Terrifying and right

There are things I built this year, I could not have described to you last year. Not the shape of it, not the nerve it took, none of it.

Which is to say: the fear was never the thing standing in my way. I used to treat it like a signal to wait. Get it quieter first, then move. Feel ready, then share. That order made sense to me for a long time.

Here is what I know now from the times I moved before I all my parts could guarantee their readiness. The fear doesn't clear on a schedule. It doesn't clear because you finally read the fourth article or asked in the second group. It doesn't clear because you see enough other people dooing it.  Permission isnt' often enough either. It just sits there while your comfort zone slowly stretches to include the thing that used to terrify you. And one day the thing you were braced for is just a Tuesday.

I say this because for the clinicians and helping professionals reading, our training taught us to stay neutral and unseen, and then we built businesses on that same instinct to stay out of sight. You can publish while still scared. You can build the offer while your hands shake a little. Terrifying and right live in the same week more often than anyone told us. 

But it is a whole lot better when we work on it together.

That's a lot of what we work on in EMBER, from the inside out. Not a productivity fix. The slower, more structural work of including yourself in your own vision, and building something that lets you keep becoming. Trusting in your experience, knowledge, imagination and skills.

And if you are sparked by this, reply and tell me what you would like to create.

Two places to start, depending on where you are.

Tending Together, a grief retreat  - four days (Oct 8-11) in community in Loveland, Colorado this October, facilitated by Carmen Cool and myself. Come share the grief that have a name and make space for the grief that does not.The price goes up July 30, so this is the best time to claim your spot.

EMBER opens for registration August 1. Six months, up to 40 helping professionals, working on the business from the inside out, together. If you are on the waitlist, you will be the first to know when registration opens and I will thank you for your interest with a bonus discount.

With care, 

Hilary