Do I Interrupt This?
That moment. When your board member or donor or colleague says something that isn’t okay.
And you have to ask yourself “Do I interrupt this?”
How do you know?
I had one of those moments about a week ago. I was in a class on working with the body and the Enneagram. These are two of my favorite topics and I loved the teachers, who have also been coaches and mentors to me.
We were in the middle of a beautiful share, folks talking about expanding the body, how it sometimes feels good but scary to get bigger, especially as women.
And then one of the teachers said “Well, there’s a difference between getting bigger with breath and getting bigger with food!“ And laughed.
Ouch. Fat shaming. Not okay.
I felt it in my whole body - it yanked me out of the flow. On the screen, the check-in’s just continued, as if nothing had happened. I heard my internal critic, Edith, speak up. (Have you named your internal critic yet?) Like most inner critics, Edith likes to shill for the racist, patriarchal Story of Normal. Edith says “Don’t be a vibe killer. Don’t be a victim. Just. Let. It. Go.”
But I know now what it feels like when I violate my values – and not just in my head. I know what it feels like in my whole body. Once upon a time, values were an idea-kind-of-a-thing for me. I did the staff retreat values exercises! They were a theory of my ideal self – in fact my list of values when I started this journey was pretty tense: Honesty. Justice. Excellence. Service. I mean each one is fine… But as a crowd? Do you want hang out with them? Make out with them? Even have a staff meeting with just them?
No. That list is not my whole self and when I tried to put it in my body, it felt like what it was: A lecture from Edith on who I should be.
Here’s who I am: Courage. Pleasure. Honor. Wisdom. Magic.
That’s my values star. It is planted in my body, each value forming one of my five points and helping me remember who I am and what is sacred to me, even when the Story of Normal on full blast in my head. I know what each value means to me and what it feels like when I’m aligned: Solid. Secure. Interested in dancing! Able to create. I might be scared to say something difficult, but I’m not scared that I am betraying myself or putting one foot on the path to getting smaller and dimmer inch by inch as I pretend things are okay that really aren’t.
So. I wait until the check-ins are done. I remind myself of seeing a trans friend interrupt a lesson to say “Ouch. That hurt.” I remember one of my elders saying to me right after 2016 that she wants every woman in the world to get as big as possible. I ground. I run my values star and I'm ready. I start with my own check-in- it was good week! And then I say, “Now I want to say something that’s a little vulnerable. As a woman who has struggled with food and body image my whole life, I felt an Ouch when you said there’s a difference between getting bigger with breath and bigger with food.“
Then, I think I babbled a close, something about sharing the impact…I would like to have finished with an invitation to remember that all bodies are beautiful and that when we embrace that truth it allows everybody to shine our fullest selves.
Next time.
This time, I didn’t let the moment go by. This time, because I have a tool that embodies my values, I knew my “No” in the moment and I stayed loyal to myself and to my body, which is the land.
I use this tool over and over. When I’m facilitating. When I’m coaching. When I fuck up. And when I’m healing my own beautiful wounds in beloved community.
As leaders and change-makers, we are sacred storytellers and stories are magic maps- they show us how to live our values and become authors of a beautiful future. When you own your leadership story, it begins with your values and leads you to the magic that is just yours and that the world needs now.
What are the values that help you Shine?