I eeefed up BIG time and I thought my career was over!

I eeefed up BIG time and I thought my career was over!

(The picture is me composting this post is about me composting my humble learnings)

I was facilitating an intimacy retreat earlier this year and I made one of the biggest mistakes in my entire career.

There was a workshop that was being facilitated that I approved of, even though I had some intuitive concerns about it.

As soon as it began I felt fear and concern come over my body. I had the thought, "that is too much, too quick without enough safety, context, resource in the room"

And then the terrifying thing happened. I froze. I was panicking inside. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to stop it. I could see the room unsettling moment by moment and I couldn't figure out how to interrupt it.

As someone who has facilitated thousands of people into deep processes, I had never experienced freezing in front of the room like that.

Even though there were other's nervous system who were beginning to feel overwhelmed, no one spoke up, no one took action to stop it - not even me - and I was the leader!

I went to grab Ashley Berry who was in the role as emotional support for the weekend who was not in the workshop. She jumped into action, helped me ground, and lead a powerful exercise to help the room resource.

We regrouped as a team and found a way to move us towards more resource and stop the train from going down the spiraling tracks.

The dichotomy of what happened was a couple people had a profound, life changing healing experience, at the same time several people felt deep hurt and distrust in us as the leaders. And rightly so. Everyone's experience is valid.

And to top it off, this was the first retreat where I shared The REPAIR Process to a group. Everyone got to practice repairing the day before.

And now, me, as the leader, the one who created The REPAIR Process got to repair with the group.

And...to make things worse! I effed up the REPAIR process! I forgot to get the group's Permission (which is the 3rd step)!!!!!

I was so humbled - I almost want to say humiliated...and yet I somehow found enough ground, enough connection to the strength of my well ancestors, enough dignity, enough courage to stay connected to my humility, to my body, to the ground, and to my humanity.

I stayed in my seat and in the room to be present with all of their feelings - the range of their feelings - to celebrate the ones who had a profound healing experience - to be with the justified hurt and anger from the ones who felt loss of trust with me - to be with the ones who were lost and confused and didn't know why some people were hurt or angry - to be with the ones who felt protective of me - to be with the ones who were upset at the ones who were being protective of me.

I chose to be with all of it. I was committed to staying with The REPAIR Process and following up that in the end, based on the feedback I got from the people who felt safe enough or willing enough to share, people got tremendous value out of the whole process.

Some people said, "to watch a leader acknowledge they made a mistake and be available to hear the impact helped me not only heal from when leaders didn't take ownership, but showed me what it can look like."

In the end, some people deepened their trust in me. I feel certain, and rightly so, it left some people trusting me less. And I can take full responsibility for all of it, and simply do what I can in the future to take actions that may earn some of their trust back again.

Even though there was so much gained, if I could rewind it, I would have NEVER wanted the hurt to happen in the first place. The gains were simply not worth people feeling emotionally unsafe.

To this group of humans - I am in deep awe of all of what it took for you to be so grounded in your ability to compost that big bump we went through together to find the gifts in it. I am in awe of your grace with me. I am humbled for those who chose to trust me again.

I say being a leader and learning out loud takes great courage.

May I continue to learn and have grace for my humanity for when I miss the mark. While I don't love the binary "Man" in this quote, I can't think of a better quote that captures how I feel (thanks for Brene Brown for bringing this quote forward)

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

- Theadore Roosevelt