I can’t quite get myself to write a long piece on somatic leadership practices and philosophies this week. As I am centering into my body all I feel is a deep desire for silence, listening, and understanding.
It is not business as usual.
The world is aching and the consequences of it are just slowly starting to come to the surface. Maybe.
The way we prepare ourselves now, is how we are going to collectively respond, heal, support, find new solutions, and find ourselves in offering help to those filled with anxiety. Now is the time to build up your organizational spiritual backbone and/or offer your thought leadership; even it means to start listening and then find ways to help.
How we offer space in times of isolation through covid anxieties, natural disasters left and right, and the stories of our own personal lifes is how we are going to grow our emotional availabilities and communal compassion. This is about all of us. We all belong to the same system, connected through the same source of life.
I am currently gathering with a few wise souls, former afghan journalists, and other humanitarian experts to find out what we need to know, how we can offer space, what would really help people, and what action we can take as individuals, and organizations.
Here is how my husband and I have leaned into inquiry, curiosity, and reached out to our communities:
“What's happening in Afghanistan appears to be tragic, on so many levels. Democracy toppling, women's rights vanishing, families fleeing. When I scroll my feed and read the news, I see a lot extremely confident and terribly ignorant opinions. As a citizen I'm interested in hearing from people who've actually studied this situation, who can offer accessible frameworks that can help the rest of us who aren't international relations experts understand what's going on, and who might have an idea of what the average person can do to help. Has anyone read any articles that have opened their eyes? What mental models are useful for a layperson to apply in understanding a situation like the one unfolding? What can one do besides donating to be helpful in such a situation?”
Please reach out to me if you or anyone you know has resources that would be meaningful to share as far and wide as possible.
If you, your family, or beloved friends are affected by the current events, please give yourself the gift to be heard and understood, reach out to someone you trust being listened to, or have a good cry. My door is always open, too.
The emotional release of this is just as important as the actions we will take. If we store away or disregard how all of this affects us, we will never be able to act when we need to, lean onto our pragmatism because our nervous system will be busy coping with the emotional load we never unloaded. We will freeze in the light of our perceived nothing-ness, rather than own that we are one small fraction that can drive change through whatever is available to us.
With strength, and communal power,
Franzi