We write weekly on the issues that are top of mind for us as we do the work of driving equity, shifting culture and co-creating inclusion with our clients. To receive these posts via email, join our free weekly email series, Self-coaching for DEI advocates and leaders.
A few months ago I wrote about how every memory hurts and everyone is traumatized.
Every memory still hurts.
And what I along with our team at Co-Creating Inclusion have been exploring is how grief is necessary for change.
The ability to grieve, then, is a rarely articulated leadership skill, if we are aspiring for creativity, innovation and transformation towards equity, inclusion, justice and liberation.
Read MoreWe’ve been talking and thinking a lot about change recently, both within the team at CCI and with our clients. DEI is, to us, inherently about change, not for the sake of change, but in order to shift towards equity and inclusion.
Change work, however, by necessity involves grief work, which by necessity involves acceptance work.
Read MoreIt’s been a tough week of news out of Ukraine.
I have been trying to take special care and to be aware of the different and perhaps invisible ways that we all might be variously impacted, on top of everything else that is going on. I am noticing my responses, managing my energy, and trying to stay focused on where I can make a difference.
As the days passed though, I’m noticing other things.
Read MoreI’ve been experiencing a huge wave of grief lately.
Some of it is personal, some of it is systemic.
It’s painful, this deep and abiding grief.
Read MoreThings are so much better than they were for my family now that the kids are settled back into in-person school. That they are thriving seems like a miracle, and with my younger son just a few weeks away from being fully vaccinated, there is the sense that I can exhale just a little bit.
And yet, with the exhale comes the grief, multi-layered. Waves and waves of it, especially, ironically, at the weekend when there is more space for it.
It can be easy to numb ourselves through a variety of means, including throwing ourselves into work. The danger is that grief unnamed can come out sideways to exacerbate power differentials and systems of oppression.
Read MoreI'm still in a space where I am thinking a lot about grief and trauma, and not just thinking about it but feeling it myself at a variety of different levels
Maybe the grief of the pandemic is making all the other grief feel closer to the surface and easier to access, but I'm seeing so many layers to my own grief and to the grief of others. In many ways, the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion is the work of holding space for the hurt and harm of white supremacy and other systems of oppression while also figuring out how to create space for healing, recovery, and growth.
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