So, You wanted to create something visionary and your ass is getting handed to you.

If you’re a community or culture work project this could look like…

Constant conflict, loss of connection to vision and purpose, inability to get work done, power dynamics…a never-ending hell-realm that’s accomplishing little positive change in the world, burying you and your people, and making you wish you could just walk away. You’ve tried to get outside support from other communities, facilitators and mediators. You’ve tried circle work like Council and Forum. You’ve tried different governance and shared decision making structures. You’ve dabbled with conflict frameworks like restorative circles. And you’ve done a LOT of personal growth. But apparently there isn’t enough ancestral healing, re-wilding and breath work in the world to keep your group from blowing apart. You don’t want to give up on community, but you need things to change.

If you’re a parent this could look like…

Constant conflict with your coparent and kids, worry that you’re not raising the kind of cooperative and compassionate humans you know the world needs, and power struggles over everything from when to go to bed to screens to food to school. You love your kids, but you really don’t like being a parent most days. Your own physical, emotional and mental health are precarious. You’ve tried reading books about attachment, neuroscience and indigenous ways of nurturing children. You’ve explored philosophies like conscious and gentle parenting. You’ve taken workshops, joined memberships and hired coaches to try to shift the patterns and triggers that show up in your relationships with your kids as yelling, punishments, bribery and shaming. But the advice you’ve gotten either feels shitty and doesn’t work, or like it was made for someone with way more resources or capacity than you have. You feel trapped, exhausted, and like your efforts make little difference. You want so badly to feel a sense of togetherness and connection with your family, to feel like your parenting moves the dial in the direction you want to see humanity go. You’re chronically under-resourced, losing faith that something more is possible, and you worry your kids won’t have the foundation they need to weather an uncertain future.

The reason communities and families break down

Audre Lorde said “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” This is deeply true.

Even within counterculture projects, most of us are trying to dismantle the master’s house with the same tools that built it. Yes, even visionary, well intentioned, critic of the patriarchy and dominant culture you. Because these tools have been used on us since the day we were born. They’re the building blocks of our beliefs, the software of our nervous systems, the shape of our society. It’s tragic, and almost inevitable.

It’s easy for most of us to see the ways in which CEOs and politicians use tactics of separation, domination and control to achieve their aims, but it’s much harder for us to see the ways in which we reproduce patriarchy in our homes and communities. We’re the “good guys” aren’t we? But we do. Every time we judge someone, believe we know what another person “should” do, engage in exchange based relationships, use pressure or coercion to get what we want, believe that resources within our legal control are “ours”, make decisions that don’t work for others under the guise of fairness or merit or some other moralistic notion. These are the master’s tools too.

I support people in discovering and using different tools

What this looks like for communities and culture work groups:

• Engaging with conflict as a map for what’s not working, what you want and how to move forward in the direction of purpose.

• Sharing a radical and practical framework for orienting to needs and care as organizing principles that serve life.

• Helping groups distill their huge, beautiful vision into a clear purpose with goals that are within capacity for the actual humans in their group.

• Supporting groups in holding one another’s limitations tenderly so they can find ways to compensate for limitations (rather than fighting reality or insisting that people change or heal before you can do anything together).

• Helping groups create clear systems for conflict, distributing resource, sharing information, decision making and feedback that subvert patriarchal norms and pull groups towards vision.

• Helping groups learn how to create agreements that people are actually capable of honoring and that work for everyone.

• Offering ongoing learning and support opportunities through weekly group coaching calls, classes, workshops and conflict care.

What this looks like for Families:

• Helping families move beyond right/wrong thinking and orient to the needs of everyone in the family as a way of operating.

• Supporting families in releasing power struggles and learning how to live in a flow of collaboration that doesn’t require anyone to sacrifice what’s important to them.

• Identifying persistent areas of struggle and creating agreements that are sustainable and work for everyone.

• Teaching playful and liberatory tools and practices that support parents and children in shifting behaviors that others find impactful.

• Creating simple structures for feedback - both appreciative and integrative, to support empowerment, authenticity and self-responsibility for everyone.