The Justice Walk Travelog

Leadership coaching rooted in equity and justice

This Month's Walking...

Fall is quickly becoming Winter.  Various holiday seasons are in full swing.  The days are colder and shorter.  Fall and Winter mark ends of seasons, years, and life-cycles.  Plants and animals hibernate or slow down.  Hibernation and slow down are times of renewal and evolution.

Evolution of thought and action has been top of mind for me this year.  It's critical to the ongoing work of equity, justice, and belonging - having a curious mind and spirit, being willing and eager to evolve.  Within the first 24 hours of checking in to the Air BnB I rented for Thanksgiving with family I spotted 4 ladybugs (or perhaps the same ladybug four times) in impossible-to-miss places, like eye-level on the top hem of the drape I opened in the morning, or right next to the handle of my tea mug.

After the second sighting I googled the significance of ladybugs in different spiritual traditions.  While ladybugs are generally seen as symbols of good fortune, they are also symbols of evolution.  I had no idea that ladybugs go through four molts during their larval stage (during one of these stages they look like mini alligators!). According to the post I read by Kristen M. Stanton*, "the ladybug symbolizes regeneration as they shed the old to make way for the new."

(Photo description: a larval ladybug with six legs, a black head and abdomen, with a red and black striped back end, making it look like a tiny alligator walking on a green stem of grass)  Photo credit: Sophie CatShedding the old is often a hard process.  It can be painful.  This goes for physical change "growing pains" as well as for emotional/intellectual change.  Shedding old ideas about our role as leaders, how our actions promote or tear down racist, abelist, homophobic, misogynist systems, to make way for new ways of interacting and thinking is an evolution. If ladybugs can do it, becoming symbols of good fortune in the process, so can we.

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Thanks for coming on this journey!P.S. Reminder that you can view my website here!

*I was not able to fully vet the website I used to get the information on ladybug meanings for all aspects of inclusion, avoidance of appropriation, etc.  I do know that the use of the term "spirit animal" can be disrespectful outside of Native American spiritual practices. If you visit the site and find something problematic I should be more aware of, please feel free to let me know

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Struggle is part of growth.  We fall a lot when we learn to walk.  Sometimes we get bumps and bruises.  But we don't give up and stay on the floor.  Equity and belonging work involves bumps and bruises too.  It also requires us to get up after we fall.  Hannah L Drake is an author, poet, storyteller, and activist who's blog post from 2019 resurfaced recently as conversations continue about the difficulty and discomfort that comes with the work of understanding and undoing inequity - especially for white people and those used to being in positions where their mindset and comfort have been prioritized.  Her reminder of the fact that ANY transformational change is hard and curiosity as to why white people would assume seeing and confronting racism would be easy are presented brilliantly and made me think.  I hope it can do the same for you.  Read it by clicking below.

https://writesomeshit.com/2021/11/09/dear-white-people-who-told-you-it-would-feel-good/

In late October, I was on a panel hosted by The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven with colleagues from The Self Care Network and Ubuntu Storytellers.  You can check it out by clicking here or on the image below.

Helpful Resource

john a powell founded and leads the Othering and Belonging Institute at the University of California and Berkeley.  All of their offerings are compelling, but I'd recommend starting with a short video on "bridging," where powell explains bridging as a call for all of us to reject a politics of 'us vs. them' and instead move towards a future where there is a new 'us'. The framing where all dehumanizing is dangerous and a slippery slope is challenging, but one I aspire to grown in alignment around.  See what you think.