Grief Living a Mission Based Life

0:04 All right welcome everybody my name is Emily Barany and you're at Visionality's Building Forward webinar series ... you
0:12 know how we do this it's a hot topic in 25 minutes or less and then we're gonna open it up for
0:18 sharing and questions and comments i am so excited to introduce my colleague
0:23 Kari she and i are gonna talk today about navigating living a mission-based life
0:31 and working in really intense mission-based organizations and dealing with the natural
0:37 grief the unavoidable grief and rage that comes along with
0:42 living in such an emotional environment so Kari welcome i'm so glad to have you
0:49 let's start our our timers our 25 minute timers all right
0:54 so why are we talking about this topic give me give me the highlights give me the
1:00 high level stuff ... yeah well ... the first two things that come to mind
1:06 are ... number one most people who are involved in doing
1:13 mission-based work are doing it for a reason right they're bringing something with them if i'm
1:18 working at a cancer center it's probably i probably chose that work because
1:23 i either i have a complicated health history or i have a family member with a complicated health history if i'm
1:29 working in homeless services often my life has been touched by being unhoused myself or same with recovery right so
1:37 so many people that choose mission-based work are people who are bringing their own
1:42 unmetabolized grief with them so they already have that sort of baseline right
1:48 but the other thing is we don't have any like we suffer collective grief all the
1:54 time but we don't have any collective ways of actually acknowledging it and metabolizing it and
2:03 when we are people who are already bringing unmetabolized grief to our work and then we're compounding that by
2:09 adding more grief and trauma on top of that what we're doing is we're making it actually harder for ourselves
2:17 to function in a way that is not only healthy for us but that is actually going to serve the larger community so i
2:24 think if we don't start having these kinds of conversations especially given the climate change and the covid
2:30 pandemic and all of these other things that are starting to happen ... then we're just we're going to be
2:36 ineffective metabolize grief is not a phrase that
2:42 i've heard before and i love it can you just explain that to me because i think
2:48 it's brilliant yeah so i mean one of the
2:54 descriptions or definitions of trauma is when you have some event that happens to
3:01 you or some you know really painful experience and there's nobody around to kind of help you contextualize it and
3:08 help you understand it and help you figure out like this is not what life is
3:14 supposed to look like or this was an anomaly or ... you know how how can we
3:19 learn from this and move on right and so what happens is we end up just sort of
3:25 storing that and it gets stored in our bodies and our brains as trauma right but when we can
3:32 metabolize that when we can have people around us who can help us figure out how
3:37 to move through that and find a context for it then we can actually almost compost it
3:44 right we can pick out the stuff like where's the good stuff and then where's the stuff that just goes away
3:50 what are what are the the lessons that i get to bring forward to inform my life
3:56 and what is not serving me and i get to release that exactly exactly so we came
4:03 up with this term at Visionality and we call them ghosts and it's when
4:08 you know, I... I think it's maybe synonymous with like a triggering event or or with baggage or something but
4:15 we just decided to call them ghosts where there are moments where we show up
4:22 in ways that maybe are outside of our character or or surprising in some way
4:28 and it what we've found is it often has this tie back to some kind of traumatic
4:33 event in your past can are having ghosts a
4:40 indicator that we still haven't metabolized our trauma fully or is that just part of having a memory and
4:47 existing in life i mean i think there's there's some of both of those things in there right we
4:54 we have to understand that when when people are triggered or they're burned out or they're overwhelmed
5:01 what we're seeing is not someone's personality we're seeing someone's trauma response right so
5:07 for example if i'm if i'm walking down the sidewalk in my neighborhood one afternoon and
5:12 it's getting on ducks dusk and i get mugged on this one particular corner
5:18 right that's a really traumatic event for me that's really scary if i don't find a way to sort of contextualize at
5:25 that and metabolize that not just the like oh now i have to you know take care of my physical injuries and get my new
5:31 driver's license and credit cards and all that stuff but if i don't find a way to sort of contextualize that literally
5:37 every time i walk down that stretch of sidewalk my body is gonna tense right i'm gonna
5:44 remember even though the 600 000 times i walked down that stretch of sidewalk before then and i
5:50 wasn't mugged that didn't register in my body right that's a sign of unmetabolized grief
5:55 it's like oh and so if we can't sort of figure out how to
6:01 reframe what's happening in our nervous system because our brains do this thing it's like i gotta i gotta tell a story
6:06 about that well now my story is that corner is unsafe right but is it
6:12 right right yeah interesting
6:18 yeah and so sadly i think that's what happens a lot with with mission-based employees where it is
6:25 we've got these stories like thousands of them rattling around in our
6:30 heads and they're connected to things that are responding in our bodies right
6:36 and unless and until we can find ways to sort of connect those things and then
6:42 ask the questions is this real is we know this base that i'm operating
6:47 from actually reality and rooted in something that is necessary
6:54 what happens is is we get stuck in this constant loop of fight flight right
6:59 because the story because our brain is your brain is doing exactly what it's supposed to do i'm trying to keep you safe right right
7:06 but when our nervous systems are in that constant fight flight
7:12 we're not able to discern the difference between what's really dangerous and what isn't
7:18 and all our minds know is like i'm gonna default on the side of holy crap watch
7:24 out because the consequences might be too big right yeah
7:30 but we can't work effectively that way we can't function we can't be helpful
7:35 no no and and talk to me too about
Loss Accumulation
7:41 the accumulation of ongoing losses right none of us came into the pandemic
7:48 free of loss free of grief free of rage and so talk to me you know we all came
7:56 into this global experience with our own past and we're now
8:02 going on years of experiencing a collective trauma
8:07 that many of us were expected to just like keep working keep showing up keep acting
8:15 normally like whatever normal is well because everyone's going through it so like why is this an issue for me if
8:22 everyone else can show up for work so talk to me about the accumulation of loss and
8:29 and grief and rage and specifically how things are different when it's
8:36 a global shared experience yeah so
8:41 sadly we have these sort of collective these sort of social
8:47 contracts around grief right we have we've decided ... there are certain rules and around
8:55 around grief what's acceptable which kinds of things are acceptable to grieve and which ones aren't how long you're allowed to grieve something and not
9:02 ... and generally those things i mean all of those rules
9:07 come from patriarchy capitalism colonialism and white supremacy right i mean that's what
9:12 this country was built on so that's what all the social contracts are built on right and and one of the main tenets of
9:20 all of those sort of pillars of our society is individualism
9:28 so we tend to frame mental health burdens as individual no
9:33 matter what without recognizing the collective traits of them and the systemic causes
9:40 so we call for individual responses and place the burden on each individual
9:45 person in order to somehow manage their own traumas on top of continuing to manage your
9:51 workload and continuing to suffer the losses right because we don't have a sense of being
9:57 part of a collective and so this is why when there can be like school shooting after school
10:02 shooting after school shooting our social contract says we're going to be outraged for
10:09 48 hours maybe 72 we're going to sign petitions we're going to post about it on social media
10:15 and then we're going to go back to opening our emails and writing grants and you know doing all of
10:21 these things right and the problem with
10:26 not being able to share those things collectively is not only are we not metabolizing our
10:32 grief but we're not actually able to access our rage and rage is the catalyst for systemic
10:40 change but when we are exhausted when we are burned out when we are operating on just
10:47 like the bare minimum right we're able to complete our jobs because
10:52 that's habit right i know how to answer emails yes i know how to fill out that grant template that you know i know how
10:59 to continue to go to the meeting and mostly look like i'm paying attention but we're defaulting to those old
11:05 systems patriarchy capitalism white supremacy colonialism right we're because that's what we've known our
11:11 whole lives we're not able to think creatively we're not able to access
11:19 what does it feel like to be part of a community and we're not able to to proactively
11:25 imagine what it would look like to have a different system and so yeah when we are
11:32 suffering these sort of compounded losses it's keeping us in this really small
11:38 very confined space and it's also making us believe
11:44 that there's something wrong with me right so how many hundreds of thousands of people have died of covid but i don't
11:52 i can only really be sad about the ones that i knew personally and if that was over a year ago then
11:57 probably i should have already grieved that and i should just really be able to suck it up and get back to doing what i'm doing right
12:08 well i think maybe for the first time in building forward history she's gonna cry
12:13 so let's just hold space for that and i and i want to hold space for our colleague in the chat who is
12:20 shared that they lost both parents on top of pandemic trauma and like
12:25 just name it that what we are collectively enduring is
12:31 unimaginable and it's not fair and it's yeah like
12:37 it's a little too much right like it's a little too much and
12:42 and and i want to bring it back to what you said you know there is
12:49 a written it's there's an unwritten societal expectation that
12:55 grief takes this long and like and and i think that's different for the different
13:01 ... causes of grief and you know i i
13:06 [Music] like to say that pain shouldn't be compared
13:11 and just because something was deeply painful to me based
13:16 on my experience and my outlook and my personality doesn't mean that it might be deeply painful to you but that
13:23 doesn't mean that what i'm feeling is less or you know and it and it is i guess
13:31 you know that's an interesting look on individualism right where it's like let's
13:38 let's make space for each of our let's make space and respect and protect each
13:43 individual's experience and hold space for that and trust them that
13:49 that what they're living is real and valid and enough
13:57 and pair that individual respect
14:03 with the with collective support and collective understanding
14:09 and i'm i'm curious like i say all this
14:16 and still i show up to work every day right and i pull i put up those barriers
14:22 ... around i compartmentalize every single thing that makes me cry in
14:30 the shower after work so that i can be here and have this conversation with you
14:36 and i can sign my next contract and i can make sure payroll happens and i can renew my insurance
14:41 ... and i can get my car fixed and so it's both but i'm not sure how it is both but
14:48 it is both so can you speak a little bit to that and i want to add one nuance
14:55 that i think this is especially impossible to navigate when you are working
15:01 when you're living a mission-based life and when you're working in a mission-based organization
15:06 because we have people that we need to show up for you know and it's
15:14 and maybe their lives depend on it yep absolutely absolutely
15:20 yeah it is a both and it is a i have these individual needs
15:27 and i am part of like i'm part of this system
15:32 right there's this it's not like the vast majority of us
15:39 can just check out of capitalism and patriarchy like we just
15:44 think it's the water we swim in right and i think
15:50 one of the things that we can do that is sort of that they can start to shift things is
15:57 yes we all individually have our own ways that we're gonna
16:03 approach some of these things right and so like for me you know and and for a lot of people anniversaries are a big
16:10 deal right so it's like man the anniversary of my mom's death wow that's gonna hit me really hard whereas i might
16:15 have been functioning pretty well before then right ... but i think in
16:21 as we're finding ways to sort of collectively grieve these things collectively
16:26 create a container that's big enough for us to hold space for everybody one of the game-changing things that we
16:33 can do is see that as part of the normal human experience instead of well i'm going to
16:40 hold space for you with compassion until you get your together and you can
16:46 function at 100 right the thing about especially with mission-based employees i think that is
16:54 a game changer for us is to see that tenderness not as fragility
17:01 but as strength right you come to this mission-based work to do this work because
17:09 you have this passion you have this desire right and there's
17:14 this inner core of rage so i try to you know i describe grief as sadness at all
17:22 of the ways that we all of the things that were lost or all of the ways that we're not able to share
17:28 our gifts whether that's our love with somebody else or you can grieve the loss of a job or whatever right
17:33 rage is the like twin to that that says it didn't have to be this way
17:42 and it should have mattered more yeah right but until we can start to metabolize that grief
17:48 we can't get to that rage and the rage part is the thing that fuels us to make systemic change to say you know what
17:54 you're damn right it didn't have to be this way and once
18:00 we can resource ourselves and recognize that tenderness and that care and that
18:06 sadness as strength then we can start to come together
18:11 collectively and go what will it take to make systemic change but
18:17 as long as we stay in our own little individual silos we're never going to have the resources
18:24 to metabolize that grief enough to get into the powerful place of rage right
18:31 and so and and again what happens when we when we're in that place of not being
18:36 resourced we are just status quo we're complicit with all the old systems we are just like
18:43 keeping up we're just answering the emails we might be like doing one little extra thing every day
18:50 but we're not thinking outside the box we're not blowing stuff up and the fact is
18:57 most people who do mission-based work came to this work because they want to blow stuff up yeah they want to create a
19:02 new paradigm and so the questions i think we need to ask are who are we and how do we show up when
19:08 we're not fully resourced right no judgment no judgment because it's not your fault
19:14 you're not fully resourced right but who who am i and how am i showing up when i'm not fully resourced how am i
19:20 complicit with all of these old systems simply because i'm not fully resourced
19:25 and then the game changer is what would it look like for all of us who are here working in
19:32 this environment to be fully resourced
19:37 so we can go blow some up yeah well and i think in a lot of our
Symptoms not root issues
19:45 work that can look like treating symptoms
19:50 not root issues right and and that's because the symptoms in your
19:56 face you know the cis i'm sorry the symptom the symptoms in your face the symptom is
20:03 often less expensive to take baby steps right
20:10 the sources are those four things that you keep talking about patriarchy capitalism colonialism
20:17 and white supremacy those are big big big big words can you
20:26 break it down for like give me an example of the way each of those show up maybe
20:35 in in my work or in an imaginary organization just so that we can have
20:40 like a just so that we can see it sure i mean one of the things is
20:46 obviously that rugged individualism right that like even within non-profit organizations there's there's this
20:53 hierarchy there's this like you you have to compete with your co-workers
20:58 almost sometimes for resources right and then outside in the larger
21:04 ... system the whole the whole world of like grant writing
21:10 and all of that stuff is that's that's that same thing it's it's this i it's
21:15 the scarcity mentality it's this idea that ... you know there might be five
21:21 great agencies doing work with unhoused people in ventura county but we're gonna make each of those five compete against
21:29 each other for the same limited resources right and and so there's this like
21:35 it's it's power it's hierarchy it is ... not being
21:42 not understanding and accepting and embracing mistakes and failures
21:47 right it's it's wanting status quo we're not you know we're just going to keep doing things the same way over and over
21:53 and over again it's perfectionism it's compartmentalizing like all of those
21:58 things come from those four systems right it's rational linear thinking
22:04 you know as opposed to what if you know
22:09 ... all of those things are and and again all those things are baked into the way
22:15 the vast majority of us were born and raised and so it's hard to imagine
22:22 what what would it even look like well i think it's baked into the way we
22:27 were born and raised and it's intensified when you work in non-profit
22:32 land right and and so like tying it back
22:38 to patriarchy capitalism colonialism and white supremacy right the non-profit
22:44 industry pays less and so in order to afford
22:49 to work at a non-profit you either need to agree to live in poverty
22:54 or you come privileged in in some way
23:02 to this what that ends up looking like is
23:07 i say this as a white lady working in nonprofits it means that lots of white ladies work in nonprofits and that is
23:13 perpetuating patriarchy and white supremacy
23:19 as we maintain capitalism and colonialism which is siphoning wealth to
23:25 the top and then ripping it down yep right
23:31 that is perpetuating [Music] capitalism and colonialism
23:36 right and how many nonprofits do you know whose mission actually
23:42 involves them not existing someday right like if we really
23:49 want to be serving our communities our goal ought to be
23:55 to be so damn good at our jobs that we don't have jobs anymore there will be no unhoused people left for me to serve if
24:02 i do a good enough job but that is the complete opposite of capitalism correct
24:09 and and so you're living in that paradox of like well i need a job but
24:16 but so i'm gonna do just enough right and the cognitive dissonance that is
24:22 required there is kind of painful but we've gotten really really good at it entirely
24:29 painful yeah yeah
24:36 yeah so for me this work is about breaking social contracts it is about coming together collectively with the
24:43 people that we work with who have that same core strength of passion for what
24:48 they do looking at what these rules are that we've all been complicit with
24:55 understanding what it's costing us both individually and collectively to
25:00 follow those rules and then working together to craft a new set of social contracts at least within
25:08 my own organization how are we going to resource each other how are we going to create
25:13 a space where there's psychological safety where we're going to support each other through all of this where at least
25:20 within our organization we're going to stop being complicit with some of these other
25:26 systems and then once we start to feel safe and calm
25:32 and resourced how can we think about being creative and blowing up
25:38 yeah and, I... I really vacillate between feeling powerless and powerful and so
25:47 when i feel powerless about really big things thank you therapy i
25:53 i look at the places in my life where i'm very powerful and i'm very powerful in my job
26:00 right and so one of one of the really big things that
26:06 we doubled down on during the pandemic especially was the difference between equity
26:11 and equality and and we're not doing equality like
26:16 equality the tools that i need to show up at my best are different lou ellen's on the
26:23 camera are different than the tools that llewellyn needs and yeah i
26:29 am in a very unique place to say we're not approaching things
26:34 for equality we're approaching them for equity and we're treating each of us as an individual with an individual set of
26:43 strengths and approaches and challenges and and it really requires a lot of
26:49 vulnerability to say, I... I need this accommodation that my
26:55 colleague doesn't need but guess what your colleague needs a different accommodation like we each need
27:02 a different set of accommodations in order to show up as our full and best self so
27:08 for me that has been kind of like the the rock that i'm standing on where i'm
27:14 like well i have the power to do this one thing and that's to approach approach my employees with
27:20 an equity mindset like what's what's the next
27:26 step on that how do we continue within our organizations
27:32 to build out of this and and and to move from grief into rage so that we can start to
27:39 burn down yeah i'm i'm thrilled to answer that question i want to be cognizant of the fact that
27:46 my timer went off or we've ... we've okay thank you we have
27:52 25 minutes and so let's let's wrap up this one what's what's the next step and then
27:59 let's open it up for our colleagues to come on and ask questions and share their lived experience and let's have a
28:05 conversation okay awesome yeah i mean i think there are a few different steps one of the
28:12 steps that i think is really really important is something i call relational mapping
28:17 and this was this work comes from an organization called the bay area transformative justice collective
28:24 ... and they they look at it as a way to describe relationships
28:31 between people who turn to each other for support ... and i love doing this with different
28:36 organizations because i think it creates this sort of map of where do people feel psychologically
28:42 safe and with whom in your organization right and i can i won't go into the
28:47 details but if folks are interested in that i can absolutely talk about that more ... so relational mapping i think is is
28:54 really great because it starts to give you an idea of how can we have these
28:59 conversations where people are being vulnerable and it feels okay
29:04 ... another thing is something i call wealth mapping and that is you know if you can if we
29:11 start to again shift the idea of like you might need an accommodation and that
29:16 feels a little skeevy and gross and like ... but but what if we flip that on its head and
29:22 say wow you have a completely different lived experience and perspective and
29:27 that's a huge strength so let's look at all the alternative forms of wealth that people have i can
29:34 navigate a bureaucracy like nobody's business right i'm a person who knows how to hold space
29:40 for difficult conversations without having relationship rupture um
29:46 you know there's all these different kinds of things like maybe i come from a huge family and i know what it feels
29:52 like to be held in care and unconditional positive regard right so if we start to do a little wealth
29:58 mapping with our employees then we we can sort of draw out some of those
30:05 things that make ... the people that i work with really freaking amazing and holy cow the
30:12 next time i need to navigate a bureaucracy i'm coming to you because you know what you're doing there right
30:17 so that's number two and then number three is to have those conversations what are the rules
30:23 around grief and rage that we've learned our whole lives that we're following right
30:29 and then where do we where did we learn those and what's it costing us to follow them you know if
30:37 i'm gonna follow the rule that says you know i have to be grateful for what i have
30:42 focus on the positive focus on the positive it could be worse right that's that's absolutely one of the rules it
30:48 comes from one of those four systems what's it costing me to do that right
30:53 i'm not acknowledging the actual deep pain and frustration that i have and it's costing me support because i'm not
30:59 able to say to somebody i'm really struggling today and yeah i
31:06 know i have a roof over my head and my kids are really great and i have this sweet puppy dog at home but
31:12 damn i'm struggling right and then we start to write new social
31:18 contracts with these people that we're in relationship with that share our passions and i think those are the three
31:25 most absolutely transformative things we can do to start to shift our culture
31:31 and create spaces where we can grieve collectively
Share our passions
31:36 i love that i love that so much well i want to invite our colleagues to come on and ask
31:43 questions and share experiences and ... it's okay if it's not the right time to
31:49 share an experience i ... quite early in the pandemic we brought
31:57 on a facilitator to to have a conversation as a team
32:02 about our feelings and our grief and our loss and our
32:08 fear and the unknown and it you know the feedback that i heard from the team was
32:13 that it was really helpful you know we didn't come up with any
32:19 answers right we didn't solve the pandemic ... but just the act
32:25 of holding space and like even saying
32:31 we're struggling emily is struggling she's gonna put on a really brave face because that's her job and she is
32:38 optimistic to a fault and she still gets to struggle and she still
32:44 gets to be afraid and that's okay and it doesn't mean we're disappearing ... but it was
32:51 really important for our team oh i see llewellyn's hand up please
32:56 join us hi Kari thank you so much for being on ... i have a
patriarchy and grief
33:03 comment on a personal level and then a question on a professional level so it's
33:09 it kind of took me by surprise when you said that patriarchy has something to do
33:14 with grief and then as you described it i realized yes actually i completely
33:20 know what you mean ... about that because i ... am the sort of person who
33:29 is like a counselor to my friends and my family and i can do that on a one-on-one level
33:36 ... i could maybe do it on a group level if i was doing it with my female friends
33:43 and female family members but to feel comfortable stepping into a position
33:48 where i am going to try to be supportive of men or of a group that includes men
33:55 feels like i'm stepping out of a role and i shouldn't be doing it
34:02 and it's ... it's kind of interesting if i think about you know like
34:08 grief and how we process grief and how funerals are traditionally led by priests and men
34:16 in the church and the church is part of the patriarchy in so many religions and
34:22 how you know what if there's no funeral what if it's a mass shooting and there's no funeral what if it's a
34:29 ... something that you feel more distant from but you still need that collective
34:35 grief and you and there are all of these strong women in our families who feel like they shouldn't step into that role
34:42 of of helping a group of men and women through grief because it's not their job
34:48 so i'm gonna take that and i'm gonna be braver about that in the future
34:54 ... so thank you for that ... the question that i have is about
35:00 kind of like and maybe there are some success stories that you might be able to share but of
35:06 taking grief from the individual to the collective in
35:11 the like in the context of a team working in a non-profit because
35:17 i think that what you're saying about you know people coming with their unmetabolized grief is so true so
35:24 you have a team working on a mission and that mission is triggering their grief but it's triggering their grief at
35:29 different times in different ways to different extents
35:34 maybe not even everyone comes with that a metabolized grease you have that whole spectrum
35:40 of people who make up this team and then how do you kind of like
35:47 what what's a leader's role in bringing it out of the individual and
35:53 into the collective for a team so that people don't have to just kind of swallow it on the job and keep grinding
36:00 through the day yeah well first thank you for sharing your
36:05 perspectives i really really appreciate ... that it is important for us to recognize the
36:12 role of patriarchy especially with like that's you know what are the rules
36:17 around what what kind of grief do we allow men to show right we we tend to culturally and societally be
36:24 way more comfortable maybe comfortable isn't there isn't necessarily the right word
36:30 but but we expect men to show rage more than grief right that's sort of more culturally acceptable than and so those
36:37 are really good things for us to kind of think about you know and how are we raising
36:43 young men to believe what's okay to express as far as emotionality and what isn't
36:50 ... so i appreciate you saying that ... yeah i think
36:55 again for me so much of this lies in
37:03 what it means to be resourced for us right and part of that is like getting in touch with myself like what
37:10 you know so each individual person is gonna have we know we all have our own nervous systems right
37:16 so what is it what does it feel like for me when i'm resourced right if i get up in
37:23 the morning and i know i'm a social worker and i'm going out to you know the the camps and i'm gonna
37:29 work with folks who are unhoused if i don't know where my rent is coming
37:35 from next month then i'm already my my nervous system is already here
37:40 right and then if i you know something happens like it's it's harder and harder and harder for me
37:46 to do my job and so i think for for us as as team members to sort of
37:54 encourage each individual person to think about what does it feel like when i feel fully resourced
38:01 and safe and how do i know when i'm not and and if i'm not
38:07 how do i how do i get there from here right because
38:13 when our nervous systems are calm and when we're feeling resourced
38:19 we can discern the difference between discomfort and danger and in discomfort we can still access
38:25 the critical thinking executive function portion of our brain right and so we can be like creative problem solvers
38:32 but if if our brain is screaming danger then we're just in wrote you know like
38:38 check the boxes do the the old standard kind of stuff right
38:44 so in a team it's important for us to know
38:50 everybody's going to have slightly different thresholds everybody's going to have slightly different needs and
38:55 everybody deserves to feel as resourced as we possibly can right and so if i'm you know if i'm a
39:03 social worker on a team who's going to go out with you know two other social workers and we've got
39:09 say 30 clients we're supposed to see that day if i'm coming in and i have a child
39:15 who's on the spectrum and i got them late to school and i'm a little nervous about how i'm going to pay rent and
39:21 maybe i don't take 10 of the 30 today maybe i take
39:27 seven and someone else who's on my team who's feeling really a lot more resourced and super
39:34 calm is gonna take my extra three people right to have that flexibility to build
39:40 that collective container of recognizing and there's no like okay well next time
39:45 you owe me right it's not that because that's capitalism that's colonialism that's
39:51 white supremacy we're not keeping score knowing that this is is an investment in
39:59 the entire team in the work that we're doing the goal is the work right if the goal is to serve
40:05 this community of people how are when we show up under resourced
40:13 are we actually serving them and if not then it's our job to figure
40:18 out how to resource each other and so that you know again it's a process it takes time and it takes
40:24 vulnerability and it takes conversations with your teammates
40:31 and and for a lot of us it'll take reflection right i mean a lot of us are not comfortable in our
40:36 bodies and so even asking the question like what does it look like what does it feel like when my needs are being met
40:44 i don't know right especially if i'm a mission-based
40:49 person who's been socialized to meet everybody else's needs first how do i even ask myself that question
40:55 so beginning to normalize those kinds of things hey we want you
41:02 to be resourced yeah and the person in that position of leadership
be sympathetic to the need
41:08 either has to a you know be sympathetic to it because they need their own resources and so they understand it from
41:15 a personal place or b they're gonna go out of their way to make sure that it doesn't matter if
41:21 it's not their their if they can't connect with that need they trust that the other person needs it
41:29 yep or or c it's the person underneath leadership who pushes on leadership to
41:36 say this is how this should look right but that's hard to do
41:42 if you're not feeling resourced and you know these hierarchies right like we as as
41:49 people who are in positions of power in organizations it is incumbent on us to always be
41:56 analyzing the power structure always always always right i'm going to walk into a room with and have a one-on-one
42:02 meeting with this person i'm going to analyze the power structure right i'm going to go oh i'm a white woman and you
42:08 are a person of color i am a 50 year old woman and you are a recent college grad
42:13 i am right i mean i need because here's the thing if
42:19 the we this is relational work this is absolutely relational work and that's why it's so groundbreaking because
42:25 capitalism colonialism patriarchy white supremacy they don't want us to form relationships that's that's not healthy for those
42:32 systems right this is relational work though and and it's really transformative and what we
42:40 need to know is that you know one of the three most toxic things for relationship
42:46 is power so unless we're not constantly analyzing
42:52 the power and the gatekeeping between us and our clients too
42:58 we're we're not doing it relationally we're we're doing it in the old default
43:05 systems thank you very much yeah
43:14 Kari i want to bring us back you know where i feel like we're in this
43:22 you know what is the right word it's like um
43:27 a moment of cute self-care where right where it's like
43:34 i took a bath today i only worked 10 hours today not 12.
43:42 talk to me about what about the difference between
43:49 performative self-care and permanent resourcing and how does
43:55 one me go from deeply performative
44:02 self-care and really barely holding on to this like i don't even know what it
44:08 feels like to be resourced because all i'm doing are these like drips of like
44:14 yeah well couldn't sleep another night but i'm gonna yep
44:20 leave early this afternoon and take a walk on the beach
44:25 well and and we're rewarded for that in the current paradigm right people go good for you
44:32 and again that's because like i said way back at the beginning of this because we treat all of this stuff as an individual
44:39 problem good for you for taking care of yourself good for you for going to therapy good
44:45 for you right it's like you have this problem you need to solve it right but you're right those little sips of
44:51 self-care that's like putting well i'm going to age myself here i was telling my kids i have four kids and they're in
44:58 their 20s and i was telling them ... i can remember having like an ash tray full of orders
45:05 in my car when i was a teenager and putting 25 cents worth of gas into my car
45:11 like that was that was actually a thing in the 1980s and
45:17 what that's like right you you put like 25 cents worth of gas in your car and so
45:24 you're gonna get to go this little you know that's not resourcing you that's not
45:30 sustainable that is like treading water until you know the lifeboat shows up
45:37 and what it looks like to be fully resourced is to be part of a community
45:47 right to be able to like raise the white flag and say
45:53 i got too much work to do today or ... you know, I... I need
45:59 somebody to listen i need while i vent or ... i just need a hug
46:06 right human beings are not designed to
46:11 be independent there is no such thing there absolutely isn't like the oxygen we breathe comes
46:18 from the plants you know the food we eat comes from from plants and animals like there's no such thing as us being
46:24 independent and so being fully resourced requires us to be
46:30 part of a larger community and rest in that comfortably
46:38 and that's something that you know for a lot of us is really really challenging like do i actually trust these other
46:44 people to meet my needs you know and so yeah those little pieces of self-care
46:50 are fabulous i'm gonna take my dog for a walk on the beach or i'm gonna take the afternoon off and you know go
46:55 get a massage or whatever right ... if that's accessible to you that's
47:00 not accessible for a lot of people right but being fully resourced means that we
47:07 know like i'm resting within this larger community of people
47:13 and and it's not just when things go sideways right it's
47:19 it's for the good stuff too like it's someone who says oh my god i got my csa box this week and there's so
47:26 much extra food in it come over for dinner on a random tuesday night you know and you can have a conversation
47:32 about anything and everything like it's this it's these vibrant dynamic
47:38 relationships that we're in where there's this exchange of energy
47:44 and we feel safe like i can show up as myself maybe
47:51 you're gonna come over on tuesday night in your pajamas and your bunny slippers cool whatever wouldn't that be great all
47:56 right i don't have any wine but i have orange juice okay orange juice is cool right how can we exist in community and
48:03 relationship with each other in ways where we can have fun together where we
48:09 can relax together where i can say to you i'm actually not really comfortable with that i'm not
48:15 really interested in that and you're gonna go okay that's cool
48:21 right and so again it's not i wish it was like ... oh i can tell you these four things to do kind of thing but it's
48:27 really where can we put our time and energy and effort into creating
48:33 these safe loving connected communities because we weren't meant to resource
48:40 ourselves it's not a thing no i um
48:46 here's my my very favorite question to ask our guest stars
48:52 how do we sell this to our board how do we write if we're if we're
48:57 operating within a non a traditional nonprofit structure and we have for the entire history of our
49:05 industry ... been expected to do more with less because we're doing good how
49:12 do we start to have these conversations with our board that um
49:17 that flip this script that like doing more with less was actually counterproductive and we can do more
49:25 with more ... and we need to change the way that our industry operates how
49:31 do we start to have those conversations yeah i mean one thing that i always go back to is
49:38 especially if i'm coming in from the outside as sort of a consultant is let's look at your mission i don't care
49:45 about your financials like what is it that you say you want to be doing
49:52 right i'm serving this particular population i'm gonna do it with dignity and grace i'm gonna you know whatever
49:57 right and then let's work from there
50:03 right so if this is actually what it is that you really want to be doing
50:11 we're gonna have to get creative because there are finite resources that's that's just the fact of it right
50:17 but we can't be creative about how to do this mission work
50:25 ... if we're over here in scarcity land if we're over here looking at your spreadsheets and your balance sheets and
50:31 your roi and you know all of that there's that activates the fight flight
50:37 freeze portion of our brain we're gonna if we go at it from the mission side of things and if you are
50:44 truly mission driven organization then this is the land where we're gonna
50:50 live and that's where we can start to have those kind of conversations
50:55 and you hired your employees for a reason right
51:00 and they came to you for a reason if they read your mission statement
51:06 they're on board with that so everything i mean we talk about being
51:13 mission driven right but in the end i've been on a million non-profit boards and we're always talking about the money
51:19 i don't want to talk about the money let's talk about what what we really are
51:25 here to do and if we center the mission and if we center the human beings or
51:31 the parts of the planet that that we say we're supposed to be serving
51:36 then the conversation naturally changes i love it
51:42 yeah i see shakira has her hand raised yeah
51:47 so i want to also acknowledge that there's six minutes left so ... i'll be very brief ... and it's
51:54 i believe perfectly couched with emily's question last two questions and then your
52:00 response Kari i want to come back to what you said around communities so
52:05 ... a couple of things i have worked 100 remotely the entire two and a half years
52:12 that we our organization has been in operation in my home right like as you can see it's not like
52:19 it's full of unicorns and rainbows it's it's a taupe from the 90s so why i s why i say this is this question
52:28 ... building up on performative or piecemeal versus
52:34 connected to communities and how we can grieve through and then how do we bring this to the board
52:40 ... throughout these two and a half years i have been in a grieving process about multiple things
52:46 so for and it ties back to what you also said about rage hat being directly connected to
52:55 that grief so that was like i'm tearing up right now that was a big aha for me personally
53:01 so i really thank you for that ... because rage is what i feel all the time
53:08 rage is my coffee ... so or the cream in my coffee i should say i'm not gonna avoid my coffee so my question
53:15 ultimately is for those of us who are highly emotional
53:21 and highly expressive of our emotions so many an executive committee meeting now
53:26 many a board meeting i'm bawling the tears are
53:32 how do we normalize the in some ways you could say that as
53:38 letting the steam out because it just comes and if you don't if you hold it in then something else will happen i don't
53:44 know what because i'm i haven't let it happen yet but i'm afraid to see what happens if i don't let the ears come out
53:50 that's that's the first thing and then the follow up with how does it become normalized where then we we are not looked at and this is that
53:57 patriarchal piece as oh that's an emotional woman
54:02 oh you know oh there she goes again oh everybody knows that she's a crier
54:08 that's very concerning to me as an evolved adult society can you speak to
54:13 that absolutely thank you so much i love that question because
54:19 i'm a rage crier and i used to work for the washington state mental health division
54:24 and i would go to olympia the capital of washington for these legislator meetings around funding
54:30 and i and i would cry every time and i was like 20 something you know and
54:36 there's all these old white men in the room rolling their eyes and patting me on the back and you know whatever right
54:42 okay well my background my educational background is in human biology
54:49 and here's what i know that i tell absolutely everybody and also like i said i have four kids three
54:55 of them are young women and i used to tell my kids this all the time that rage crying
55:03 is like sweating when you're too hot or it is like farting when you eat too many
55:08 beans it is literally if you measure if you take those rage tears and and
55:15 measure the amount of human stress hormone cortisol in those tears
55:21 it's astronomical right when you're crying because you're you know your cat died or you know i
55:26 mean there's different reasons there's different kinds of tears when you are rage crying it is literally because your
55:32 body has too much cortisol and it needs to offload it
55:38 it is a physiological biological response that is absolutely normal
55:46 period end of story and i tell everybody that i will tell people that in meetings i'm like if i start crying it actually
55:52 means i am better able to access the executive functioning portion of my brain because
55:59 my body has now offloaded cortisol and so i am not in fight or flight
56:05 anymore so this is a really good thing right because what we've done for young men
56:13 is another way to offload cortisol
56:18 is to physically attack something so how many young men do you know have punched a hole in a wall
56:24 right i would really rather have them cry frankly but societally culturally we don't let
56:30 them do that right so one another thing that is that offloads cortisol which is
56:38 really really scary and horrible is cutting self-harm behavior it's not suicidal it is literally i have too much
56:45 stress hormone on my body and i'm trying to get rid of it so it provides a release and so when we tell
56:52 kids don't cry we're actually forcing their bodies to come up with a
56:59 different way to release cortisol and it's harmful right
57:04 so yeah the next time you're in a meeting and you start crying bring out that little factoid
57:09 oh it's like if it's too hot in here and i'm sweating it's the same thing but i have zero control it does not mean i am
57:16 too emotional it is literally my body going nope not doing this taking care of myself our
57:23 bodies are designed to always seek homeostasis and that doesn't
57:30 mean like everything's constant all the time but like our bodies are like when we get too hot it sweats it's like we gotta bring us back right that's
57:37 physiologically that's our body's job is to bring us back into alignment and it's
57:43 gonna find ways to do it one way or the other but patriarchy
57:48 capitalism colonialism and white supremacy have socialized us to believe that
57:54 certain things that bring us back into homeostasis are not acceptable
58:01 so it absolutely bring that little factoid in the next time you start crying and just
58:06 let people know like my body's doing exactly what i'm supposed to be doing and this actually means i'm thinking
58:12 way more clearly Kari you just gave me a piece of freedom thank you very much
58:17 good i'm so glad i'm so glad
58:22 well not a dry eye on the screen my friends it's like
58:30 yeah and i and i want to underscore to like being
58:39 being boldly emotional is part of our superpower right
58:44 that's why we're here is because we are boldly emotional and you know i often
58:52 whatever your superpower is there's a flip side of that coin that
58:57 isn't societally ex acceptable yeah and being boldly emotional is what
59:04 uniquely qualifies us to be magical yeah and to make the world a better
59:09 place but that means sometimes we cry in meetings which can be really embarrassing when
59:16 society says it's not okay and especially when your whole board is a bunch of old white dudes right and
59:23 you're just this little girl crying in a meeting yep and
59:28 i just love this owning
59:34 that that's part of the superpower and that's part of why we're here and that's part of why we're effective so
59:40 get used to it it is it is it is yeah it absolutely is and that's why you want me
59:46 here you want me here because i care if i didn't care
59:54 what how effective am i gonna be right but you don't get to tell me what it looks like how i get to express my care
1:00:02 that that's yeah yeah
1:00:08 yeah all right we're getting lots of love in the chat my friend we've got a
1:00:13 suggestion to do a series on this i we've got a suggestion to do a podcast
1:00:19 on it Kari has a podcast so so we're gonna send out an email to
1:00:25 everyone who joined us we're gonna include a link to the podcast and to
1:00:30 carry herself we also have that relational mapping that she mentioned that we'll send out
1:00:36 but like this one was a good one this one i'm gonna be thinking about a lot so i i
1:00:43 have a feeling it won't be the last y'all hear of this because um
1:00:49 this i think Shakur said it right you gave me some freedom today
1:00:56 you helped me take back some of my power today and i just really appreciate you and i
1:01:02 appreciate the vulnerability of everyone here in the sharing of space
1:01:07 and ... yeah thank you i'm so glad to have been here
1:01:14 and i really appreciate the opportunity and i'm happy you know if people have questions i think, I... I just sent you the
1:01:21 graphic for the relational maps so i'll send you out the write up that goes with it ... but yeah if folks want have more
1:01:28 questions for me please reach out and let me know i could talk about this stuff all day long
1:01:34 yeah well well let's let's do it you know we do this thing once once a month so maybe we
1:01:40 make it part of the continuing conversation so i just yeah i appreciate
1:01:45 everyone and ... you're not alone. Awesome, all right thank you, thank you, bye!