Hello lovelies! It has been a minute since I’ve popped into your inbox. I’ve been giving space for myself to keep returning to the questions “What exactly do I want to say here? Why is that? Why should I say it?”. In a world where there is no lack of noise, voices, thoughts, opinions, and dare I say it, newsletters, I’ve found those questions provoking these last few months, and really, since I started the newsletter to begin with.
I’m amped to share how I’m thinking about this newsletter - and even some of my professional coaching work and how the two will intertwine - for the upcoming year here.
For the last four and a half years, I’ve been hibernating, wintering (to borrow the term popularized and delightfully meditated on in Katherine May’s book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times), restoring, integrating, and learning new ways of being. I’ve been in an exploration of how to be ever more in the practice of humanity with myself, others, and this precious world in which we live.
I’ve needed this time because when I left my old jobs in 2019, I had loads of big questions about what I believed - about change, about justice, about systems; about who I was and what shaped me - as a white person, as a woman, as a relatively newly out queer person, as a member of my family; about what I wanted to be up to in the world because of both those sets of questions - for money, for love, for my own integrity. When I have big questions like these, I find I need time away retreating somehow to allow the answers to be heard.
I was also exhausted. Full of an anger and rage that was both mine and far larger than something that could be mine alone. My energy was dull. I found it far easier to complain than wonder; easier to fight than build. I was numbing myself with far too much consumption: alcohol, meat, comparisons, material goods, experiences, accolades of status, noise & vitriol from social media, other people’s thoughts and beliefs, and more.
I felt out of control, confused, overwhelmed, and simply like it was too much. Without any coherent plan to winter for this long (and certainly aided by the forced isolation of covid lockdowns at the beginning), I’ve discovered that my body, my mind, my whole system gave me just what I needed. It hasn’t all been self-serving (thankfully and importantly, at least to me) but it has, nonetheless, changed me.
As I mentioned at the beginning, I’ve struggled with this space during that time. I think part of me knew I wanted to process what I was moving through, to be connected to the “outside” even as I was very much going inward. But I’ve struggled because I haven’t - until now - really known what I want to offer or what I could even offer in this time of deep introspection and integration. I know that I’m someone who finds it easiest to engage (especially on platforms like these) when I have a clear offering, and without that clarity, I often found myself lost in this space that I had created.
As usual, it is only because I find myself at the end of this period of wintering that I can look back and discover what, in fact, there is to offer.
I believe two simultaneous and conflicting things about teaching and coaching: we teach what we need to learn and we can only accompany people to the depths that we’ve traveled ourselves. It didn’t exactly surprise me, then, that when I set out to be a full-time coach in 2019 - because I wanted more and more individuals, teams, and families to have an experience of life that radically shifted their imaginations, expectations, and actions so that we could collectively create a path away from capitalism, carceral systems, and supremacy thinking - that I had a lot of depth to travel for myself as I started to work with my clients, even as I had insight and tools already to share.
In this time of my retreating, I’ve been learning how to practice humanity, how to experience humanity, and how to invite others into the practice, and it’s this that I want to offer here in 2024 and more consistently (weekly!!). It’s still messy. I’m still messy. This humanity is still messy. I’m sure that will also appear here. I won’t be writing from a place of “I have answers”. Instead, it’ll be from “I’ve seen some shit. I’ve been through some of my shit. I’ve learned a whole lot of shit about change, our brains, our hearts, and our spirits. I bet that at least some of that shit might be interesting and helpful to others who crave the same movement toward humanity.”
I keep saying humanity here, so it’s worth clarifying that I mean it as a way of being, not as a way to describe the totality of human beings or the state, necessarily, of our species. When I say I have been learning to practice humanity, I mean I have been in a practice of learning and remembering what it means to come into connection with my heart - my love, compassion, and awe - and how to then bring my actions into greater integrity, or alignment, with that newfound depth of caring. I have been in the practice of forgetting, letting go of, and healing that which capitalistic, carceral, and supremacy systems and schools of thought have convinced me is the “natural way of being human”: competitive, greedy, awash with scarcity, needing power over or to dominate, punishing, individualistic.
In 2024, I want to use this space, as I said, to make an offering of what I’ve learned and practiced - what I’m still learning and practicing - about moving toward my and our humanity. Because that’s required change (a lot of it!) in my life, I want to focus this newsletter, at least initially, on that topic. Across the year, we’ll explore two big questions:
How do we create change, specifically lasting & sustainable change?
What conditions1 support us to create change and to move toward our humanity?
Each month, I’ll offer some things I’ve learned these last several years on the first question, in particular, from a variety of fields: neuroscience, psychology, religious & spiritual practices from across the world, “business and leadership”, organizational development, adult development & consciousness, and more. And each month, I’ll focus on one condition that supports us to create change and move toward our humanity. I’ll be sharing my experiences, practices, and ongoing efforts on that condition, and I’ll make an invitation for you to try some things on if you’re interested.
My hope is, of course, that this is helpful to you, to me, and to us. It seems arrogant to take this position of making an offering like this, and it also feels selfish to hide from doing so. I imagine I’ll continue to work with and meet these parts as I make this shift to the newsletter. I do know that right now, as I write this, I feel excitement for what this could be; I feel the unique buzzing in my skin that signals to me that I’m wrestling with big ideas and am on the cusp of making sense of them in a way that is itself big; and I feel alive with the motivation to write about what I’ve learned, experienced, and practiced these last several years as something new emerges within me for what’s next in my life (whatever that turns out to be!).
I love that you’re here and I hope this excites you about staying! As ever, if there are others who might benefit from this, share and invite them in!
Here’s to our humanity, my loves, and our movement toward it2.
Xo -
A
PS - I’ll have another newsletter in your inboxes before the end of this year! As many of you know, I’m a voracious reader. I skipped doing it last year, but I want to return to sharing my books read list and highlighting those that made a mark on me this year. I read some cool shit this year! It’s worth talking about and sharing with you!
PPS - I’ve also recently put a pretty rad and discounted individual coaching offer out in the world. Take a look; if you’re interested or know someone who might be, I’d love to connect! I’m at athena.palmer@noduckscoaching.com.
I’ll share more about each of these in the coming year, obvs, but as a preview, the conditions I’ve learned and practiced fall into six interconnecting categories: physiological wellness, spiritual wellness, social wellness, physical wellness, mental wellness, and creative wellness. Each category has different practices that I’ve found incredibly helpful and move me toward my humanity and that research also tells us is important. For example, in social wellness, we’ll explore practices like laughing with friends, sharing a meal with others, petting / stroking our pets, and being in service to others who need us, among others.
You might have noticed already, but the name of the newsletter has changed to match this focus! From now, it’ll be called Moving Toward Humanity and that’ll be in the sender line with future posts.
I love the new focus! the idea of humanity as a set of behaviors, a way to be in the world, feels resonant and relevant to me in this moment. Looking very much forward to following the various threads of your thought process on a weekly basis. Reading you is like being at your table in conversation - lots of deeply interesting ideas, big and little, connected or not, but always in service of discovery. I’m excited!!
Someone recently recommended the book Life is in the Transitions by Bruce Feiler. I have not read much of it yet but the basic premise is first an acknowledgement of the significant power of one’s own narrative (life story) to guide, define, heal; and second, affirmation of the fact that the basic construct of those stories is out of sync with how life works these days. We historically thought of life as a cycle, then as a linear path, but now life has clearly become very nonlinear, with far more disruptors that occur with far greater frequency. This ultimately compels us to rethink our expectations of how life will unfold. We will need new tools, different solutions and, of course, changed expectations going forward.
That seems to be in alignment with this inaugural installment.
Let’s go.