Autumn is the time that plants prepare their seeds for dispersal. Each seed trusts that when the conditions are just right, it will open to start another cycle of life-death-life. How miraculous!

I’m trying to be thoughtful about this both/and seasonal transition space of autumn. Colorado has the heat of late summer days partnered with cool, crisp nights - often 40+ degree day differences. 

By focusing my September workshops on “Seeds of Hope,” my own planning directed (aka forced) me to slow down to hold appreciation and integration of Nature’s lessons.

Autumn equinox was this weekend, and as a gardener, my curiosity turns to the seeds as the gifts and offerings from the summer’s growth. No surprise then that all my September workshops have the theme of seeds.

On a recent podcast with Pinnacle Health, I was asked what I find hopeful given my work with leaders and teams on workplace resilience and, specifically, my climate resilience work. I talked about seeds of hope.

The seeds of hope are these little moments where you experience joy, pleasure, love, and connection. We have to gather seeds of hope and then hold them with care, like the precious containers of life they are.

I think community is something people really yearn for these days, and it seems like many of us don’t know how to find it or cultivate it. Where do you start?

I see people often (1) not knowing they yearn for it until they experience it almost by happenstance - like when someone joins one of my workshops for the content only to leave feeling the community or (2) if they know they crave it, but aren’t sure how to create or find it.

Aligned, regenerative social engagement is a salve to our individual discomfort and loneliness.

One of the ways I know you emphasize resiliency is in community. What is the connection between resilience and community?

[Thanks, Jennifer of Pinnacle Health Solutions - stay tuned for that podcast release!]

In both my organizational Resilient Teams program and Embodied Climate Action workshops, I teach a model of regenerative resilience that is the foundation to building community.

Transitional seasons are full of shifts. I like to mark this time in the calendar with the seasonal transition of Late Summer because my garden pulls my attention with cooler mornings paired with hot afternoons of tomato harvesting.

In our open community call last week, folks talked about the transitions they’re in: reorgs, new leadership at work, career changes, back-to-school routine changes, and the election season.

And with all types of transitional shifts come change and uncertainty. Two words that make human brains freak out! Am I right?

When I was a kid, my mom, who's 5 '2", walked really fast everywhere. I’d be hustling my little kid legs to keep up. And she was never about waiting. We’d always get places late and leave early, especially to my grandmother’s church, but really any place that had a start and end time. Counter that with my dad, who is a tall, lollygagging shoot-the-shitter, as he’d proudly claim.

Put those together, and you get me. Ta-da.

I am highly attuned to transitional times and spaces.

Last week I brought up the Semester Scaries and offered you access to my client community session, where we will talk antidotes. Sign up here. It’s only an hour, and I’m confident you’ll feel lighter afterward.

Here’s Part II of the Antidote to the Semester Scaries: Planning

Planning is a way that shifts you out of overing anxiety and too many commitments in the wrong places. But I’m not talking about the typical back-to-school planning with a bazillion tasks paired with cramming all the summer wish lists into the same few weeks.

Tell me if any of these feel like I can overhear your thoughts and feel your feels:

• Dread that feels like a sucking out of your life force.

• Wondering where the back to school excitement went.

• An imminent sense of doom but you can’t place why because you’re okay.

• Anxiety that feels like tension in your chest and shoulders or knotted up stomach.

• A general pessimistic cloud that hasn’t been your usual.

• Burnout. Rusted out. Blah.

• Wondering if THIS is your mid-career crisis playing out.

If a version of these resonates, you’re in good company. Talking to clients and colleagues in the last few weeks I’m noticing a lot of what I’m naming as the Semester Scaries or, if you’re outside of higher ed, then this shows up in that palatable shift from summer to fall.

Last month, I put the type of leadership I wrote about last week to the test. I went outside of my comfort zone to co-lead a women’s backpacking retreat that required packing in over two miles to an off-the-grid gorgeous mountain hut at 10,000 feet.

I’ve led many things over my career, including study abroad trips, but this one pushed me. One of my responsibilities was leading our morning movement sessions. On the surface that seems easy and simple enough. It should have been an easy part to prep. And yet in the month leading up to the retreat all the brain gremlins came out.

Heart-forward leaders are facilitators of growth - their own, others, and their communities.

As the second half of 2024 starts, I want to spend a little time addressing the need for all of us to step up as embodied leaders. When I think about leaders I do not necessarily mean those limited to positions or job titles that involve management, decision-making, or administration. But, of course, anyone in a position that influences others, like people managers and educators, are 100% leaders. By leaders, I mean folks who identify with that as a purpose in our world. If you look around, I think you’ll agree that our communities need all of us to lead right now.

This month, I’ve been sharing about the shifts in my mentorship coaching work–meant to grow access to what I feel is really important work these days. As I talked about last week, I aim to create different levels of access points, so here’s a free gift for you. 

In my community program, I host a seasonal workshop every 90 days to reflect on and rebuild our intentions and goals. My clients are so gratuitous in welcoming me to play with various metaphors and embodied practices that I feel fit that current season and moment. 

Maybe you missed the news - I revised my mentorship coaching programs by reducing their prices over 20%. This is not a gimmick or quick, slick sales attempt. It’s been a fully embodied response to this question I asked of myself and my business this year:

How am I, both as a human and a business, adapting and transforming myself and my community in ways that are regenerative and mutually beneficial?

Questions I’ve heard so far: