On this Women’s Day my attention goes to the millions of young girls and women of all ages, who currently face, and who have faced in the past, unimaginable suffering and loss due to conflict that is unnecessary and incomprehensible. While new conflicts erupt, I am ever aware of the women who have suffered in conflict zones before this. It is in these times that there is a reigniting of trauma and a reliving of painful experiences. I often imagine and feel an unbreakable golden thread that connects all women and girls…a thread that intertwines through each of us and carries with it our grace, dignity, and strength that we share as a collective. My strength is yours; my dignity is yours; and my grace is yours. I am reminded so often by the many women in my life that if not for their strength, their dignity, and their grace, I would not be able to find my own.  

Image: Golden Thread. Painting by Oksana Lekhniak, Ukraine

We’ve created a label for a disorder that has been placed on an individual who is already trying very hard in what is most often a system that is not doing its best to create a culture of inclusion and belonging. Adding a label to what already feels like ‘less than’ or ‘not enough’ is deepening the injury to one human being and not dealing with the root causes. Each time I hear a client say that they have imposter syndrome I feel compelled to say – you are NOT an imposter.

Most of us are grappling with uncertainty and in turn are also grappling with our responses to this uncertainty. My own response to uncertainty is a bit like “what do you mean it’s not going to go like that….it’s supposed to…that’s how I’d planned for it…” And while my intellectual self can acknowledge that we live in a time of ever-increasing uncertainty, my emotional and physical self usually take a bit longer to adapt.

What if rather than having a goal of being more courageous our goal was to build the body of Courage? of Presence? of Authenticity? And what if instead of asking our minds to figure out how to do this …

Over the past few mornings I have felt such a sadness and I’ve wondered, is it because my kids are back to school and I’m left with that familiar sense of being apart from them as they slowly grow up …