Taking your next halting step: The Wednesday 1-2-3


Happy Wednesday Reader!

I really struggled with knowing what to share this week.

I had written and re-written this email a couple times, and the teaching I had planned for this week just didn’t quite feel “right.” Intellectually, it was fine, but in my body there was a quality of “offness,” or unease. I experienced it as a numb but deeply obvious and visceral, "meh."

And so on Monday, which is when I usually finalize these emails, I hopped on Instagram and found myself staring at the poem below by my friend and Tacoma-based poet, James A. Pearson.

Unlike the teaching I had planned, these kind words from James reverberated within my story and within my current questions.

And and I knew it would be the teaching this week.


1. Teaching

If the image doesn't appear, you can access it here.

2. Questions

  1. What is the next "halting step," however imperfect or poorly planned, you are being invited to make?
  2. How have your grand visions kept you immobilized, frozen from any movement at all?

3. Resources


⏪ If you missed last week's email:

I shared a practice from Imam Jamal Rahman called "sacred holding."


Sending you good vibes,

Andrew

Introspection As Community Care

I sat down with Kate Holly last month and recorded this conversation. In it, we talk about scarcity mindset, dignity, and the intersection of spirituality and activist work.

The Wednesday 1-2-3

Weekly frameworks and practices to help you take meaningful action in gentle and sustainable ways.

Read more from The Wednesday 1-2-3

Hey Reader, A quick request: as we come to the close of the year, I have a reader survey for you! It’ll only take a couple minutes and will help inform what The Wednesday 1-2-3 looks like going forward. 📝 Please complete this short 2024 Reader Survey (And in case it helps: there's a cute tardigrade gif at the end of the survey 😂) Last week I was talking with a friend about burnout – specifically “activist burnout.” He mentioned how folks who engage in activism often go full-speed ahead until...

Hey Reader, At the bottom of today’s email is a free 25-minute mini-workshop I recorded for you. It’s all about how we hold the charge of this moment – the heaviness, fear, unease, and discomfort of it all – in a gentle and intentional way. Just wanted to make sure you saw it 🙂 Alright – onward to today’s prompt: A couple weeks ago, I wrote that we are collectively living in the midst of a disillusioning moment. I defined this experience as: A moment when the illusion of “how the world works”...

Hey Reader, With Thanksgiving Day tomorrow for those of us in the United States, I thought it would be a good time to bring back the Consent/Closeness Matrix, which I first shared about a year ago. Designed by my colleague Catherine Quiring, the Consent/Closeness Matrix is a tool for helping us understand the stories we carry within us and their origins. (If you can't see the image above, you can view it here.) As you look at the matrix, you’ll notice two axes: Low consent - high consent...