It was great to spend time with a great group of (self-reported) data nerds, some data enthusiasts and the data adjacent attendees of the Halifax Data Capacity Summit.

The Nonprofit Data Capacity Summit toured across Canada in Fall 2026. It comprised full day of sessions on data capacity for nonprofits, funders, and intermediaries in each city:

• Toronto, ON — Oct 8, 2026 (cohosted with Purpose Analytics)
• Calgary, AB — Oct 20, 2026 (cohosted with PolicyWise for Children & Families)
• Winnipeg, MB — Oct 22, 2026 (cohosted with Canadian CED Network Manitoba)
• Halifax, NS — Oct 27, 2026 (cohosted with Impact Organizations of Nova Scotia)

The Nonprofit Data Capacity Summit(s) brings together nonprofit staff & leaders, intermediaries, funders and government for a day of engaging in meaningful cross-sector conversations.

The summit is designed to foster collaboration and offer strategies to help strengthen the sector’s capacity to create data informed impact for the communities they serve.

The day features insightful presentations from leaders in the field and funding partners, along with breakout sessions focused on building data capacity, sharing tools and resources, and exploring what a more connected, equitable future state of nonprofit data could look like.

It was so good to see people from the sector representing organizations I have worked with over the years in various roles. From settlement sector to employment services to women’s resources and more.

Diane Connors from Impact Organization of Nova Scotia (IONS) did a great job chatting with Tammy Mudge and I, as we worked our way through a more public version of our pre-summit conversation. It was great to see how it played out.

A few people asked about the Circle, Tammy referenced in her remarks. Here is a blog from 2022 about a version of it on Everyone Everday’s website https://www.halifaxiseveryone.ca/blog/our-circle-of-change *caution that as Tammy said it changes so don’t look at it as fixed.

Here is a digital copy of the current newspaper (the digital copy doesn’t do the paper justice though, ijs)

My remarks began with a more personal data story about needing to become responsible for medical records because my family doctor retired. And wondering why access to this data cannot come at a different time (than during the journey to find a new GP) and/or why this data is not accessible annually and what storage looks like for residents of NS.

I shared this to contextualize the conversation that ‘data is not out there’ and for ‘the report’ or ‘the funder’. Data matters to us and its value, is much closer to home, and for more reasons than we think. It is important to learn about storage and use and updates — even in under-resourced low capacity organizations.

The arc I tried my best to follow for my responses to the conversation was:

• My data story, Everyone has a data story (or a few)
• Practitioners role in bridging community realities and institutional
  requirements. “More data beats clever algorithms, but better data beats more data.” — Brian Carriere, Ph.D.
• (What if we already have enough data, and what we need is inspired action?)People and communities are not/ are more than data sources.
• What data role do you hold? Owner, User, Steward, other? *(And)what about boards? Protect people and the data. Ask the difficult questions.
  Remember when the data already exists.

To democratize the Q&A after our formal conversation, we used Slido* to capture questions and allow votes. We answered a few of them. But thankfully we also have the richness of all them to return to over and over again.

*In modelling more participatory practices, I think we now can look at the outliers as well as those that got the most votes. And the questions were visible (and transparent) to everyone who used the Slido.

In answer to some of the Slido questions such as:

• “where do we start if we have not before,” or
• “how do we strengthen data practices without overwhelming staff or taking resources away from direct service delivery,” and
• “how do we ‘tell our story of learning’ to staff and community when talking about data without bogging people down in details”?

My answer was (mainly) don’t try to do this [ figure it out] on your own.

I hope we took that to heart and that we will consider how we might tap into existing resources (and networks and supports) and/or create a cohort of practitioners that want to connect to go further together (per the African proverb).

I closed by referencing Dr. Randolph Potts LinkedIn post on Franz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral’s influence on Paolo Freire’s work. Commenters under this post ask some salient points through their own reflections & questions, points that are quite applicable to the sorts of conversation that Diane, Tammy and I were having in the fireside chat and that continued throughout the rest of the data capacity summit itself:

“Paolo Freire’s teachings also demand an unflinching self‑audit: Is the work you are doing contributing to oppression or helping to liberate the oppressed?” — Sheila E Fon (commented under Dr. Potts’ post).

“Paolo not only drew on the work of Fanon and Cabral, but worked in Guinea-Bissau after leaving Chile.” — Travis Knoll (commented under Dr. Potts’ post).

“Randolph Potts, Ph.D. I value your clear identification of Black thinkers and practitioners Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral. Paulo Freire’s creative approach to teaching and learning often loses the figures who shaped his pedagogy from public discussion. His citations suggest that much of his work draws on African diaspora liberatory thought.” — Jasmine Getrow (commented under Dr. Potts’ post).

I felt these questions and reflections were also worthwhile to consider for the panel I participated in, at the Atlantic Social Impact Exchange summit held in Dieppe earlier in October, but did not get to them then.

Thankfully they made it into my closing thoughts for this Summit, where I read custom reflections, informed by Dr Potts’ post and commenters, as applicable to data capacity, culture, practices and governance asking:

• Does your approach to data reproduce oppression or strengthen community agency,
• Does it address power or sideline community knowledge?
• Is it transparent about assumptions beneath the data requested?
• What is the basis and intellectual lineage surrounding the decisions about what data is valid or legitimate and what is questioned, treated as anecdotal evidence or ignored?
• Who is accountable for what is (or is not) being done (in terms of action) using the mountains of unused but already collected data?

That last one got a lot of mileage through the day, it clearly hit a resonance ❤

I have it on good authority that my “energy was infectious and [my] talk was definitely referenced in various sessions throughout the whole day!” I am glad, I felt energized and among peers throughout the day as well. I even gave a recommendation to Bearly’s Blues House (iykyk, smile). ❤

I look forward to further conversation, particularly in NS and Atlantic Canada about what’s next. I hope we maintain the momentum in the room.

And most of all I am grateful to have been in the company of the many wonderful, talented and committed people asking thoughtful questions about how to strengthen their data capacity, practices and cultures as they continue to do meaningful work.

SOME RESOURCES

(1) Tamarack Learning Institute hosts Data Walks workshops to show participants how they can turn data into a shared journey of discovery, dialogue, and action.

“A data walk is a powerful process for engaging diverse stakeholders in a shared sense-making process around data. Created by The Urban Institute, Data Walks is an interactive way of sharing data and research with stakeholders.” — Tamarack Institute (TOOL | Hosting a Data Walk)

(2) Canadian Evaluation Society has an Essential Skills Series which teaches you the basics you need to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of your programs. The course is designed for those who are new to evaluation. For more information inquire through the NS Chapter. The Chapter, in addition to being connected to National CES, provides professional development and networking opportunities for our members and others who are interested in learning more about program evaluation and the impact it can have on their organizations.

(3) Performance Planning and eXchange (PPX) has courses on meaningful results and will soon be delivering content specifically for nonprofit organizations.

Increasingly more and more is being said and written about regenerative, wellbeing and alternative to status quo economies. Molly Balcom Raleigh , in moderating our session at the Atlantic Social Impact Exchange remarked that a lot had been said about the “how” but our session may describe the “what”. In my remarks I said that we needed the how,what and why to hold together for movement.

This how, what, why (and for/with whom) felt very resonant during the concurrent session I was fortunate to be part of during the 25th Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Congress in Toronto in August.

Who Deserves What?

The first speaker Evelyn Forget presented very compelling reasons for moving beyond the data and technical arguments and getting underneath our beliefs and value systems.

In her title slide (image below) she asks “What Kind of Society Asks People to Audition for Empathy”?

She went on to present several slides that continued to ask session participants to reflect on our histories and current realities. **Also see this recent article by Thomas Piketty on a dystopian future.

She made a clear case for how decisions are made with respect to Basic Income (and other inequalities) through the lens of ‘Deservingness’.

In this slide she addresses ‘criteria’ for deserving(ness) that include:

• belonging (part of , and worth collective concern),
• productivity (worth through what you do) and
• behaviour (acceptable actions & lifestyle).

Her talk, with case examples, really demonstrated some of the difficult realities we have to grapple with as we navigate income inequality, (un)affordable housing and homelessness and continue, at least based on our conversation on Dieppe on creating “multi-dimensional, resilient and well communities…” (to quote Seafair from their Atlantic Community Impact Fund website)

She told a great series of stories. I was especially struck by the way in which narratives confer ‘deservingness’ and how the way in which media covers an issue and/or a story is told ( and what choices are made about what is said (or left unsaid) in the story conveys deservingness. It reminded me a lot of Kelly Lamrock, Q.C. ‘s remarks in explaining the title of the most recent NB Advocate’s report ‘buying the (bus) ticket’.

Listen for Missing Stories

She closed by sharing how much Listening Matters because

• stories allocate moral attention
• stories shape policy
• stories embed moral judgments inside ostensibly technical systems
• (AND) stories regulate empathy without requiring cruelty ❤

She closed by issuing the following call to action, because stories narrow imagination and narrow policy follows narrowed imagination:

WHAT stories are missing? What is the silence absence telling us?

AI & Canadians and Work

Following her remarks, Tracy Smith-Carrier and I shared the preliminary findings from our study on AI, income inequality and implications for meaningful work and more in Canada. After providing the study context and our research questions, we cited Marxist theory: “Marx recognized that machines transform “the agency through which the capital-relation is formally mediated i.e., the contract between the worker and the capitalist” (Hilstob & Massie, 2022, p. 230).

We then moved into other parts of our discussion covering the notion of inevitability as well as the many implications of AI use including de-skilling.

Our presentation also highlighted the recent Canadian data on public distrust of AI and how it continues to be high. As we walked through our slides, I shared that when we began this work in November 2025 the discourse was significantly different (and much more optimistic) than it was at the time we finished data collection (~March 2026) and were presenting at BIEN (August 2026).

The rapid shift in sentiment driven (likely) by the data center concerns and following the unfortunate incidents at Tumbler Ridge not to mention ongoing employment disruptions.

During discussion people wondered about what displaced workers would do with the returned time. Our presentation spurred someone (Josephine Grey) in the session to share their concerns related to automation and the the rapid rise of digital services, even as they acknowledged how entangled we all are with AI and in use of technology as it rapidly shifts in real time:

“Automation is systemic abuse*” — Josephine Grey

*Systemic abuse (also called institutional abuse) refers to rules, regulations, policies, or social practices that are harmful or discriminatory. In public services or programs, the harm or discrimination is against those seeking supports through such services (or programs). Automation is perceived in this manner as it moves people even further away from human — human interactions and support.

FOOD: Banks, Systems and Commons

The final speaker in our session spoke about the ways in which the organization he runs in Durham is shifting from food banks to growing food and creating sustainable more localized food systems.

In his remarks he spoke about how our food system is about the commodification of food and creates food insecurity.

“Global food systems commodify food and have turned a human need into a private market product” — Ben Earle

It was humbling to hear him conceded that food banks as they currently operate are a band-aid solution that may be part of the problem. *This was a brave space and session for sure and we all were better for it and appreciated the learning.

In general discussion following all the presentations, the conversation turned to commons(es) and how much needs to shift in the ways that work for many more than is currently the case.

The speaker (Ben Earle) addressed that there was a need to operate in three horizons in which while continuing he food bank model (buying food to stock up in them) begin more readily exploring and creating more pathways for food security and building local food economies. (Such as )through purchase or lease of land and growing food and/or moving to Commons approaches.

Bringing it all together

In a recent LinkedIn post by Vinod Rajasekaran, after attending a few philanthropic convenings (WINGS 2026 Forum in Montreal and PFC gathering in Winnipeg), he asks three questions: (1) “Who are we becoming” … (2) “How do we move capital for systems change — and fast?”… and, (3) “How might philanthropy and government build Canada’s future together?”

I responded by first suggesting he read Norma Wong’s “who we are becoming matters” and then suggesting that it may be helpful for me to sit with recaps I had been seeing come across my LI feeds from other gatherings that others in my network has posted, saying:

“ I am going to sit with some recaps from the past two weeks in my feed and see what I get. Already for instance there’s yours (Vinod), Brian Mc Bay’s (on creative land trust gathering in Finland), Tamer Ibrahim‘s (on community land trust gathering in Ottawa), Jen Angel’s (on the Adaptation Conference in Toronto, Milica Begovic’s (on a gathering at the UN) and then the various ASIE 2026 (Dieppe gathering) one’s.” — Louise Adongo

This post begins that journey for me, I had delayed writing it but now that I have I can add it to the convening reflections I would like to sit with and pattern make from. I think this is important as we move from talking (to action, in remaking our ways of being/becoming who we need to be to respond to the realities our communities are facing.

I close this reflection with Danya Pastutszek’s comment on Vinod’s post which says in part:

“[…]We can’t invest in the parts and hope for something whole. We can’t expect much if we leave untouched the systems that produce the grief and poverty. Designing and delivering the collection of things capable of transformational results means deploying so many types of capital — financial and otherwise — in new, coordinated ways. Let’s do it!” — Danya Pastutszek CEO Tamarack Institute

In my next piece I will share the synthesis of the review of the recaps listed above (including the 25th BIEN Congress), and musing from Tamarack’s Community Change summit happening next week (Oct 20–23, 2026).

In late 2023 & early 2024, Canadian Women’s Foundation funded a Systems Transformation Leadership (STL) I undertook to get a sense of what might be different for these self-identified leaders in their time(s).

• See LinkedIn post for more info (if interested)

In late May 2025, with encouragement and support from Fabienne Pierre-Jacque of the Carold Institute, I facilitated a share-back and closing session with the Systems Transformation Leader (STL) study participants who could make it. Additionally, the various transition guides and supporters who have dropped into my orbit along the journey to the end of this work also attended for the sharing.

It was a significant day. I had been very reluctant to go back into the wounds, but it was helpful to do so and move along the timeline from a wounding to a healing narrative.

At that gathering, I shared both my personal journey in this work as well as the findings from the sense-making of the insights and survey responses contributed by STL study participants.

I shared that what’s changed for me is I’ve moved from work as activity and tasks and items on a to do list to work as practice.

Other #STL’s I met through this study have described it as:

• “moving from rigid schedules to rhythms”
• “breathing in and out” — noticing the stiffness and the tensions,
• “spaciousness” (more ease),
• “different choices about what I need to be doing”, and
• a “noticing of my inner environment as it connects to and related with my outsides”.

It was an incredible experience for all present.

The STL study emphasizes the need for a significant shift in how we understand leadership and organizational transformation — especially in communities which feel like ‘the canaries in the coal mine’.

We need a shift that moves from leadership expectations in community from exhaustion and linearity toward regeneration, collective rhythm, and adaptive support systems.

The work calls for deep structural changes in how we understand leadership, fund innovation, and support leaders during crucial transition periods.

In the discussion following my presentation of personal story and study findings, we arrived at some clear Calls to Action for various audiences which I shared in an LI Post last summer but will reiterate below:

• 🤎 💚 To the person who might possibly be a Systems Transformation Leader: be gentle with yourself, have compassion and take your time in this journey which is wholly your own (even as you are drawn to participate more in leadership collectives).

Take your time resting, healing, reflecting, remembering your joy and delights. Spend time in nature, with loved ones, on your own or in pursuit of doing anything and nothing. Just let yourself BE.

• To Board members (in the context of the social sector) supporting this kind of leader: model a pace and amount of latitude that makes sense for the work, support healthy conversations about transition and succession planning with the leader. Faulty transitions from the undiscovered and the un-discussed help no one.

Encourage the leader to collaborate (with others in collective, co-creative leadership) and work in non-linear and more cyclical time. Be the first supportive container for the leader (instead of the first line of critique and hypervigilance).

·🗺️ To funders and philanthropy, three things:

• ♨️ Fund rest, dreamspace/time + what may seem like not (yet) well articulated non purposeful forages into the unknown. How else will we build the futures we have not yet seen?

AND

• ♨️Support modelling of collaboration + working in collectives + shared impact and success. Accept proposals and reporting from collaborative efforts instead of reinforcing the hierarchy and competition of single leaders (and organizations).

AND

• ♨️ start to build out transition funding for organizations that are seeking healthy succession. Model the healthy transition of leaders and do not hold back support in a ‘wait and see’ mode. Recognize how fragile and vulnerable organizations (and leaders) are particularly, at the time of transitions, before the networks and relationships are successfully shifted.

After preparing the final report(s) for both entities, more felt like it was left to be done. The report of the findings alone felt too distant and not in flow with what I was both discovering and stepping into as a new way to be in practise.

With encouragement from Julius Lindsay and all of those who know who they are; and don’t wish to be named, I am turning this into a book.

I have been learning a lot from Luvvie Ajayi’s Book Academy and from AJ Harper’s Write a Must Read. I have the outline, a narrative arc I am pleased with, the chapter summaries, some core messages and key points drafted. But ultimately, even with all these resources I do (just) need to write. So, I will be spending this Fall doing just that.

See you on the other side, though, I will pop in from time to time, with some updates. Hope you are all looking forward to that as I am.

This work is about tending the living systems we are part of and grieving endings (even as other beginning start). Moving with patience, humility, and reverence. Being with what is difficult, navigating ruptures and being courageous in intentional in relationships with repair. Transformation isn’t a checklist or a certification or solely a skillset with which one is or isn’t imbued. If it can be considered a garden, let’s make space among the carefully cared for and well established known annuals and perennials, for what is weedy, wild, slow, interconnected, and yet to be named.

Much gratitude, again, to the Canadian Women’s Foundation for funding the study and the Carold Institute for convening this great wrap-up to my Carold Fellowship experience.

😊

So… it is Fall and while I love this season, it is not so great that there is ‘falling’.

Good news first — I am part of this anthology of amazing creative works and I am so glad to have been included in it.

The not so good news second

Firstly, you need to order any books via 9th house press by Sept 15th noon PST because the co-op is dissolving. After September 15, the 9th House Press website will read “currently out of stock” and in early November will redirect you to individual author’s pages for purchasing their books directly from those who have books to sell.

I want to celebrate the courage and vulnerability it took each contributor to write in this book. AND the courage of the founders of 9th House Press to practice Liberatory Futures (and alternative economies) in the present. I know that the farewell and closure is not what was the plan. And navigating these unplanned difficult decisions is part of why I joined Ever/Was (albeit in a different context).

Secondly, to connect this trail/weave in the tapestry to other parts of the web of my life…. there is a #climate story here too:

• Carmen Spagnola lost her home to wildfires. I learned about this about a week before I went to the Victoria Forum to speak on a climate survivor panel. You can donate to her family’s gofundme here

There may be many other elements going into why 9th House Press is not able to continue; and/but it felt important to name this aspect of things as the #fractals of crises and collapse continue to show up in many parts of our lives.

So, even as I send this a plug for anyone who can/ wants to — to order the book before midnight on September 15th 2026…

To echo something I shared a few years ago when the BC government walked back a plan they had made around harm reduction (amid backlash), in which I (in an unpopular opinion) supported and celebrated

• the courage to try and
• the courage to shift course when feedback showed it was necessary.

I want to thank the founders of 9th House Press for creating something that can become, hopefully alchemized into the foundation for something else.

And I celebrate their courage to try to bring to life and fruition alternatives for publishing and sharing work as creatives. An alternative that was built with their skills, knowledge, expertise, experience, imagination and hope.

❤

This quarter’s theme: grief, the un-homed and creating new narratives and realities by coming to terms with calamities, losses and one’s sense of reality and facts.

The summer months have been mostly about continuing the practices that support ‘resetting’ an activated nervous system (see aces & paces).

I had a conversation with some folx at the Victoria Forum about the ACEs and PCES. I am continually amazed when people I meet haven’t heard about these. In case that is also you — here they are: https://touchstonefound.org/aces-pces/.

It kind of reminds me of when Vanessa Andreotti said when she wrote Hospicing Modernity people were asking her about collapse (no that anyone’s really asking that anymore).

Even though I still have not finished reading ‘Understanding the Politics of Trauma’, I do get surprised that there is not more of a trauma literacy (or grief literacy for that matter, but Sara Bareilles has an album and documentary coming out, so… )

Anyway, amidst somatic practices and what not, I read a few books.

The ‘aces and paces’ may not be named explicitly in each of the books I read, but I could see them playing out in each book (as in my life):

• Nation of Strangers https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/240081183-nation-of-strangers?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=uDIwfstzPi&rank=1
• I see you’ve called in dead https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/217204419-i-see-you-ve-called-in-dead
• The right to be cold https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25734152-the-right-to-be-cold?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=Ss0VGl3UIP&rank=1

I also listened to some really great music and I spent time outside with various plants and streetscapes around Canada.

I’d call this quarter’s theme in reading the “grief, un-homed and creating new narratives and realities by coming to terms with calamities, losses and one’s sense of reality and facts”.

I would say more about this but these three authors pretty much wrote the books on what I am saying so mostly I just encourage you to read their words.

:-)

Sidebar: speaking of questioning reality and “the” facts — I highly recommend Amanda Doyle’s latest podcast on gender: A=a great episode of how bias gets turned into science and natural law (*looking at you Aristotle).

Climate, Grief and Home

Speaking of home and unhoming, I have participated in the climate disaster project and found great solace in the shared stories of the impact of having an experience with climate-event related loss that is sadly going to keep coming for more and more of us.

I found this anonymous letter posted to Holding Ground, a substack that gathers and updates the work of the project and wanted to share bits of it here:

❤

“To all of you who have lost,

I write this note, five years after the massive fire that took my home in the Village of Lytton. […] It felt like I had my passport stamped for another country, living evacuated in a strange town, amongst strangers. They were the normies, and I would wonder, “Can’t they tell just by looking at me?” I was in a bubble that only other evacuees from Lytton could enter.

[…] Please know — despite the shock, and the feelings of isolation, fear, anger, sorrow — know that people do understand. And wish deeply you didn’t have to go through this. Some of the supports you expect will fail you. Many supports you don’t expect will appear. Despair will arise, don’t believe its nasty voice. Keep going. Keep going.

With love and support,

A former resident of Lytton, Canada”

For the whole piece, and other stories visit: https://climatedisasterproject.substack.com/p/to-all-of-you-who-have-lost

Alt title: Things I learned about belonging from artists, and spaces for grief.

I was one of six provocateurs in the session on Reimagining Public Consultation — The Victoria Forum: What if public consultation wasn’t an obligation — but an opportunity to build trust, connection, and shared purpose?

We only had 2 minutes for our remarks, so I did not get to really share as much as I wanted to in the room. I am ‘reclaiming my time’ (smile) here to expand on what I shared and to give tribute to the Harvest Wall and the other creative spaces provided in the Collective Harvest Studio at the Victoria Forum.

Background

I first became aware of the Victoria Forum in 2018. I was doing some work in EDI, probably for one of the provincial ESG (or affinity groups) and came across the Forum’s inaugural report. The report, titled “Canada @150:Promoting Diversity & Inclusion” was edited by Adele Guitouni, Saul Klein and Sebastien Beaulieu. It featured a wonderful poem by Ann-Bernice Thomas titled “ideas for a Better Future”. The topic areas and summary of recommendations were compelling and reading through the report, it felt like it had been a great convening.

Attending the Victoria Forum this year, with this context, meant I came to it with a sense of wonder and curiosity and hope for another great convening.

I was invited primarily to speak on a panel of climate event survivors, joining four incredibly impactful people who represented themselves and their stories with such potency and grace.

Secondarily, I was invited to be one of the provocateurs for a session by the SFU Centre for Dialogue on Reimagining Public Consultation.

Coincidentally the sessions were one after the other, with the public consultation session preceding the climate survivor one. As I prepared my remarks for each of them I started to see that they both sort of coalesced around the same perspective but came at it differently. Essentially, I was asking that we make space for how people are feeling as part of what we consult them on.

Spaces for Reflection and Making

This year’s Victoria Forum featured harvest spaces and reflective questions that people were invited to respond to. This started with the registration package that features a postcard asking “what patterns are you seeing”, ‘what does it mean” and “what becomes possible(now)”?

At what I learned was called the Collective Harvest Studio, I also followed the progress of (and contributed to) a participatory collage that attendees were bringing great creativity colour and depth to over the course of the Forum.

I had wondered over the days who was behind each set up (the collage and the reflection questions). The morning of my two sessions I spent time with Helen Roberts, the artist responsible for the Harvest Wall and we chatted a bit about the concept. She told me, from facilitating across many parts of the island, that people wanted to feel heard. And she shared that she would be speaking about the summary of what was gathered at the Forum’s closing.

I told her about my two back-to-back sessions, and how I planned to share a story about belugas and how the news that they would be euthanized can inspire even very young people to write to their elected officials (speaking of wanting to feel heard). I shared as well that I would be describing what it felt like to visit a Spaces for Grief installation at an Evergreen Conference. And shared with her how that changed my interactions participatory installations and made me begin to consider how I might similarly create that space versus a workshop at future events I attended. To move, as it were from talking heads to feeling heard. And I used my hands to show the talking and the head (neck to crown) and feeling heard as being about the rest of the body. Helen brightened up at that and asked me to contribute these reflections to the psychosomatic portion of the Harvest Wall. And I thanked her for giving me the title of my remarks in the re-imagining public consultation session.

My Reimagining Public Consultation Remarks

I think that we need to deconstruct public consultation and shift it from how we currently think about it, design for it, who is included, in what ways and spaces and how we assign different value to the forms of input that we receive. We need to move from talking heads to feeling heard. I share my own experience of feeling heard (and seen) by being immersed in a Spaces for Grief installation at an Evergreen Conference. The ability to move through the space of different settings/spaces for what represented the lived experiences of different people during the pandemic was visceral in its tapping into griefs I had not even realized I was holding. The quietly being with what each space represented (the living room, the writing desk with a violin, the toddler bed, the empty fridge, the impacts of essential work, and nonessential work on livelihoods, the losses mourned in isolation, the fear, the dread). And creating space to hold that and then have it supported with the fact sheets and resources on what collective and unresolved grief looks like and how it moves in space and time was illuminating. Being able to visit again and again and at my own pace and et the different parts of myself catch up to what I was seeing, and feeling, stays with me to this day. And has me wondering how we do that more in public consultation.

Some of what I said in the room was that “Some of us need space and visibility to our current state (or stasis) before we can participate in public consultation”. And what I would add is that the ways in which we feel heard (not just by being talked at or listened to) can include being given space to be with ourselves and our multilayered feelings.

I also said “when I prepared for this I wrote that we need spaces to have visibility to our current state before we can participate, but then I realized that actually that it was not about one then the other. Actually these spaces were how we were participating”. And so I would add now in this reflection that is what we need to do in reimagining public consultation; expand our sense of what we consider it to be and how we include the ways in which people can feel (now only what we talk about, in whatever format of gathering).

Later on in the session as we developed pitches for a competition, my group flagged that in public consultation we need to not ignore the civil servants as a constituency and understand that regardless of what comes up through consultation; if they do not feel (or think) that it is possible (for whatever myriad reasons) it goes nowhere. We did not dig into this one further in the time that we had, but it’d be great to have a focus on rebalancing how public consultation moves in public policy & programs at a future session.

My closing questions were/are:

• How are we meeting people where they are?
• How do we encourage people to discover and voice what their feelings are showing them about patterns and what might be possible?
• How are we seeding the soil of democratic engagement in the younger youth?
• How can we redistribute the value of different forms of engagement (collage, spaces, stories, assemblies, and more) amidst quantitative data points and other sources of information in reimagining public consultation ?

*I noticed a Freudian typo of ‘reimagining’ as ‘reimaging’. And maybe what that typo is revealing is we need both. 😊

A bit more about the Harvest Studio:

Harvest Studio :Take a moment to pause, reflect, and connect in the Harvest Studio, located in the Sherman Jen Building across from the main entrance. Throughout the Forum, this creative space invites you to explore the question you brought with you through conversation, reflection, art, writing, and visual harvesting. At the heart of the Studio is a growing Harvest Wall, where participants can contribute questions, insights, stories, drawings, and connections that capture the collective learning of the Forum. Three facilitated gatherings will explore the questions: What are we hearing? What does it mean? What becomes possible?

Whether you stop in for five minutes or an hour, your perspective will help shape a living picture of the ideas, relationships, and possibilities emerging throughout the Victoria Forum. Everyone is welcome.

Alt title: Survival, the apocalypse, rebirth and renewal

Maati Wafford asks (in a recent blog “Worthy to be Witnessed”):

What’s one thing you braced for that never came? What does it mean that the doom you rehearsed didn’t visit?

Hmm, ok so the doom I rehearsed did not visit…

BUT WHAT ABOUT ALL THIS OTHER DOOM NO ONE SENT ME THE REHEARSAL SCHEDULE FOR THAT IS ALL OVER , EVERYWHERE and also right here??

(What about) the doom I/you did not get a chance to brace for?

The consecutive and concurrent dooms?

Have I/we “just” been dooming wrong?

This was the conversation I was having with a friend the other day on a lovely long phone call, the kind that lingers and allows all kinds of catching up: with words, with sighs, with laughter and with silence.

“I feel like I am dooming wrong” might be how I led into this part of the conversation. “Great, another thing to add on this list [of things we do wrong implied]” she responded wryly.

This then led to me explaining the gist behind my statement and then also my remembering that it was kind of like when I was in my first ten-ish months of mothering and after a certain point each cry was met with “Maybe it’s teething”.

At the time I wanted to walk around wearing a “maybe it’s teething” t-shirt to get out ahead of the opinions/perspectives/insights.*I still really want that shirt, it feels really applicable as I/we continue to start and fall and get up and start again after the tumbling that seems to have hit its stride the last four years.

Why four and not six you ask?

Well, maybe the first two years were freeze mode, but as we started to ‘thaw’ and the phrases ‘post-pandemic’ and ‘new-normal’ became more prevalent in our discourse it felt like some of us were still in a state of stasis and some of us were much more able to just get on with it. Or at least that is how I felt like it felt. Is it just me?

We don’t really even connect to or talk about ‘pandemic’ (and all the other griefs) anymore. Ok maybe not “all” of us, I mean I have previously written about the amazing work by Space for Grief (to name just one example of not slipping this into ‘ the past’ or acting like it was a blip and now we are ‘over that’).

And yet some (maybe many more than some) of us walk around with parts of feeling so so sad. Like the blue character in INSIDE OUT and although we mask and manage for a bit, there’s this thing that keeps coming back into the technicolour frame that we cannot completely alienate.

And so that’s what I said in our chat, and suggested that perhaps I might be dooming wrong. But of course that is not the case, there is no wrong or right way to “doom”. And maybe the only way to handle the dooms one could not have braced for us THE BEST ONE CAN from moment to moment and that could look different each time.

Fortuitously, a few days after our chat I was listening to Becoming the People ‘The Wild Edges of Sorrow’, and Prentiss Hemphill was having the most amazing and witnessed melancholic chat with Francis Weller about (sort of) the state of the world (and each of their past worlds, and current world) that they each inhabited.

There are so many great things in this episode, please check it out. The two that stood out to me were:

(1) the grief that comes and that needs to come and be shared and be felt and be held out in the open with others and

(2) when Francis talks about the grief from the ascent; Prentiss with such gentle but firm truth speaks to the grief that they feel about never knowing what that ascent feels like and from a young age.

And ok so let’s add a 2.5 or a 3

(2.5 or 3) Francis meets that moment with such witness and compassion and co-being. It felt great even as a listener. I felt (em)braced and that maybe that meant, whether rehearsed or unanticipated, I could just go ahead and doom (yes, I just verbed doom, smile).

I felt like ok, Francis is helping by giving me a ‘permission flag’ to doom ‘my way’. And I needed the flag, because this is all so new, I am 10-ish months old in allowing myself to feel the feelings and not try to perform my way into happiness or joy.

Maybe I am teething.

A few days later I sent Nancy some of my musings and the original posts that informed/inspired/ illuminated them. She wrote me back, a few things. This one I appreciated, because some of my dooms come from a life of continuing to navigate the healing journey of the impact of growing up among generations of mental health and addictions.

“I do not agree (opinion not fact of course) that the most gorgeous thing on a human being is vulnerability. I think that ‘recovery’ is far more beautiful, … because during recovery people choose, find and engage with love when its been lost from their lives for a while. This produces a great deal of hope, peace, and ultimately, the joy of more love” :-) — Nancy

I think maybe it is both, especially in an apocalypse. Especially in the continual need to recover, repair, rebuild and/or recreate the versions of self from pieces that grief shows you need compassion and tenderness and time.

It is vulnerable to feel this all and it is beautiful to get through the teething pains of recovering from/into the post-doom self.

I mean, I think Francis Weller might agree based on his new book ‘In the Absence of the Ordinary: Soul Work for Times of Uncertainty’ where he frames our current era as a rough initiation — an upending experience of profound trauma and transformation that demands we reorient our ways of thinking, being, and relating.

He also has a book “The Wild Edge of Sorrow — Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief” in which he introduces the 5 gates of grief, helping us come to terms with grief and loss within a culture so fundamentally detached from the needs of the soul:

• The first gate recognizes that everything we love, we will lose. Here, we meet the pain of losing a loved one; the grief of illness; and the tender invitation to touch the depths of our losses and loves.
• The second gate helps us uncover the places that have not yet known love: our secret shames, our shadow sids, and the neglected pieces of our soul that need restoration and care.
• The third gate meets us at the immense sorrows of the world.
• The fourth gate, what we expected but did not receive, offers wisdom for tending our wholeness after the love, care, and validation we need are withheld.
• The fifth gate opens to our ancestral grief: the traumas, pains, losses, and unrealized dreams of those who came before us.

With grief rituals, reflection prompts, and deep, ageless wisdom, The Wild Edge of Sorrow is a genre-defining invitation to healing and renewal. Weller helps us rediscover what modernity has made us forget…and reconnects us to our most profound and human yearnings. Less a self-help volume than a blessing, this book is a homecoming for the soul. — Excerpt from the Penguin Random House page for the book.

So let’s go ahead and be with our feelings and be in our state of being and perhaps be worthy witnesses (h/t Maati Wafford) to our own and each other’s souls.❤

Alt title: A contemplative stroll into (a Jordan Peele) utopia**

A new contact whom I am hoping is also becoming a friend asked me the other day what I would do if I could do anything and I said:

1) run a bookstore cafe that hosted open mic nights and had an upstairs apartment(s) and a meditative Chinese garden backyard.

2) build my dream off grid near the ocean home (not difficult in NS), with lots of natural light and views in at least two directions).

3) write and garden and art.

She asked me what I would write and I said an anthology of poems (which I keep working on) and then also maybe turn a chapter I wrote for an upcoming book into a full book.

She asked what it was on, and I had to think a bit about how to answer succinctly. I said it would be about how I wish those who can see the value and promise in the grand ideas by the absurds would support them differently and let the work associated with the ideas flourish instead of what tends to happen.

What does tend to happen is one of three things:

• co-opting it and implementing it without the absurdity that would enliven it and make it sustainable and regenerative.

Or worse,

• co-opting it before it is ready and then pushing off the risk and any resulting failure on whom it was co-opted from without acknowledging it wasn’t quite ready yet.

And then maybe arguably saddest of all,

• dismissing it and along with it, the ideators (the absurd), and keeping those who can ‘dream new dreams’ and seed the future out in the wilderness or to the margins which keeps us cycling in the downward spirals we exist and work in.

But more is possible, what if instead, there is an other option/action? What becomes possible when the alchemy brings together the seers, the seekers, the seeders, the holders and the customize-to-context-and-space(rs)?

If they were to do this, I’d celebrate the co-opters.

Why? Because, credit where credit is due: they are really great at spotting what’s going on at the edges among the absurds.

(And so)

• I hope for their better selves to rise and hold their actions in space(s) differently.
• And that they more consistently take the action(s) to co-create the path from absurd into possible and implemented.

Our walk ended but clearly my rumination on absurdity did not.

What does ABSURD mean anyway?

What does ABSURD mean to me?

My absurd is much closer to the seemingly ridiculous and unreasonable. In the course of my life and in the places and communities I have experienced life in/with, I have seen a lot of unreasonable and impossible things happen.

Claire Helakoski, a writing instructor who wrote this blog about qualifiers says “by “qualifier” I mean descriptors which come from a place of personal opinion rather than clear, indisputable observation.”

I have benefited from witnessing and being raised in the company of many of those whose futures work and being and imagination has taken shape in crisis and on a budget.

I come from many generations of hopes and prayers and piecing it together.

The absurd moves in me and through me, it is a whisper and silver thread that connects across all my communities.

Final reflection

When we think about the state of our various worlds (close and personal or larger and more global:

→ How do we return to the knowledges of being in community and cooperation with each other?

→ How are we moving into the after?

→ After what?

**On a semi-related note (of absurdities and futures and imagining new realities). I was thinking last night that if anyone knows Jordan Peele please get him to write and direct some utopias. The horror films may be entertaining for some but they are also very reality shaking hands with fiction. So, with such great power meaning great responsibility; can he manifest and generate some good futures for us?

*asking for a friend ❤

Alternative Title: Motherhood and the Sharing Economy*

This post was originally written on LinkedIn in November 2020

#sharingeconomy #newmamalife #givetogivenotonlytoget #communityresilience

I know of a family that has recently immigrated to Halifax with one partner a teacher and the other a “computer fundi”.

No one has called them that yet, except me, but I have been wondering how soon they can pick up their trade in a world where things are much more disposable and planned obsolescence is built into our tech gadgets.

I looked up the word to see if it still meant what I thought it did. After some missteps and something about concavity of an organ, I included the language (Swahili) and this came up:

fundi. (ˈfʊndiː). n. (Professions)

E African a person skilled in repairing or maintaining goods and appliances

But that is not even why I am writing about fundis. That is part of another story that I am interested in exploring further. I am writing about the #sharingeconomy and how it has been an important part of my post-partum life strategy.

When the family arrived, it was the cold months of the year and they had not adequately prepared for the warm clothes necessary for their toddler. I have a child similar in age so well-meaning social support networks being what they are, a request was made to me to ask if I had anything to share.

I was very pleased to share much of the abundance in clothing I had since I discovered a community of parents (mostly women) who shared and traded clothing and toys and other child-raising materials (and knowledge) in what has been a very supportive circle that I happened upon through a friend.

The Dartmouth Baby clothing swap

The Dartmouth Baby clothing swap, now paused in operations due to COVID, has been a great continuous clothing resource for me and my child. Before COVID the swap was at risk of closing due to the cost of rent which was increased to accommodate repairs needed after damage from Hurricane Dorian.

In a social media post, the Clothing Swap organizer spoke about the need to fundraise to sustain the swap and keep the energy going. In it they shared some of their vision for initiating the swap.

I enthusiastically agreed to support the cause saying:

ME: “Thanks for this swap, it is one of my favourite things about living here — how we show up for each other, even strangers. We are our village” . “It literally SAVED my 1st year (you have no idea how much coming to the swaps helped me)…”

Baby Swap Organizer: “The support and sense of village is so meaningful to me and I’m sure to so many others.”

Baby Swap Organizer: “I don’t know if it’s the lack of sleep (two sick kids) or just general hormones but you’re making me tear up”

ME: “I am tearing up too. E-hugs”

Motherhood, the Sharing Economy and Community Resilience

A lot of literature exists out there about the joys and turmoil of first-time motherhood(in addition to motherhood more generally). For some, though not for all, it is both physically and emotionally intense at the best of times. Jessie Harrold who introduced me to the term ‘matrescence’ — the transformation into motherhood — has written about motherhood as a sacred rite of passage. As isolated, or isolating that it may feel for some ordinarily, it may seem even more so during 2020 with restricted travel and limitations in size and composition of social groups.

I find hope in the knowledge of the existence of avenues such as the clothing swap which moved virtually and created a community, even if circumstances dictate whether or not swapping can occur.

I am also hopeful in the social support network that has formed around this new family to Canada. One of the best ways to stave off isolation and loneliness is to begin to build social bonds and community. This isn’t always easy to do, but I do find perhaps more so in the smallness of our city, in a province with fewer than six degrees of separation it becomes much more accessible. And perhaps pockets of interaction that build community resilience can be more broadened by sharing and swaps.

Perhaps the organizers of activities and initiatives within the sharing economy such as clothing swaps are the fundis of community? 😊

Some semi-random references

1. COVID and motherhood — https://theconversation.com/the-moms-are-not-alright-how-coronavirus-pandemic-policies-penalize-mothers-144713

2. Sharing Economy — https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sharing-economy.asp

Alt Title: So you think you can help 😊

I was recently revisiting a few separate but related stories that were shared with me by some colleagues (who will remain anonymous) regarding how set back, speechless or not helped they find it when someone asks them “how can I help” after they have shared part of their journey. The generic offer to help falls flat to them when they feel like based on what they have said, there could be some very clear issues/instances/ needs where certain kinds of help could be meaningful.

I decided, upon reflecting on these conversations, and as the instances keep adding up to work through some options for how I/we might be better and more nuanced in how we thought about our offers of help. And how when we say or ask how we can help; we preface this with what we already know about ourselves that can meet the moment and the connection that has been built through the sharing by the other party.

Especially, as I consider how much I too have been unnecessarily vague about my offers of help. So this is all of us, an entangled collective; no abstraction or distancing allowed 😉

So here are some thoughts on how we* can be better at offering help.

*Yes, I wrote “we” because I must entangle myself in this as well. I am more than likely continually clueless on what would be helpful in the instances where I offer non-nuanced help. Perhaps, thus far, those on the other side of my offers have maybe (just) been graciously quiet.

TL;DR: Instead of asking “how can I help you”, after someone opens up in what they have understood is a mutual and reciprocal vulnerable space. One might want to say “ based on my expertise, influence and access how can I help you”? And if the person offering help feels comfortable with the risk of getting it wrong*, to actually suggest 2–3 things they would do. This shows they listened and they internalized the gift of the sharing.

*sidebar, do we ever discuss this fear and how it leads to people saying how can I help versus offering help?)

Current state and a proposed alternative to how we offer help

Let’s walk through the steps in how we might find ourselves in situations where we are offering help:

Usually:

1. Someone opens up in what they have understood is a mutual and reciprocal vulnerable space. [what is the setting/container, what was our opening question/inquiry? What generated the sharing from the person with need(s)?

2. Whatever the case, something was said which led to us asking “how can I help?” or “how can I help you”, afterward. This great, I am not saying we should stop offering help. I am suggesting, on reflection and on discovery (through conversation) that more may be warranted.

Let’s pause here and think about some of the reasons we keep the ask generic. Why do we do that? What are some of the reasons we say “how can I help” versus jumping in with specific or general offers? What have we learned or been told that has led to us acting in this way?

What else is going on for us? Do we know?

I know that I have asked around and, in some cases, as I am told, it is based on feedback of not assuming the help someone needs. So the offer is kept generic to give the person who needs help the agency to decide (by response) what the answer is.

The reason I am writing this post is that I think this is where the disconnect happens? Starts? I wonder how the person with need would know what to ask, if they do not know who the offerer is and what in their world(s) is possible so that they can frame their specific request for help.

There is a power (and knowledge and information) imbalance in the interaction. And one if not being asked to share their whole life story in terms of how they can help. But certainly to bring some context to the offer, it is not out of the realm of doable to base the offer of help on context of the lived experience of the person offering help.

And more importantly, what if the generic offer is also a mask that protects the person offering help from the vulnerability of getting it wrong? What would it look like to risk offending the person with need(s) by framing the offer of help in the context of the expertise, access and influence of the person offering it? What might that look like and how might that shift to us being able to then suggest 2–3 specific things, in the context of who we are?

So let’s revisit and take a different path with our offer of help.

When

1. Someone opens up in what they have understood is a mutual and reciprocal vulnerable space. [what is the setting/container, what was our opening question/inquiry? What generated the sharing from the person with need(s)?

We can

2. Offer help by saying instead: based on my expertise, influence and access how can I help you”? Can you see how this is valuable and deepens the nuance of the offer of help? Can you also see how it meets the person with need by sharing “this is who I am and what I can do” and this is the way in which I am offering help to you, by what I understand about what you need from what you have said. This can be really helpful by not just showing that you, the offerer of help, has listened and internalized the gift of the sharing by the person in need, but you are also doing a bit of meeting the moment with maybe less a mirror and more of a window. Having said that , there is nothing wrong with mirroring back the need as presented and then proceeding with the revised step 2.

Imbalance of power in asking for and needing help

Something we do not maybe surface enough/ at all in considering the interaction of seeking helps is the power structure in needing help and having help and how help is offered.

I created a visual as part of this post to illustrate how we might get better and more nuanced in our offers of help (see below).

The figure captures our skills and knowledge (expertise), our access (opportunity through who we know) and our influence (at first, I thought this was similar to access but I realized that one can grant access (also see *mentorship) but without influence (see sponsorship and angel investors as an example) the access is just opportunity.

In fact, according to this post by Adrian Salas, the difference between influence and access is that one is about giving you the opportunity to present a case while the other is about the power to shape the decision. If you are reading this you may have an alternative take, please share!

Other instances where we can deepen our offers of help:

When I discussed my idea for this post with Njoki Mburi she shared this incredibly helpful (smile) podcast on the Gender of Grief: “How to offer help specifically during grief”. Definitely worth a listen/watch.

Now over to you, what are your thoughts on this piece, I would love to hear them (you can disagree and share even more/different perspectives):

· What has been your experience with being offered help, or offering help?

· Do you, like one of my anonymous colleagues, appreciate it when people make the effort to be specific with their asks, requests, and offers?

· Do you have stories/experiences of offering help in more nuanced ways that speak to what’s been said above?