Finding my People

So here I am, in excellent company with my fellow August 2023 grads of the Wayfinder Life Coach Training course, trying to find my next step and stay in my integrity. Marketing is weird and hard, friends. How do I let you all know that I’m here? How do I put myself out there without putting too much of my time and attention on social media, which often makes me feel kind of yucky? If I don’t think it’s great for me, should I be adding to it and hoping that you spend more time there (so you can find me)? And what about the accounts that truly do bring me joy and connection? adrienne maree brown’s Instagram account is a thing of beauty, hilarity, joy, learning, truth…

It makes my brain hurt to try to figure it out, so I guess I need to disconnect my brain (or reconnect the rest of me), and try to feel my way, slowly, paying attention to what feels good and what feels bad. For supporting material for myself and anyone else who may feel they are in this spot, I offer something from Chani Nicholas, when she was on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast, episode #129 (transcript here). She says,

I am deeply annoyed and incredibly critical at anything to do with healing the self that does not then connect to healing the world via dismantling systems of oppression and supremacy. Of course I’m not the only one who thinks this, but one cannot be without the other. We can’t only be trying to fight the stuff out in the world that we need to fight without doing inner work. But we cannot do the inner work without connecting it to some other thing.

Then she goes on to say a little later,

I think the philanthropic industrial complex and the healing industrial complex are invested in one thing, which is self acclaim. I think we want to feel good about ourselves, and what happens when we do good, quote unquote, inside of systems of oppression. It doesn’t mean we’re trying to dismantle the system itself. It means that we are trying to assuage our guilt and get good PR. A lot of the times that’s what’s happening. Show me people that are invested in eventually getting to the point where we are obsolete. Every piece of work, every work that we do, every activism that we engage with should be that so eventually this won’t be needed.

And then this:

I don’t want to be a good person inside of a horrible system. I want the system to change so that we all have the ability to get educated, to have healthcare, to thrive, to have food, to just have the basics so that we can remember who we are and why we’re here, which I think is to love and help each other. But we can’t get there because there’s so many things that are constantly bringing us into chaos and crisis. I want to be invested in not needing to do this work eventually.

Yes to all of this.* I want to coach people through the chaos and crisis in the hopes that, together, we can make this work unnecessary eventually.

So as I move forward, trying to find my people and help them find me, I will tune into inspirations like the words from Chani above, calibrate my body compass to the feelings they inspire, and then act from there. I can’t wait to see what happens!

*And if you go check out her page of job listings, you will see that not only does she speak these words and actions through the work of her astrology business, but also through the work of the work: her hiring and benefits page makes me feel so emotional in the way she shows her values, and shows what we can do for each other.