Chapter 3: Landing in our bodies, in our homes and communities

When I stepped down from my role as Executive Director of Girls Action Foundation,, I didn’t plan a new career move or immediately step into a new role. It felt like jumping off a bridge and then free falling. It’s my nature not to plot and plan (I’m an Aquarian), and I was craving a clean whiteboard, so to speak. Without a role, a title, or a platform to work from, I began to see the work of change in a new light.

When I left my work in this feminist NGO, I landed in my home and community and couldn’t help but wonder how all of these issues would look from the viewpoint of a mother, partner, sister and aunt situated in my neighborhood, and in relation to my community. What would these issues mean to me now?

What happens when we really land in our bodies, in our lives, in our humanity, in relationship with the world, where we see how interconnected we are? What happens when we take on the hard work of recognizing and healing disconnection from our bodies, our hearts and guts, from each other and from humanity? What happens when we invite our whole selves into the work?

Systems change is about shifting from the Newtonian machine thinking mindset of parts and pieces to interconnectivity. And this is more than an intellectual exercise. Interconnectivity cannot be grasped only by the brain.

It requires other ways of knowing. It requires landing in our bodies, bringing our senses into play, being still so we may listen deeply with our whole being. In my experience, this has meant deep healing work in many forms: intentional practice through movement like yoga, walking and running, and a meditation practice. These practices keep me embodied so that I tune into information coming through in different ways. Interconnectivity also means creating space for connection and being human in the systems change we do. We engage in systems change as a practice of reflection and learning, to inform our next steps and action.

Dominant western culture trains us to fragment ourselves, and to disconnect our bodies from our minds, from our hearts and from other people. It is easy to distract ourselves in a consumption-driven society. Our systems operate primarily in silos. Dominant Western cultures perpetuate disconnection even though we may be working for change.

Landing in our bodies invites a profound shift in consciousness. It changes our priorities: how we live, how we care for ourselves, how we care for others and for the earth. It changes our perspective, and it changes how we approach problems that we think need to be fixed.

Our context, relationships and connections to our surroundings become central. Many paths lead toward this deepening, reconnection, healing and perspective. The journey is personal, and with no prescribed or correct path.

Once I land in this body, however, I see how I am a part of a whole. We exist in overlapping systems that range from our bodies to the mammoth institutions that we construct around us. I have come to see that who I think I am and all the messiness of my everyday life is the work of systems change too.

This experience can be both terrifying and joyful. It’s terrifying because we can no longer ignore any part of ourselves. We must confront our shadows and acknowledge the many ways which we cut ourselves off through overwork, busyness, distraction, addiction, professionalization and performance. It’s inspiring because it de-siloes. It connects what has been fragmented. It breaks the illusion of the anthropocentric worldview. It necessitates humility. It heals by making whole.

It also offers a pathway forward that transcends the limitations of bounded organizations working for change, of single-issue agendas, and of disconnected professional and technical campaigns to change policy.

It helps me know that I am human and connected to everything: to the climate, to poverty, to mental health and to the media. They are all part of me.

Paradoxically, there is more space here. Less focus on me. I move differently.

In the interstitial, we are invited to hold the messy flawed reality of our lives in our work. We are reconnected to our own traumas and shadows. We pay attention to these depths and bring all parts of us along. A line connects ourselves to the systems that we think need changing. This challenges our assumptions, humbles our expertise and invites us to question whether we really have the answers.

I am a mother raising children. I am part of a family, and part of a community. These realities are part of my wholeness. They disturb the binaries that separate and disconnect us from our humanity. The domestic space is not really separate from the public space. My value as a mother is not separate from my work or the systems I move in.

What happens when we hold the role of mother central to the work we are doing in the world?

This is one of my learning grounds.

What do we see when we redraw boundaries that start from wholeness, recognize our interdependence and allow ourselves to meet each other here?

This is a key question leading our inquiry into care and systems change.

In the wise words of Nora, our guest for Session 2: Interconnectivity and Landing in our Body:

“We are going to have to help each other to remember what that feels like — to be human”