The Role of Leadership
We are still in a deep state of healing, and it can feel like the world is continuing to throw us curveballs. Every December, The Power Path puts out an annual forecast for how the year will show up. In 2020, they stated that we would be healing from the pandemic for 5–7 years, and we’re in year 3.
I’ve had multiple discussions recently with people who run meditation centers, yoga studios, and churches that reflect our struggle to find people committed to the internal practice of healing.
There are several factors at play. To begin anywhere, we have to put space between ourselves and the continual world events that reactivate our trauma response through fear. Distance doesn’t mean disengaging, but it means holding off on engaging until there has been a deliberate and conscious effort to allow autonomy between said events and self.
The world is burning, and we’re responsible. How do we get comfortable with that to create the positive changes required to put out the fire? How do we look at the parts of ourselves that we typically hide or hate so we can invite our whole selves to the table? Accepting who we are as entire individuals is essential to a healthy foundation.
We also must recognize the role that culture plays in restoring us through healing-centered engagement. In this website that lists the phases of trauma recovery, cultural healing practices are listed just following the creation of compassion through that space and awareness. This site also represents models created that support the white majority and could be more effective at stating such in the example of cultural appropriation.
I’m reading Kerri Kelly’s new book, American Detox, which states, ‘To be truly well, we don’t need juice fasts or yoga fads. We need to detox from a culture rooted in perfectionism, white supremacy, and individualism — and move toward a model that embodies mutual responsibility and extends beyond self-help to collective care’.
The necessary need to heal collectively is to begin to see ourselves as a collective. Psychic noise surrounds us. When things happen like the overturn of Roe vs. Wade, mass shootings, or the war in Ukraine representing the sick need for power and profit over people, we must work to build resiliency through compassion for ourselves as our outer world is a reflection of our inner world.
This country holds a society conditioned toward productivity, busyness, and numbing our pain. We don’t live in a communal environment where we must lean on others to get our needs met. Despite understanding the meaning of the Sabbath, not many of us practice taking a day every week for connection. We’re hyper-independent distracted creatures running around in survival mode, blaming everything around us for the condition of our world and our relationship to it.
When the pandemic first hit, I was motivated to share so many people’s knowledge of holistic well-being. I put together virtual seminars, pivoted my business model, dove deep into diversity, equity, and inclusion work, and rebuilt staff and clientele across my businesses.
Other people realized their work didn’t align with their values turning their worlds on their heads to change that. Almost all of us lost people very dear to us, and we’re still navigating the grief process. Grief is entirely consuming and needs the reverence it deserves.
Researching the social impact of humanity following the pandemic, I mainly found suggestions for employers, likely because of our value of money tied to productivity. Ultimately, this is an individual effort that requires societal support. So how do we find the endurance to heal for the next 2–4 years?
Working from our values allows us to focus on the big picture to create the positive change needed. Making time for reflection is critical to meeting these goals and assuring our tasks are associated with those values.
We must honor integration time as employers, counselors, therapists, or healers. We must emphasize the importance of slowing down as a matter of consistency. We must walk the walk to be the change we wish to see in the world. We must build our systems to reflect this time of integration and listening.
We can only continue to grow by making space for healing. To create systems that support all people, we must look at what causes us to shut down and build the capacity to create distance. We must continue to reflect on our shadow and participation in these broken systems and give ourselves grace in taking responsibility so we can grow from this awareness.
We all play different roles in life, but I believe that if you’re in a leadership position, it is your responsibility to create the foundation in which we can all heal. I’m calling on managers to do their internal work to ensure their employees have the space they need to do theirs.
We’re all in this together, and as the world continues to wake up, as our vibration continues to shift, we must learn to accept all parts of who we are so we can create from a place of wholeness. It requires space to do this, and reflection must be a societal value we adopt and implement.
