Being Human Is Hard

"Working" on ourselves isn't about making life easier, it's about increasing our chances of being able to show up more authentically to whatever comes our way in life

We live in a world where…

• We wake up to awful news of violence

• People we love get sick with terminal illness

• The climate crisis is edging towards catastrophe

• Just to name a few

And yet we are expected to…

• Show up to work as if business as usual

• Override our emotions and messages from our bodies

• Be “okay” and “good” 100% of the time when asked how we are doing

• Feed ourselves meals and exercise and be healthy

• Do laundry (and put it away)

• Be kind and patient in every relationship we have (lol)

• Look like we have it all together on social media by sharing the highlight reel

Without showing any…

• Sign of grief, tears, or loss

• Questioning of what the heck is going on

• Imperfection

• Anxiety

• Slowing down

This is a spiritual crisis we are all undergoing every day BECAUSE we are not allowed to be human and we are not treated as humans.

I remember when I was living in Minneapolis during George Floyd’s murder and the protests that followed. It was surreal. In the laundry room in my apartment, I talked with my neighbors after night one of the protests only to hear that it wasn’t just a one night thing. This was when we weren’t supposed to be gathering in public, we weren’t even supposed to have other people over to our homes because of COVID-19. And yet we were seeing crowds gather to protest and things escalated in the direction of looting, robberies, violence, fires. While I don’t condone violence at all, I do understand why it escalated to this point because when people aren’t heard and listened to, it leads to violence. When people feel ignored, it leads to anger. I know this in my own life, so it makes sense that this happened in Minneapolis and across the world. MLK said it best, “riots are the language of the unheard.”

I’m not writing this to take sides, but really just to point out the fear and chaos of living in a city that is on fire. My neighbors told me to fill my bathtub with water in case our apartment building started on fire because there weren’t enough firefighters to help everyone. The city told us to move the trashcans to the back of the building so that it wasn’t as available for people to set on fire. There was an 8 pm curfew and military blockades on the interstate so one time I couldn’t even get home. There were so many military tanks rolling into town. All the windows of businesses in my neighborhood were boarded up. It was far from normal, but at work I was expected to move forward with business as usual.

I was expected to keep working normal hours, we didn’t shift any deadlines on deliverables, I had to facilitate all the client workshops that were planned before. I did sneak away from my computer for a bit to go shopping for cleaning supplies that I brought to a friend who had work off and was going to help clean up after the riots. But I was in no way extended any flexibility to do this service work or to slow down long enough to even face the grief, tragedy, and weight of what was unfolding around me. I remember posing to my manager at work this self-reflection question I asked myself at the time, “what did you do when your city was on fire?” And to be honest, I did very little, but I did something. And if I had the support from my workplace to slow down, I would’ve loved to have done more. Isn’t that what led to the riots and fires and violence in the first place, that some people just continue living life business as usual EVEN WHEN their city is on fire? To what extent do things need to escalate in order for people to feel heard? As a white woman, I know that I can’t understand the extent to which how unheard people of color feel in our world. But I can think of how I have experienced feeling ignored and like I don’t matter in my life, and that is a heavy burden I carry in life and so I do have empathy even if I don’t fully understand.

And what brought this topic top of mind this week is of course the violence against Israeli and Palestinian people. It can be hard to even comprehend the tragedy that is unfolding especially when it’s far away for us in the U.S. and everyone already has so much on their plates in their own daily lives. Yet I’ve long believed that the world needs more tears. The violence happening in Israel and Palestine broke me yesterday and I wish it would break more people. This level of violence is not new in human history, but what needs to happen so it doesn’t continue? I believe if we all felt more willing to feel our grief and sadness we’d be able to move forward more harmoniously. As I face so much grief in my personal life the past 5 months, I see how crucial of an ingredient it is for transformation at all levels. Grief was largely an experienced I avoided before it became something so potent I could no longer ignore. And now I see the alchemizing magic of grief and how if I had learned how to grieve better, sooner, that healing would’ve been more abundantly available to me sooner.

But grief is not a productive emotion. It doesn’t lead to productive workers who can produce, produce, produce at the same level every day. Grief slows you down, it can even gut you and turn your inside out and leaving only your Truth to remain. Grief awakens. And to a large extent, capitalism requires people to push themselves and override their emotions especially ones like grief. The root problem is that we have been taught to see ourselves as machines and therefore we treat other people as machines.

THIS is why I am such an advocate for IFS (internal family systems). IFS is such a clear, evidence based process to get your PhD in YOURSELF, in your own inner system so that you can treat and respect yourself as a human FIRST. And then hopefully spread that to others.

IFS helps you stop intellectualizing your human experience so you can start living it.

IFS helps you stop treating yourself like you’re broken and need to be fixed and healed because something is wrong with you and starts helping you connect with your Godself within as your truth and endless source of wellbeing.

The violence and mental health crisis we see in the world are CALLING us forward into a new way of being where we no longer need to be so extreme in how we handle conflict.

It is time we soften and become more tender. It’s time we bring the feminine intelligence of nurturing and understanding to the forefront of our world.

And it all starts with you cultivating this softness and tenderness within. If this speaks to you, please do send me a DM or comment so we can continue the conversation.

I truly don’t care if it leads to you engaging my IFS coaching services or not, I just want to connect over our shared humanity. That is my #1 priority: to be a safe place to land for the deep feelers of the world to feel at home and step into leadership.

P.S. I know I critique capitalism a lot because what we experience as capitalism today is toxic capitalism. But I know that focusing on capitalism’s downfalls is only one side of the story so I want to expand my research and understanding into reimagining capitalism to be more just and holistically beneficial. In the past I’ve done more work on this area as for a year I worked with a friend on starting an earth-centered design consulting agency, but have since focused more on 1:1 work and coaching. Also it’s LOL to me that I do SO much thinking about the economy because I was an economics major in college but like in ssssoo many ways I felt like that major was NOT aligned but now I realize I studied it to CRITIQUE and REIMAGINE capitalism, not to continue it as is. People, we are guided!