You are needed.
Each of us has a part to play – and none of the injustice and harm happening in our communities is going to be solved by a “hero out there.”
As Grace Lee Boggs wrote:
We are the leaders we’ve been looking for.
If you’ve been doomscrolling the news, waiting and wondering what to do: you don’t need to stay stuck in the “guilt gap” between wanting to act and actually doing so.
Every week, I send out the Gentle Change newsletter to teachers, parents, everyday neighbors. Each edition has practical tools, frameworks for taking action, and small things you can do now to shape change in your communities.
When you sign up for Gentle Change, I’ll also send you my Starter Kit with activities, exercises, and resources for you and your community to use in shaping change.
"We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness.” – Grace Lee Boggs
In a world filled with intersecting crises and urgent calls to action, it’s hard to know in which direction to move.
So many of us want to act – to make a difference – but we’re frozen by beliefs that we need to have big, perfect solutions, that we aren’t doing enough, that we don’t know enough, or that we’ll take the wrong first step.
We don’t know quite where or how to start.
The truth is: for many of us, we just haven’t practiced enough.
It can be scary to push back on a toxic boss, to attend our first-ever protest, to challenge our MAGA family members and still hold tender the relationship – to step into a world of activism with all the images and ideas swirling around in our heads of what that means.
Even more so, it can take a world of courage to face our own inner hesitation, our “should monsters,” our defensiveness, and our sense of comfort with the status quo – especially when we don’t have a community of folks doing this work around us.
Embodying the energy of a gentle change-maker can be daunting – but we can each do it.
And here’s my one-sentence take on how:
We stay gentle with ourselves and the outcomes; we stay fierce in our commitment to change.
Each of us lives within a unique context and set of communities – which means what is “ours to do” will look different for each of us. But no matter what, we each have something to do.
We create change most effectively when we begin where we are, with what we have to offer, and with the folks around us.
For the past decade, I’ve worked with teachers, coaches, retirees, local governmental committees, schools, school districts – folks in all different life seasons and organizations in all different areas of work.
And my guiding question is always the same: How can we embody healing and justice in the ways we’re moving within our communities?
This is the core question of a “gentle change” approach to activism that meets us where we are and helps us carry a posture of experimentation rather than perfection.
If this approach resonates with you and your story, I invite you to sign up for the Gentle Change newsletter at the top of the page.
Note: All of my offerings are financially free-of-charge. This is one of the ways I’m countering the pressures of capitalism and choosing relationships of reciprocity and trust over transaction.