permission to change theirs.

Remember: You're not broken. Your patterns aren't character flaws. They're just highways that served you once. Now you're building new roads. It takes time. It takes practice. It takes courage.

Beyond Survival, Holiday Guide

Before the Gathering (Preparation):

1. Map Your Default Role - Write down the role you typically play in family dynamics (maybe...hero, scapegoat, peacekeeper, invisible one, rebel or simply the qualities of your role). Just naming it reduces its power over you.

2. Create Your Circuit Breaker - Choose one pattern you want to interrupt. Just one. Maybe it's saying setting boundaries and saying "no." Practice your alternative response out loud, alone, 10 times before you go. Your nervous system needs the rehearsal.

3. Build Your Courage Buddy - Identify one friend or family member who might be ready for change too. Text them: Will you be my courage buddy for the holiday. Can I text you everytime I disrupt “x” pattern and will you celebrate with me.  Then, ask if they want to do the same for themselves. Courage is stronger with a witness - and it helps your brain  change faster.

During the Gathering (Remember the 72-Hour Threshold):

1. The Bathroom Reset - When you feel yourself slipping into old patterns (and you will), excuse yourself. In the bathroom, do 5 slow breaths with longer exhales. This reset literally tells your nervous system: "We're safe enough to try something new."

2. The Pattern Interrupt - When the familiar dynamic starts (Mom criticizes, Dad withdraws, sibling deflects), try ONE different response. Maybe it's silence instead of defending. Maybe it's "That's interesting" instead of arguing. Small disruptions create big ripples.

3. Conflict as Connection - When conflict arises (not if, when), try saying: "This feels important. Can we slow down and really hear each other?" You're not avoiding conflict—you're dancing with it.

After the Gathering (Integration):

1. The Debrief That Matters - Within 24 hours, write down: Where did I activate? Where did I stay present? No judgment, just data. Your nervous system is learning.

2. Celebrate the Tiny Wins - Did you pause for 3 seconds before responding once? That's a new neural pathway being born. Your brain needs you to acknowledge it.

The Non-Negotiables:

• You cannot do this alone. Your brain won't let you.

• Progress isn't linear. You'll regress. That's not failure—it's data.

• Small disruptions create big changes. Don't try to transform everything all at once.

• When you change your dance, you give everyone permission to change theirs.

Remember: You're not broken. Your patterns aren't character flaws. They're just neural highways that served you once. Now you're building new roads. It takes time. It takes practice. It takes courage.

And courage, thankfully, is contagious.

Start with one step. Just one. Your nervous system—and everyone connected to it—will thank you.

Building trust and mystery practices

Mystery is something that is difficult or impossible to understand…but it is also part of what hope and faith are rooted in, especially in the face of uncertainty or things deeply outside of our control. How do you navigate mystery, after you have done all the tangible things you can do and thought through all the logical approaches? In what ways do you trust or mistrust yourself or others when things feel uncertain, out of your control or even hopeless? How are you leaning more into mystery?

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Three foundations, I was taught…

In 2012, I interviewed tons of young people and young parents who had been through the foster care system. Through my interviews, they all predominately told me three things as advice, which they would tell expecting young parents:

1. Learn how to believe in yourself

2. Develop a belief in something bigger

3. Build a community of support around you

I have found that the wisdom these young parents shared with me translates to everyone and every family I have ever known. Since then, I've been cultivating this in my own life, too. I have also woven these principles into the fabrics of every program, every organization I've started, and also every family or individual I have worked with as a coach.

I was reminded of these three pieces of advice while having dinner with a dear friend, in her 80’s. For context, she has been part of my chosen family—like a mother to me since I was 18. She and her daughter Elise, who had developmental disabilities, raised me through some of the most formative years of my twenties. I worked with them for over 10 years, and they became part of my heart. I'd like to think I became part of theirs, too.

While we were at dinner, she told me many stories and regularly referenced three words: mystery, possibilities, and curiosity. The focus was on how to teach these themes, or, in my words, allow them to be experienced and transferable to others. 

While the three foundations I was taught are interconnected with each other, they also seem to weave between the words my friend shared. The belief in something bigger becomes mystery. The belief in yourself and building community through relationships becomes curiosity and possibilities. From my perspective, they all involve building trust in intimacy with self, others and something bigger, all while trusting in timing.

Do you trust yourself? How did you learn to? Do you trust a bigger force holds you? What do you believe in?  And, do you trust others and yourself with others in community?

Rebuilding Trust in Yourself

Noticing your nervous system response is key to rebuilding trust with yourself.  Oftentimes we are taught to override our body and our emotional responses to things. We are taught not to trust ourselves and our intuitive gut. We are taught to push through, force, or ignore. We are told what we are feeling is not allowed or not true. But if we stop ignoring the messages of our nervous system, it gives us a complete map on how to not only better care for ourselves, but also how to rebuild trust with ourselves.

Finding the presence and curiosity of a child can assist in building trust with yourself.  Children or the child inside us show us ways in which we can be so present and delight in the most incredible or mundane of things. Even if as kids we weren't allowed to be kids because of circumstances in our lives, as adults we can choose the opportunity to have that curiosity and that playfulness despite the circumstances. This opens possibilities.

First, we have to get really curious…Notice and recognize what your behaviors are, what your patterns are, and the quality at which you treat yourself along the way. 

Second, establish markers or tells…Find little tells that help you notice the frequency of patterns, behaviors and responses, so you can eventually disrupt them. Maybe it's defensiveness, maybe it's people pleasing, maybe it's abandoning yourself or your own needs, or not even knowing your own needs.

Third, acknowledge and show up for an apology…Actually tell yourself what you are committing to change and let yourself know you will mess up, but you will always come back and show up for repair. I am reminded of a story I heard where a mother hears her daughter say “I love you” (to herself), and then “I love you too” (back to herself.) 

Fourth, creating new pathways through disruption and repetition. When our nervous system hijacks us and puts us into old patterns - like a highway back to what’s familiar or how we learned to respond from our parents or other formative experiences. What we want to do is create little dirt paths of new possibilities by disrupting the old patterns. The more we disrupt and replace old patterns the little dirt paths or new possibilities can become more established through repetition. Then, we have the potential to create more possibilities and actually change our brains in the process.

Trust in Community and Relationships

How we build intimacy and trust in community largely depends on how willing we are to participate in conflict and resolution. Otherwise, we're likely fawning, pleasing, avoiding, or defending/blaming to stay away from conflict and the vulnerability required in repair.

What we want to do is be able to step into repair of conflict and have tools and pathways to do that. When we have mistrust in ourselves on how to handle it—based on past experiences, what people have told us, the delusions other people have told us, the stories they've had about us—it's harder to trust ourselves. We need these check-in moments, these points where we learn how to rebuild that trust in ourselves and while simultaneously building the trust in others. Practicing - bit by bit, over and over again.

Once we have more trust in ourselves, we have something more to stand on, but we have to keep practicing. Trust evolves and grows, it doesn’t just appear and with time it helps us build the deeper intimacy we want in our relationships and connections. It allows us to receive feedback, recognize our impact and change our behavior. It helps us better handle when people say things that are ouchie or that hurt us, because we can stand in our own self enough that we don't collapse and can instead listen.

If we collapse, we lose presence with the feelings that other people are having or sharing. All feelings are valid. What I'm feeling and what you're feeling—they're both true. But, that means how we talk about them can’t be in blame or defense. It's acknowledging that they're all true, and asking: How do you both move forward with this rebuilding trust, without betraying yourself or the other person? How do you show up in repair?

Mystery of Something Bigger

After talking with my friend, I was left with this question: How do we teach the mystery of trusting in something bigger?

I think where I see it held the most is in faith—in how we develop a sense of spiritual practice, how we believe in something bigger than ourselves. It doesn't have to be in the constructs of church, it doesn't have to be facilitated by someone. It could be a mystery practice, as a way to navigate what you can’t control. 

I felt the something that is bigger when my friend told me about meeting monks. She talked about how they exuded this peace, this energy, this way about them—a resonance of truth. I felt what she was talking about, but I didn't quite have the words. She told me that they had this beautiful container with two dice in it, and rolling the dice represented participating with the mystery of life.

What does faith look like to you? What does our own spiritual or mystery practice look like? How do you draw hope and faith from believing in something bigger, whether it's nature, or God(s), or quantum physics?

Trusting Something Bigger

It's vulnerable to connect to yourself. Its vulnerable to connect with others. It's vulnerable to connect with what you really desire in the world, and what you really feel about the world around you. It's vulnerable to put something out into the world that might get rejected or that you might not get. It’s vulnerable to have hope and trust.

In that rebuilding of trust with ourselves, we can lean into the mystery of life, the uncertainty of life, and build a trust in the unknown. And, vice versa, we can also find the support, and community we need to do it over and over again. 

Making Vicarious Trauma Less Contagious

When have you experienced vicarious trauma or when have you experienced your nervous system activating in response to the activation of another nervous system’s activation? What were the symptoms? How did you know it was happening? What support did you seek out?

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How to make vicarious trauma less contagious and break the rippling habits fear creates? 

Years ago my supervisor at a mental health organization reprimanded me for not spending time with the other therapists in the break areas. I remember bluntly telling her that I wanted to spend time connecting with the other therapists, but there was too much vicarious trauma. She quickly retorted, saying the organization does regular vicarious trauma trainings. 

The organization did have mandatory vicarious trauma trainings, but they were not enough.  All of the therapists worked with families with children under 18, who were struggling with overlapping interpersonal trauma, community trauma and immigration trauma. It was too much trauma for one therapist and their supervisor to hold without becoming vicariously traumatized. Vicarious trauma is tricky it spreads through every crack in systems, relationships and individuals. We all needed many more layers of support. 

I asked if we could build the layers of support that worked in other organizations I’d been part of to dissipate the effects of vicarious trauma, but they declined. This mental health organization had an old school hierarchical model and because I was new - they did not want any suggestions on shifting the way they managed vicarious trauma.  Unfortunately, if ignored - vicarious trauma spreads more easily and devastatingly, spinning the whole organization into survival mode.

What my supervisor didn’t know is that I had spent many years creating programs and trainings that supported anyone and everyone to navigate the vicarious trauma inherent with working with children and adults who had experienced abuse and violence, with crisis hotlines, with substance abuse as well as often connected with work with houseless youth and adults, and with foster youth. There was a rape crisis hotline I stayed with for 10 years as a volunteer, becasue we managed vicarious trauma so well. In my experience volunteers were getting better support and training than professional therapists because of the willingness to acknowledge the impacts of vicarious trauma. 

The unwillingness to acknowledge the ripple effects of vicarious trauma and build systems that truly mitigated against it  in mental health organizations caused me to break away to start an organization that could.  I was determined to build an organization that could be a model for organizations on how to dissipate the impacts of trauma and vicarious  trauma by the way it was designed like I had seen done successfully through some volunteer programs.

Building a model that disrupts the spreading of vicarious trauma…

Since vicarious Trauma is contagious, and spreads just like the flu. It means someone gets exposed to a traumatic story. The story lives in them. Makes their body feel that the world is more unsafe. Every time the story is retold the vicarious trauma spreads. One nervous system tells another nervous system to be on high alert. To activate. And, then that body brings that fear everywhere it goes - at home exposing partners, children and loved ones without even having to share the story. When the story has seeped into the cracks of us enough, we know because it has changed our mood, made us irritable, or anxious or numb, or depressed or ashamed or hopeless and our family soaks this up through us.  Just like when we are exposed to the flu - we need various layers of protection and ways of navigating infection on an individual and collective level in order to truly contain it. Unfortunately, few organizations or businesses prioritize this multi-layered type of buffer for their practitioners or participants, they simply make it an issue an individual needs to address themself. 

In the current landscape of rampant fear and uncertainty for providers working with individuals experiencing trauma - new type of organizational structure is more important than ever. We need to draw from more success stories on how to build an organization with a structure that inherently dismantles vicarious trauma. This isn’t a pipe dream. We did it with the organization Hatch Community, serving individuals and families with significant trauma and using structures to effectively weave “trauma informed” into the fabric of an organization. This model is nothing like you have experienced in other trainings with vicarious trauma. It creates structures of sustainability for the work by buffering the employees, instead of making it their issue to navigate alone. The structure tends to the business nervous system in order to subsequently care for every individual, their family/chosen family and anyone they could expose. The reason this works is our nervous systems can alert one another to safety as much as to danger, we just have to create environments that break the habits of fear and vicarious trauma from spreading to make this a possibility.

Where to start?

For you…

1. Identify symptoms of an activated nervous system…(The symptoms for trauma and vicarious trauma overlap) - Don’t pretend you are okay or can handle it. 

   1. Emotional: anxiety, depression, anger, and numbness 

   2. Physical symptoms: sleep disturbances, panic attacks, and chronic pain

   3. Behavioral changes: social withdrawal, irritability, hypervigilance, and substance abuse

   4. Cognitive symptoms: difficulty concentrating, loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities, and a distorted sense of meaning

2. Track your nervous system activity and prioritize its health and agility: Take breaks. Make Space in your schedule. Not everyone has the luxury of not living in survival mode. If you do, choose to. It will support everyone around you. 

3. Consistent Self-care, daily rituals not a one-off event. 

4. Reach out for support - I can help you learn how to do the work you care deeply about without taking on all the trauma. 

For your family and chosen family…

1. Get really honest with yourself and identify how others are being impacted by your vicarious trauma. 

2. Separate your work and your home life. Completely. This is the equivalent of don’t expose them to the flu. 

3. Pause between work and family interactions: Take a shower. Take a walk. Pause at the door of your house or home office room - every time you walk through it and leave everything on the other side of the door, protecting your partner, your kids, your loved ones or your roommates from exposure. 

4. Reach out for support - I can help you to learn how to not take trauma home to your family. It’s not worth the cost to any of you.  

For your work…

1. Have the hard conversations with supervisors or develop a team to build in new structures and systems that better support you and by design dissipate vicarious trauma. 

2. Identify small steps that can be taken immediately to acknowledge that vicarious trauma is an issue. Then, begin to identify steps for change. 

3. Reach out - I can help create an innovative and individualized approach for your business, organization or program to both identify where vicarious trauma is showing up and how to address it. 

The current political climate has demanded that we amplify the support for ALL organizations, especially those on the frontline. The heightened degree of vicarious trauma demands NEW levels of systemic, relational and individual support structured within organizations, even more so for organizations who are advocating for populations directly targeted by the current administration. We can’t do this alone. 

Conflict and Co-Regulation

How do you feel about conflict? How do you respond to it? Do you typically avoid active conflict? Or, are you comfortable with conflict, even heated debate? Do you use conflict as a way to agree and disagree in order to find compromise? How often do you participate with conflict towards repair and resolution with your colleagues, friends, partners, family or children?

Our childhood family was the first group we were part of and it creates the initial nervous system map at which we navigate groups and conflict throughout our life. It is where we first learn co-regulation. As humans, our nervous systems co-regulate in relationship. This means we decide whether we are safe or not both by how we individually feel and how the people around us feel. The challenge is that feelings are not often linear or logical. If someone’s nervous system around us is in fight, flight or freeze, it tells our nervous system there is danger present and we need to be alert. It does not matter if this is perceived or real danger. In the most extreme case, this is why vicarious trauma can be more contagious than the flu. But, our nervous system doesn’t need to be traumatized to be activated. We can feel unstable, unsafe and unsteady from the smallest of changes in our environment or relationships especially if they have negative associations with experiences from our past. 

Are you curious how co-regulation and conflict resolution are related? We learn to co-regulate in response to dis-ease and ease, to disconnection and connection, to challenge and opportunity - all reflecting a type of conflict and resolution. Conflict resolution requires a dance between the co-regulation of care for self and care for others. If we tend to avoid conflict, we can co-regulate by merging, pleasing, withdrawing or not participating (all abandoning the self or other) as opposed to more adaptively co-regulating by including care for yourself and others, finding shared compromise, repair and deeper connection.  

We live in a society that promotes self-growth and dyadic repair in partnership or relationship, but does not as often recognize the importance of community and group support for co-regulation. When it is a 1:1 relationship activating our nervous system, conflict resolution is necessary to find a way for both nervous systems to co-regulate in an adaptive way as opposed to a historically patterned (no longer useful) way. The possibility for resolution and change is dependent on the strategies of the nervous systems of the 2 individuals involved. In contrast, when we are in a group of 3 or more, there are more possibilities in a nervous system response because of the varying adaptabilities and resiliencies of each individual within the group. As a result, in groups our nervous systems can learn to co-regulate with more possibilities, allowing for greater adaptability for each individual. 

If we apply co-regulation to kids, the saying “it takes a village to raise a child” comes to mind. If our children are raised by parents, chosen family, fairy god parents, aunties, uncles and community - they develop more adaptive nervous systems. However, this requires conflict resolution because there are inevitably different styles of parenting/authroity, co-regulation and connection. If parents don’t have opportunities to share parenting, than kids often have their parents as their main co-regulators. This is a big ask on individual parent nervous systems. Therefore, beyond self care, support groups for co-parenting and learning conflict resolutions skills are the necessary practice for how to build communities of belonging and repair around kids and families. 

We often re-create the original dynamics of our original group, our childhood family. We do this over and over again in friends, work and even the families we create,  until we develop new more adaptive possibilities through new experiences. Group work expedites the possibility for change because it offers our nervous system a chance to experience and practice more possibilities at once. 

CHANGES in my work…

Moving forward I will be offering more group opportunities with more limited availability for one on one work. If you are curious about group work, have never done it, and feel like you need more information to feel open to it…please reach out for a chat.

Disrupting Money Scarcity and Time Oppression with Asking for Help

Does your nervous system feel at ease receiving from others? How do you feel about asking for help? Does it come easy, feel scary, maybe too vulnerable or do you pride yourself on having it all handled? Who do you hold and who holds you?

Asking for help is directly related to our relationship to giving and receiving. If we are more identified as givers, asking is often perceived as too vulnerable or weakness. This perception helps us to deflect receiving and stay under-resourced inside our comfort zones. Comfort zones are what our brain finds familiar, not what is most beneficial for us. But what if those who are not asking for help are also taking something vital from their community? Interdependence.

I read a book a while back called “Happy Money” by Ken Honda. Some of the big take aways: 1) gratitude when we are BOTH giving and receiving money. 2) wealth is measured by the community we have around us 3) our relationship to how we give and receive money stems from how we learned to navigate both money and intimacy in our relationships in childhood. 

His approach to money caught my attention for a few reasons. I was not always acknowledging the gratitude that can accompany spending or giving money. The wealth of community around us hit me profoundly because of my values of building community support for one another and shared resource. And, I resonated with his relational perspectives around our childhoods. I am personally continuously metabolizing new aspects of my own childhood and committed to disrupting patterns that no longer serve me as well as supporting families and individuals to do the same. Together - building new neuropathways, new adaptive patterns, and better ways to care for ourselves and one another.

 This month a member of my community and chosen family needed financial support for a kiddo to continue to participate in a summer theater performance. This program lit this little one up and it broke my heart she had been studying her part in the play and may not be able to perform. I felt really frustrated I didn’t have the ability to give them the financial support they needed, but I just couldn’t do it on my own. I reached out to my community and asked to see if everyone could make a small donation. I had tears in my eyes when without hesitation, donations flooded in. One of the elders in my community made a donation and simply said “it truly takes a community.” 

How do we create even more interdependence, especially with valuing intergenerational community?

Along side the obstacle of money scarcity is time oppression. There are so many things demanding our time and pulling us in every direction. It is nearly impossible to navigate both the constant input of information and the asks of us. It seems that even if there is a value for interdependence and community care there is rarely enough time to do it. As a result, we often sacrifice care for others or ourselves in the ways we most need because we don’t have the time. How can we use moments to disrupt time oppression and be more present with ourselves and one another?

A few ideas:

1) Disrupt money scarcity…Practice saying thank you and feeling gratitude when you give and receive money (from Ken Honday)

3) Disrupt Time Oppression: Create space or Pauses. Moments to soak in all that is around you and be present. Look up at the trees. Put your feet in the dirt. Smile at someone. Celebrate a child or friend. Find your breathe.

3) Start a Receiving Journal. Write down everything you receive in a day to digest it and let in what you are grateful for in the moments of your life.

4) Practicing asking for help. Start small. Do it everyday!

I’d love to know what works for you…How can you disrupt money scarcity and time oppression? How can you lean into interdependence? What stops you and what helps?

Care as a Practice

Where are you being radically honest with yourself and others? How are you caring for yourself by also caring for others? How are you inviting repair in conflict? What are you doing to gather more with others and build community around you?

Someone asked me this past week, why I don’t work as a therapist and why I focused my work more on building peer mentorship programs, systems change, group work and family work. I have a lot of answers for this, so I am always curious what answer will show up in the moment. This time my answer landed here… the foundation of western therapy stems from a value in individualism and I want to build structures towards both individual and collective care.  While therapy is an essential part, we need more pathways towards one another - ways that focus on inviting repair not just boundaries, and more ways that care for self that also incorporate care for others. And…I wanted to spend my life focused on changing systems of oppression - learning and teaching how to better care for ourselves, each other and the world around us, over and over again.

Some thoughts on how to invite more care and repair - to move beyond only setting boundaries to avoid conflict… 

Consent is vital, and so is invitation. As a society, we often think of self-care as a way to take care of ourself - individualistic. But, how do we not abandon ourselves or others? This would mean we need to leave room for messiness while we simultaneously learn our needs, while also learning the needs of others, over and over again. And, it would mean inviting in conflict, in order to find more pathways to repair and resolution, when needs and ways of caring bump into each other.

 Radical honesty. I heard recently “secrets are held lies” and it stuck with me. If we share truths and feelings that we hold with one another, we invite deeper empathy as well as an opportunity to build trust instead of resentment. This requires us to separate the feelings from the meaning or story we have attached to them. These are often paranoias. False stories our mind has convinced us will be true, good or bad, to protect us. But…these stories are not reliable because they stem from wounds from the past. What would radical honesty look like for you?

Acknowledging power dynamics. We all know there are places we all have power and where we don’t, depending on who we are with and the context around us. We have to further shine a light on the places we have power to find our blindspots. They can be hidden in unexpected ways. For example, self-sacrifice or rescuing someone is a sneaky way of taking power because you can justify the taking of power with good intentions. Where can you shine more light on how you navigate the power you hold consciously and less consciously? 

Release resistance. Resistance is like being tied up in a rope that is impossible to get free from. We can toss around like a wild animal. Become more and more activated. More and more exhausted. More and more unable to escape. Or we can find the stillness to accept the circumstance. Which sometimes allows the creativity strategy to get free. Maybe this is why spies, always escape in movies.

Become more open to receiving. We as a culture always want more, but often deflect receiving - not acknowledging what we have or what is being given to us. It’s like walking around in the dark in life trying to shine a light on the things around us, just to get a glimpse and prepare. Sometimes we find people that can help us shine the light on things, and we shut their light off, every time they light up something. And other times, there are hands open to us, giving in big ways to us, and something in us causes us to turn away. How could you receive more and acknowledge your havingness even more?

I would love to know how these little seeds stirred your thoughts. Did I move you towards wanting to get more comfortable with the conflict and repair that true care requires for ourselves, others and the world around us? Or did I move you in another direction? I’d love to know.