as spaceholders, healers, and leaders, we’ve got a library of stories worth cringing, crying, or laughing over, don’t we?
on our best days, we make it look easy.
if you and I were sharing stories by firelight under a sea of stars, I might share a couple of my initiation stories as a leader and healer, like the time when…
- a large rattlesnake crawled directly into a circle I led atop a remote mountain
- tree blight closed an outdoor venue a day before global attendees arrived
- the event when someone went into full seizure in the middle of circle
- a fire department marched in full gear right through the first opening ceremony I ever held (shucks, that was a good one!)
I’d laugh and cry with you as you shared your stories – each funny, tragic, or tender by turn. we know what it’s like to hold big space, weaving magic and mystery together while navigating the pain and peculiarities of leading the humans we’re called to serve.
for many of us, behind the scenes, there is a cost.
no matter how accomplished, fierce, or visionary we are on stage, we’re sensitive critters when the curtain gets pulled aside and we fully let our hair down. we love our work with ferocity, and deep passion.
and yet.
perhaps we feel there isn’t community or people who truly understand what it’s like to be a healer or leader navigating complex inner experiences. perhaps we don’t speak loudly or often enough about how isolating it can feel to be hold the space or lead (especially when things go sideways, even despite our full-hearted best efforts).
has it been that way for you?
no one really gets it like other spaceholders, healers, and leaders. whether we operate our own businesses, field the attention of tens of thousands, help hundreds one-at-a-time, lead teams doing big work, or shine at global summits, we’ve found our way through the trenches, lived to tell the tale, and continue to offer incredible, vital, visionary work.
our work as healers and leaders is rare and complicated, and there is relief when we’re held by a skilled person or gather with kind colleagues – who truly get it. it takes skillful tending to keep the dreams that led us into our roles alive…so we can keep going, and serve in a healthy, grounded, fulfilled way.
if you haven’t felt that or haven’t known it recently, it might feel very far away, but this kind of support is deep, restoring, and essential. it’s the kind of work I do, and how we gather together at the dreaming otter.
there is a cost for us as healers and leaders that doesn’t get talked about much. maybe we take our tears and bruises behind the scenes to our friends, our therapists, to a healing session. we learn sometimes through the wisdom of the skinned knee (ouch!), and often we don’t have spaces to name how painful it is for us when ‘the show must go on.’
our recovery from initiations, things going sideways, or just feeling like too darn much…matters.
it is what keeps us going.
our times are tumultuous enough to challenge even the stoutest heart, much less show up in service – it’s vital that you be seen, well met, and resourced to keep going amidst the ups and downs of holding space that don’t get acknowledged or spoken about much.
however you hold space – whether you’re a firefighter, nurse, shamanic practitioner, therapist, midwife, teacher, coach, hospice worker or other kind of healer, helper, or leader…
I honor you.
let’s be sure you have the practical and magical support to have you feeling strong so you can do your beautiful work in the world. you are not alone, and there’s a whole community of wonderful other helpers, leaders, and healers waiting here to meet you…and entire teams of helping spirits who love you and want nothing more than your happiness and ease.
thanks so much for being, and for what you bring to the world.
love,
anna
ps – do you know one or two folks who would benefit from receiving the dreaming otter articles? if yes, please encourage them to subscribe to the email list here. I would be so grateful – thanks, and may that kindness return to you a thousandfold.