Leadership Growth Assessment

I’ve only recently begun considering myself an archivist but I have been in the practice for years. Saving things, making notes, capturing sentiments, is the process by which i remember who I was and therefore, who I am, and thus, who I am becoming. Within my archive, I can chart my growth in my native language. It is a vault where I capture my truest feelings in real time, proactively, knowing that by the time I reach emotional equilibrium again, I will have forgotten the texture of it all.  

I ended up in my archive today because Evernote gave me an ultimatum (they want more money and they’re not getting it from me) so I went to copy-paste years worth of memories so I could shift them somewhere else. I have been crying since I arrived there. I forgot that, there, I have kept meticulous records of my loves, my learnings, my life. Somehow, my younger self knew I would need to be reminded of who I was, who I am, who I’m becoming. 

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I ask my clients countless questions. Many are tailored to their particular experiences; some questions I ask everyone. The most frequently asked question is – Who are you, really? I ask this because it requires us to pause and to truly consider ourselves within our own context. Typically, when we ask folks who they are, they give us their resume – a list of what they have accomplished; the things that make them valuable as defined by convention and capitalism. Those things are not who we are. When I ask folks – Who are you, really? - I am asking to know how they see themselves; what and whom they value; who they would be if they had more agency and spaciousness and liberation. 

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In my archive, I found an entry titled ‘Transformation Time”. It was written in September 2016 –the month and year when I learned who I was, really. I wrote it from the third floor of a converted convent in Toulouse, France; the site of my second-ever artist residency. It was the year that I met my artist self. I’d love for you to meet her, too.  

She wrote: 

I remember telling a few people that I have developed a love-hate relationship with singing, songwriting, and composing while here at Le Couvent (artist residency). I love singing because of what it does to my soul and because of the magic that it creates for others and for me. I remember someone telling me the first time that I performed in my high school talent show that: "[reference to another student] has a beautiful voice but when you sing, it touches me differently; in a more profound way." My voice teacher used to tell me that people truly listen to me when I sing. That is the love portion. The hate portion is when I am faced with a need to feel - to hear the words that I am singing (sometimes my own), internalize them, and then deliver them to an audience. The older I become, the less willing I am to do that. It's because I am desperately afraid. I am afraid of people seeing that I am fragile. I am afraid that someone will see a soft spot within me and take advantage. I am afraid that I will let go so much that I will not be able to come back. When I feel tears coming while singing, I literally can't imagine anything worse than allowing people to see me so raw. Everyone here tells me - "Just cry! It's good for you." But what if I never stop? What if I never recover from that pain that I invited in?

Every time I make a mistake, i have such a hard time recovering from it. Anytime I hear any emotion in my voice, I shut it down.  Frustration and embarrassment will take me under faster than anything else will. Sergio (Residency Director) told me to remember that it is part of the process but that if you let it, it will impede your ability to grow. 

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In his essay, The Creative Process, James Baldwin reminds us that “the truth about us is always at variance with what we wish to be.” At that time in my life, what I wanted most was to be exemplary and unaffected. I wanted to have full control over how I was perceived. I wanted to be untouchable; impermeable. I wanted the outcome to always match my myopic vision of success. I wanted things to be different – better – but I wasn’t willing to do the messiest work. I wanted to reach great heights but never fall down. I wanted to be courageous but I found complacency far too comforting. I wasn’t born that way. The nonprofit sector, capitalism, and its all patnas taught me this.  

One of the greatest gifts that our artist self gives is its deep lack of engagement with pretense or complacency. It is our most honest and essential self. My therapist calls this part of me my “holy origin”. Three years removed from working within institutions, I have discovered things about myself that have astonished me. The day after my last day as a nonprofit Executive Director, I learned that I am unable to sit at my computer for more than 90 minutes at a time. I did that all the time before. A month later, I learned that I can get a project done much more quickly if I start by taking a walk and recording a voice memo about how I envision it playing out. I never did that before. Three years later, I’ve learned that the process of transformation of anything – an organization, a community, a society – begins always with an individual transformation. I never knew that before. My artist self is wise so she knew.  

After three years of Culture Kinesis, she is finally the leader. I have spaciousness again, which I was only able to access previously through escapism. This spaciousness is a signal that another transformation is afoot – both a blessing and a trial. Perhaps the greatest example that we have of transformation is that of a caterpillar taking that inevitable journey into its butterfly stage. At this same residency, I had enough spaciousness to witness a caterpillar preparing for that transition for the first time. This is what my artist self remembers. 

She wrote: 

I almost sat on her so clearly God wanted me to see her. When I met her, she was nonchalantly chewing on a piece of grass. I looked away for a few minutes and when I looked back, she had shed her skin entirely and it lay next to her on a branch. i was astonished at how quickly it happened. I didn’t witness that stage of the transformation. It reminded of what my dad recently said to me about confidence being an “inside job”. it is totally up to me to decide that I want to shed the skin of fear, of self-doubt, of pursuit of perfection in order to move the next stage. The caterpillar sheds that skin because it no longer fits - it no longer serves her. She has outgrown it and cannot take it with her to the next stage.

It is so much safer to remain in a place of fear. Yes, you deal with the regret of having not pursued something but you also never have to contend with your dream being too difficult to achieve. You keep doing what you know you’re good at and you feel successful most - if not all - of the time. But in the same way that you wouldn’t go through life wearing clothes that are too tight, do not also choose to wear the past stage of life because you are scared to transition. Her physical self decided to move forward, whether her mind was on board or not. I thought that she would leave the skin and keep moving. Instead, she went back and ingested it - all the memories, lessons learned, hardships, mistakes, heartbreak, pain; she took that with her into the next stage. A reminder that I need literally everything that I’ve learned. To leave it behind and forget would be a mistake.

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Transformation is not at all what we think it is. It’s a word that we use constantly without truly letting its meaning nestle in. bell hooks tells us that when something transforms, it is “irrevocably changed.” So when individuals and organizations approach me for support – for partnership - and they say that they are ready to transform, I smile. I know we’re on the cusp of something but I also know that they don’t actually know what they’ve just called in. There will be the deepest preparation necessary for this journey. The caterpillar exists to prepare because she knows the chrysalis stage will be brutal. It is a literal melting down of parts that need to be reimagined, a falling away of things that must be unlearned, an acquiring of new wings, and an emergence in a wholly unrecognizable form. And all of that is a creative process.  

When I tell you that I’m an artist, please know that I’ve earned that self because I’ve chosen her. And it means more than you think it does. I have to fight for her to lead every single day. I earned her in these periods that i now recognize to be transformation periods. Three years since Culture Kinesis’ founding, I have had to renegotiate my assertion that everyone is an artist. I stand by the insistence that everyone was created to be one. What i have overlooked, however, is that one must choose that self. One must choose to be transformed. So, this odyssey is not for everyone. It’s reserved for those of us who have chosen our artist selves; those of us who refuse to impede our ability to grow. 

Stay tuned for part two. 

*Note to reader: These are my feelings and truths today. I may feel differently in a week, a month, a year. Similarly, none of it may resonate with you now. I'm comfortable with that. Come back at some point to see if your relationship with it changes.*

Note: As I ask of my clients, be audacious enough to start at the start. Be willing to unlearn the tendency to try to get through everything quickly. Call in spaciousness. Examine how it feels to be in a renewed relationship with time. All of these ideas connect so I encourage you to read Part One first.

It happened again. Another caterpillar, at another time, in another country begged me to spend quality time with her; to learn from her lived experiences. And it happened recently, which is how I know that it’s - yet again - transformation time. I’ve been preparing for this transformation. It has involved me stepping away from the center, assessing what’s possible on the margin, and deciding if I desire to return to that former way of being. And not simply deciding if I desire to return, but what that return will cost me.

What am I willing to give up in order to belong?

What am I willing to trade for my liberation? 

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I came outside for my morning journaling session and almost stepped on her. Of course, I profusely apologized. She looked up at me – I feel like she rolled her eyes - but stayed firmly planted where I found her. Worried that I might actually step on her if I didn’t move her, I picked her up and placed her on the side table. From this vantage point, I could see that she had been through some trials. She was covered in spider web residue, suggesting that she had had a close call recently. And yet, she seemed irritated that I moved her. From my perspective, I was likely the only reason she was still breathing. I went inside for a moment and when I came back, I couldn’t find her. A few seconds passed, and something bright green caught my eye. She was back on the ground, in the exact place where I had “rescued” her from. But there was something different about the way that she moved. She inched around the expanse with the spirit of a sage, as though she knew not only where she was going but also, who she had been, who she now was, who she was preparing to become. She moved purposefully, in deliberate preparation to transition into her chrysalis stage. 

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Artist residencies abroad have been integral to my transformation – my metamorphosis. These were opportunities to leave my context to be immersed in another; first, in Puglia, Italy. There’s a lot to say about that entire experience – I promise to share those stories, too.

The fellow resident I was closest with – a sage woman who shifted my self-perception off-axis enough for me to be forever changed – asked me a question as we neared the end of the artist residency.  

“What will you do now?”  

The question collided with my consciousness. For a half-second, my default self (nonprofit Program Director) and my divine self (liberated artist) stared one another in the face for the first time.

My response:  

“I’m going back to work. This has been beautiful but that’s who I am.”  

She looked at me, wholly bewildered. She then paused, sighed softly, and told me that I wouldn’t be able to go back. That too much had changed. I didn’t know what she meant then; I know now. She had witnessed my soul – as elders often can – and understood that the place I thought I was returning to no longer existed for me. My physical self would return to Oakland but my essential self now belonged to another realm.

Audre Lorde, another sage, asked us such beautiful questions during her lifetime that we would be wise to continue to ask in the present. In her essay, Poetry is not a Luxury, she makes an inquiry that I also receive as a loving challenge: “…am I altering your aura, your ideas, your dreams, or am I merely moving you to temporary and reactive action?”

To be truly witnessed by another person is a rare experience. One has to be willing to be seen. One has to be willing to shed behaviors and mindsets that keep one grounded in a default self; separate from one’s own divinity. When you can see my soul, you can glimpse my future. Often, I can’t see what folks see. I believe it’s because I’m still engaged in a purgatorial battle between my default and divine selves. But my artist elders see me – and they hold me lovingly accountable.  

The first sage sent me away with a seed that due to my own fear, underdeveloped vision, capitalistic conditioning, would take five more years to sprout. I’ve mourned that in ways that few folks know. The reality is that seeds not housed in environments conducive to their growth don’t grow. But they don’t die either. They wait patiently. They call to us periodically. They make firm but loving invitations to reimagine ourselves as liberated. 

Thank you for being my witness, E.H. <3

*Note to reader: These are my feelings and truths today. I may feel differently in a week, a month, a year. Similarly, none of it may resonate with you now. I'm comfortable with that. Come back at some point to see if your relationship with it changes.*

Note: As I ask of my clients, be audacious enough to start at the start. Be willing to unlearn the tendency to try to get through everything quickly. Call in spaciousness. Examine how it feels to be in a renewed relationship with time. All of these ideas connect so I encourage you to read Parts One and Two first.

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She paused. That’s what I remember most. That last caterpillar friend I mentioned – during the final leg of her journey – came to a full stop. I had witnessed her navigate all sorts of tight spots, dead ends, threats, etc. Yet, when she returned to familiar terrain and saw an elevation point on the horizon, she paused; to contemplate; to prepare her heart. She didn’t rush forward, even though she had finally found her way to the next stage. She understood the gravity of the transformation – the metamorphosis – that she would soon undergo. I sat down next to her on the concrete of my dad’s backyard and witnessed her decision to pause, to rest – as though she were abundantly clear that the coming season would test her more than the one she was in. She paused to reflect on the beauty and the brutality that awaited her. She paused to quiet her mind which I’m sure told her to turn back; I’m sure cautioned her that she wouldn’t survive the shedding process; I’m sure tried to protect her by promising that she would never recover from all that she was about to lose. She paused. And then, fifteen minutes later, she began to inch forward into her future – a new container - with a faith that she was actually much more prepared than she knew.

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bell hooks was the first ancestor to plant the seed that I could fashion a new container for myself; one where there was no requirement to abide by society’s uncreative ideals. That I did not have to undergo transformation in the realm of the status quo. Her essay The Margin as a Space of Radical Openness has quite literally done for me what Audre Lorde said art should. It altered my aura, my ideas, my dreams. In it, she tells us that:

 “We are transformed, individually, collectively, as we make radical creative space which affirms and sustains our subjectivity, which gives us a new location from which to articulate our sense of the world.” 

I call my collection of essays ‘Musings from the Margin’ in homage to bell hooks’ invitation to intentionally inhabit liminal space for the work of liberation. It is only from the margin where we can hope to imagine anything that we envision will hold liberation at its foundation.

That essay bolstered me over the last three years. And, in particular, this past year, when something in me broke open in a silent way. I can’t recall ever feeling that lost in my life. I can’t remember ever feeling more fragile. But I almost always felt – and knew - that I was in a container where I would be repeatedly compelled to grow in some of the most painful and profound ways possible.

The chrysalis exists along a margin – bell hooks calls it “a profound edge”. It is a container removed from the center - entirely on purpose. She describes it as a:

“…site of radical possibility, a space of resistance...a central location for the production of a counter hegemonic discourse that…offers to one the possibility of radical perspective from which to see and create, to imagine alternatives, new worlds.” 

This caterpillar friend knew that she was about to enter a marginal space where all do not choose to venture. She knew that to stop and never move forward would be her downfall - she’d be eaten or be burned in the hot sun. She knew that to progress too quickly would mean that her physical being might be prepared but her spiritual and emotional being would not be. She knew that in order to call in her artist self – the self that could create a new self and thus a new world – she would have to be willing to be transformed.

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I love butterflies – I always have. They are profound guides along any transformation journey because they are our most accessible example and lesson. We are wise to remember that the lightness and levity that they move with is fundamentally earned; not given. The liberation with which they float indicates to me that they have not forgotten what it is like to be the caterpillar – grounded; what it is like to be in chrysalis – restrained, disintegrating. This is another word that we should pay closer attention to – disintegrate – meaning to break something into its most elemental parts. Half the time, what we are held together by is a series of villainous untruths, told to us by a false self. Who we think we are vs. who we really are. Butterflies represent “memory against forgetting” – more wisdom from bell hooks. And because we misunderstand transformation, we misunderstand their message. We do not consider all that they had to shed – to release – to be able to inhabit the sky. To be celestial. To be divine. We rush to be the butterfly – both individually and collectively – assuming that we are ready because we wish to be.

We are not yet ready.

We are not yet prepared.

And we will not transition into our respective chrysalises without that preparation. The status quo will remain our container.

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This was a brutal birthing. Loved ones who were in the audience tell me – to this day - that it was my best performance. That’s how they saw it. That performance opened up a portal but it broke my heart along the way. I sat on the kitchen floor and cried for two hours when I got home. I had a vision for how I wanted it to go and how I wanted to be understood. So much was born in that devastating moment. I thought that my preparation would simply involve technical skill – the things I learned in my voice and music theory lessons. I didn’t understand that I would be required to undergo a transformation meant to dismember my false self so I could remember my essential self – my artist self.

My artist self’s reflection the week after the performance:

This was one of the most equally devastating and liberating moments of my artistic life. Short version of the story: I am not a trained pianist but have taught myself to navigate the piano for songwriting/composition purposes. Each time I perform, I hire a pianist so that I can focus on singing. I have told myself for years that attempting both at the same time – publicly – means certain failure. My pianist played only by ear so I would play each song for him and he would play it back to ensure fidelity. This man – a timely spiritual guide - told me the week prior, during rehearsal, that no one could deliver my songs like I could and that I really ought to consider investing in learning to accompany myself. My quick response: “I don’t play piano.”

I can’t prove whether he did what he did on purpose or not. I’m 98% sure that he did – that he decided that it was time for me to know what he already knew. It almost doesn’t matter. I can’t tell you how I got off of the stool and ended up on the piano bench. They were only about five feet apart but it was a quantum leap nonetheless. I don’t play piano but I did that evening. And in the time it took to get from stool to piano bench, a part of my false self fell away for good. I celebrate the shedding today, but I mourned it then. Those kitchen floor tears were my response to an experience that felt humiliating but also, they were the manifestation of my grief for the false self that I was not ready to say goodbye to. She is my greatest enabler for she allows me to get comfortable in perceived limitation. My artist self couldn’t care less about my comfort. She don’t play. She will unapologetically move anything that threatens to interrupt my ascension.

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An artist self does not always emerge willingly. It operates on intrinsic instinct, which toxic capitalism has taught us is not to be valued nor trusted. Three years since Culture Kinesis’ founding, I have been turned inside out in ways that I didn’t imagine possible. All of my tender parts are on the outside now. But I’m back to being human after being gone a long, long time, at the hand of institutions and toxic ideologies. I see possibility where I couldn’t before – from my place behind the veil – for myself and for others. It’s why I do this work.

The forced self-accompaniment experience happened early in my caterpillar era. I was doing hard things – I was. I had accepted myself as an artist but relegated that self to the arena of frivolity. I was doing things scared – I was. But I wasn’t clear that I sought to be a butterfly at all so my preparation was non-urgent, unfocused, covert. Transformation is not at all what we think it is. Yes, the chrysalis stage will be brutal but, what birth isn’t brutal? There is nothing more beautiful than to create; to begin with elemental materials and to fashion a masterpiece from them. And the beauty is in direct relationship with the degree of preparation.

So, again, this odyssey is not for everyone. It is only for those of us eager to journey into a realm where we proudly proclaim, as bell hooks taught us, that:

“We are re-written. We are ‘other’. We are the margin.” 

And we enter that new container willingly, joyfully, knowing that we are truly prepared, and have finally earned the right to see the possibility that calls to us just beyond the status quo. There is no more creative process than the disintegration that happens within the chrysalis. By design, on the way to those imagined alternatives, those new worlds, it will not permit you to skip steps. When you have not done sufficient preparation – when you have not engaged an artist self - there will be nothing available to you; nothing to sustain you during transformation. You will have no choice but to return to the status quo and be reissued your marching orders. What I know most is that the individuals and organizations who resist invitations to reconnect to an artist self even as they proclaim their commitment to racial equity are not yet ready.  It took me longer than it should have to learn this but it’s not an alarming realization. In hindsight, I know that the caterpillar stage will do the convincing; I don’t need to intervene. As an artist, my role is simply to make the invitation – the call – and to leave the door open enough to hear you when you are ready to respond. Then, we co-create.

[Dedicated to Liana who has helped me - through her consistent encouragement - to realize that I'm no longer afraid of vulnerability. Love you.]