Keep On Moving!

Reflecting on 2024 with an honest gaze means reflecting on a lot of terror, violence, and hate. We are hearing from our clients and friends alike that they are scared, and we are too. And yet we must march on in our ‘new now.’ At BWP, we like to flex our tools to support our forward movement. After all, we never operate in ideal circumstances. Our job, now more than ever, is to find and create joy within ourselves and strengthen our communities and connections. We get the feeling that change will keep happening at an exponential pace and that we owe it to ourselves, each other and the issues we care about to build strong mindsets, skillsets, and connection to self. Doing this foundational work allows us to thrive and challenge the status quo in an effort to create a better world.

A few weeks ago, our President, Athena Adkins, facilitated a workshop focused on building resilience and connection in challenging times. She called on wisdom filled words of leaders before us. The key takeaways were:

We may have an idea of what is coming next, but we don’t really know. To manage the ambiguity of the moment, remember your purpose, remember your values, remember your priorities. We don’t always know what is coming, but we can get clear on how we will handle whatever comes. Neurologist, psychologist, philosopher, and Holocaust survivor Viktor E. Frankl said, “If you can find a why, you can bear any how.”
Don’t waste a crisis; counterintuitive though it may be. Einstein said “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” The disruptive aspects of crises provide an opportunity for a shift in consciousness. (Remember the early days of COVID-19? Because of that crisis, we figured out how to move in online spaces. It isn’t perfect, but we are, collectively, working on it.)
Remember what our colleague, Susan Raffo, says: Trauma is a form of disconnection. It’s a place where the present moment of life in its fullness gets stopped and interwoven with an unfamiliar and painful history. Healing is about reconnection, connection of the self with the self; the self with community; the self with the land and spirit. Susan is currently walking across the United States. You can catch up with her and learn why she is doing this, what she is learning, and what she is afraid of, here.
Finally, be an expert on you! Every day we have more or less bandwidth to hold complexity, to meet others where they are, and to have hard conversations. Check-in with yourself and decide what you can handle that day. Some days you can bridge and build, some days you can disrupt and shout from the rooftops, other days the name of the game is decreasing our isolation, or following someone else’s lead. Don’t forget, for many of us, our very “existence is an act of rebellion,” as Albert Camus said. Let that be enough some days.