What does vacationing have to do with DEI?

There are hard things going on in the world right now (when are there not?) which makes rest and recuperation more important than ever, especially for those of us actively working towards equity, inclusion, justice and healing.

I’ve been thinking about this as I just got back from a week’s vacation and I think I’ve discovered the secret to vacationing, at least for me right now.

And by “discovered” what I mean is that we have intentionally planned and designed and iterated on this over many years.

This year we tried something different, and the result is that I have returned from vacation feeling better than I have in a REALLY long time. I know we often think that vacation is only for “us” and that we can’t afford to truly “step away” from our work.

However, I’m at the point where I don’t think I can afford NOT to. I know this time away will directly benefit the team and our clients not to mention my family as I have returned with a deepened sense of clarity, purpose, engagement… not to mention ideas for moving forward.

In stepping back, I got the chance to see things not exactly differently but from a higher vantage point. I could see out to the horizon and beyond (literally and figuratively). I could dream beyond what currently seems possible.

How did this come about?

First, at CCI we had a “virtual retreat week.”

We have these every couple of months where we have no external client meetings. This gave me chance to catch up/wrap up loose ends from our last run of work.

Then we had our first ever annual team retreat (yes it’s going to be annual) in the Outer Banks, North Carolina, where everyone met I think at least half of the team for the first time.

This was no ordinary retreat though. It was a “no work” work retreat. As I said to the team, our job was to rest, recover, recuperate and focus on wellbeing and individual as well as community care - this is part of the work and part of everyone’s job!

We did have one epic team session which I’ll save for another post (now available here), but every single person on our team is a caregiver of some sort and several folks talked about how they would never have taken this time for themselves if it hadn’t been for work.

So yes, I got to rest - sleep in, take naps, walk on the beach at sunrise, and take care of mostly myself (LaVoya on our team was the official retreat designer and facilitator so I didn’t even have to do that).

Getting home on Friday at 7pm and leaving for Mexico with my family the next day at 5am was admittedly not the most restful thing, but the good thing was, having just been at the beach I was pretty much able to do laundry, remove some of the long sleeved clothes, and repack. And thankfully we did not have a three hour flight delay OR a three hour wait through immigration on the other side like our trip to Mexico last year - we were at our resort by 2pm CDT!

As a result, I arrived on vacation more or less pre-rested and already a week into taking a break from work while also being energized and reflective from my time with the team on the retreat.

This week while I’ve been away has been an “open” week at CCI which means no group facilitations and our coaches can each decide if they want to offer 1:1 coaching or not. A lot of the team took PTO for retreat recovery which made it even easier for me to continue my break from work. I only had to do a couple of financial related tasks that probably took all of five minutes total.

Of course, traveling with one’s kids is never NO work but they are old enough that it’s a lot less work than it used to be, and I got lots of time for quiet sunrises and sunsets. Our final morning on the beach I got hit with inspiration for the next iteration of the vision for CCI based on conversations we’ve been having as a team. It was beautiful.

It doesn’t end there though. As my older son doesn’t go back to school until Weds (younger on Monday) I’m technically on PTO until then so I have no meetings Monday or Tuesday and the one meeting I had scheduled with clients for later in the week got moved (while I was away, without me having to do anything - yay for Lori our adminstrative coordinator!!!) I’ll probably spend some time on Monday and Tuesday reorienting to work but it meant I didn’t have to worry about any of that while on vacation in the way I would if I were back to work on Monday.

And yes, for those of you counting, that means four weeks for me without meeting with clients. This was planned since last summer and built into the scheduling of all our projects.

What does vacationing have to do with DEI?

Well, I say all of this not to brag but to model that although there are many privileges I have that make this possible, in many ways those privileges are WHY it’s important that I model a different way.

It’s important that those who can, model and make this possible for their teams and organizations as a way of decolonizing and divesting from the constant grind that capitalism has us believing is necessary but that in reality leads to burnout and the further perpetuation of oppressive systems.

Honestly, even in capitalist terms, the payback on the “investment” of taking time off is enormous.

What lead here?

As I mentioned, this has been a years long journey of reflection and iteration. In the summer of 2021, over a year into the pandemic and post-George Floyd DEI rush, it was the last day of a two week vacation, the second week of which both my kids were away at sleepaway camp for the first time, and I realized not only had I worked every single day of vacation, but I’d been working pretty much every day since the pandemic started.

We already had “retreat weeks” as well as August as “retreat month” with no client meetings in an attempt to design for spaciousness but I still had so much to catch up on with client deliverables as well as team and admin work, and I was also taking some online courses.

What came up for me was… is it really DEI work if it comes at such a cost to our team of mostly women of color?

And also, recovering is not the same as vacation.

A lot of work has happened since then to reduce the cognitive and emotional load of the work on all of our team while deepening the impact for our clients - the two being connected. It has meant iterating on every aspect of how we do our work - from the clients we work with, how we structure our services, and who is on the team.

Last summer, inspired by how I saw my kids thriving during their unstructured summer time, I proposed to the team that we follow more of an “academic” inspired schedule with “sessions” when we did client work with breaks in between. So we structured our year with two 6 week sessions in the fall, two on the spring, and a 6 week and 4 week summer session. This allowed for the break in April as well as in August.

I also realized from my own experience as well as talking with the team that vacations don’t work if you don’t design ramp down and ramp up time before and after. We’ve found this is more effectively done in advance at the org level rather than left to individuals to try and manage.

It’s a work in progress for sure and I’m looking forward to getting feedback from the team and iterating further!

Here are past blog posts through which you can trace this journey:

Designing for spaciousness - reflecting on “retreat weeks” as well as the “retreat month” of August (July 5th, 2021)

Recovering is not the same as vacation - recognizing the need to design work schedules at the organizational level that allow people ramp up and ramp down time before and after vacation (August 29th, 2021)

Vacation - an update on the challenges of taking an ACTUAL vacation (July 31st, 2022)

Vacation report back - the struggles and rewards of replenishment - a reflection on experiential learning and the need for time to reflect and learn and not just take action (September 25th, 2022)

The importance of integration time - noticing how my kids were thriving during their unstructured summer time and thinking about how to create that for ourselves and our clients (July 30th, 2023)

Dreaming beyond what is currently possible - more thoughts on the pause in the school year and how it allows time to for dreaming (September 10th, 2023)

Banner photo by Alethea Fitzpatrick from vacation!

What does vacationing have to do with DEI?

How did this come about?

What does vacationing have to do with DEI?

What lead here?

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