What did YOU do?
You may have heard me share this before:
In 2009, during a workshop, I met my yet‑unborn great‑grandchildren. They sat in a horseshoe around me and asked, with concerned seriousness:
“When you realized just how alarming the situation was — what did you do?”
I can still see their faces. I meet their eyes with sweaty palms, dryness in my throat. That moment has never really left me, and as I’m writing this, tears blur my sight.
This imaginary meeting became an anchor point, a question I carry with me most days. These children became my ever-present advisory board. Over time, it has shaped how I live. I grow most of my food with the people I share my home with, I wear second‑hand clothes, and when I can’t avoid flying, I plant trees to compensate. We heat with biomass and solar panels. These are in no way heroic acts; they are ways I have tried to respond, and I can still do more.
Just as important has been an inner shift: dissolving my ingrained habits of defensiveness and separation, and toward a vulnerable, shared way of being human. I am coming to terms with myself and learning to be with others more honestly, for better and for worse. I look for that point of connection in myself and others where I imagine I can sense the spark of divinity that lives inside all of us, and that makes us recognize the innate goodness in one another. This is my endeavor, and it is at the heart of my work—through coaching, workshops, and local initiatives.
Was it just this easy… it isn’t
My commitment to living lightly on the Earth has, at times, come at the cost of closeness with the people I love—my adult children, grandchildren, siblings, cousins, friends. That leaves me with an ache that has become way too familiar. A sense of not quite meeting what matters most.
This is my squeeze.
On one side: the call to respond to a world in crisis. On the other: My relationships and the limits of how much I can do within 24 hours, my choices often followed by regrets.
I have come to see that I am not alone in this. Many of us feel it—we struggle to do the right thing, sometimes overwhelmed, or shutting down, not having the bandwidth to cope - and longing for a more humane, more considerate world. Between care, urgency, and not knowing how to act. And we continue business-as-usual while waiting for something to shift.
“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”
(from The Hopi Elders Speak)
In our upcoming webinar, Activate Your Agency, we begin exactly here. Not from the idea that we should already be doing more, or doing better—but from a recognition that our reactions, even the stuck or avoidant ones, make sense.
Together, we will explore how to reconnect with the care that is present within us. The gratitude, the hope, the dream. From there, something begins to move, and we encounter our first barrier. You may say: “But I don’t have time, courage, strength, eloquence, bandwidth, capacity, or what else it takes!” That’s OK, or actually it’s more than OK, because what is in the way, is the way. Believe it or not, this barrier holds the key to discovering what’s next for you. Just enough to take one next step. From there, perspective changes, and you can take one next step.
If this speaks to something in you, you are very welcome to join us.