No one is more surprised than me about the direction my work has recently taken. But sometimes the best journeys aren't the ones with a clear goal in sight that you steadfastly head towards. The best journeys can be meandering. They are the journeys where you follow what emerges in front of you. Where you listen for the path ahead. Where you don't so much decide your route as realise it. I learned to travel like this when we were on the road for 18 months. There was nowhere to hurry to because we had no destination to arrive at. The adventure was in the now, in the here. Possibility was fully alive exactly because we didn't have a firm sense of where we would end up. We would arrive at a place that we discovered along the way. And we did. Thanks to learning to listen for the path, learning to follow where things led me, I now live in a beautiful highland town and have views of hills as I sit here at my desk.
So maybe I shouldn't be too surprised to have been totally inspired by the work we're currently doing in workplaces. Work to prevent sexual harassment. This is important work. It always has been. But the activist in me, the person who has this work flowing through her veins. The person who holds healing from injustice ceremonies and circles on anger. She has a wry smile. The universe is such a great writer! I thought I was heading into the hills of Scotland to hold space in the forest. To find our version of a retreat space. To step into the land. And, I am. But... my path has turned out to be more spiral like than I had imagined. Revisiting old spaces that are familiar and yet changed since the last time I was here. As am I. Changed.
When Cynthia and I first started working together back in 2018 her main ambition was to take our work into workplaces. This was the terrain she knew. Corporate spaces. Conversations about wellbeing. Conversations about looking after your staff. We knocked on doors. We imagined the work. We could see what was possible. But we were trying to persuade the work into existence. It simply wasn't seen as a priority. Too much of a risk. Employers didn't believe they had a problem and they didn't want to draw attention to the potential of sexual harassment in the workplace. So we followed our path and spent the next years working where the doors were open (or opening) - working with universities, police forces, judges, rape crisis centres. There is always enough work. Sadly.
And now I find myself looping around on that spiral. Back in this same terrain. But this time round the doors aren't closed. In fact, some of them are more open than I thought was possible.
Over a year ago we were approached by an employer who really wanted to do the work. Our journey with them is what has inspired me. One of the challenges of my career has been being inspired by the work, being inspired to dream big, but not getting the opportunity to live those dreams. Social change is about imagining the world we want to live in. It's science fiction. Sometimes our imagination lays the foundation for our future, sometimes our imagination lays a path that someone else might get to follow. There are so many things you can't control. It's all about timing. It's all about relationship. This is why the work I've been doing in preventing sexual harassment in the workplace has been so personally and professionally healing. I'm daring to dream of what's possible, and this time it feels like my dreams can be planted in soil and given a chance to grow.
I think I might get to live this dream.
This is a moment for celebration and transformation. The Worker Protection Act is what success looks like. For those of us who have been on this path. Banging this drum. This is an example of possibility entering the stage. The Act opens doors. The Act puts things higher on the priority list. And then what will we do?
For me, it's been a case of revisiting, listening, and reimagining. What does the person who's walked the path I have do in this moment? What old parts of myself might I feel back into? What parts might need composting for the road ahead? Will my heart feel too vulnerable to imagine big things once more? Or does the foundation I stand on these days give me a totally different stance? One where I know myself and my footing so well I needn't worry about my roots and can instead focus on stretching out my branches. To feel those branches unfurl is a celebration. I don't know why I'm surprised at how beautiful my work feels right now. But it does. Which is good, because at the end of the day it might all be about doing beautiful work and then telling the story about it.
This change feels as big as the day Cynthia and I popped a set of keys through a letter box and were officially home-less. We were in a completely new type of adventure. And we knew the best bit was still to come.
Mentioned in this post
Our 18 month journey called 'on the road'
And you may be interested to see some of the things those branches have created. This is our new project Harassment Free Workplace and our new resources on preventing sexual harassment in the workplace.
If you like the idea of using emergence and imagination in your activism you will probably enjoy the work of Adrienne Maree Brown, particularly her books Emergent Strategy and Octavia's Brood
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