23: Erin Fairchild on Journaling as Community Care, Trauma-Informed Work, and Leaving Well
Erin Fairchild, MSW, is the founder of Collective Action Consulting where she works with local and national partners to deepen our collective responsibility to prevent and intervene in all forms of violence and trauma. Erin obtained her Masters in Social Work from Portland State in 2009, and has worked with children, families, and communities impacted by trauma for over 20 years, in roles ranging from domestic violence child advocate, child protective services worker, child-parent trauma recovery therapist, school social worker, trainer and curriculum developer, and program and policy designer.
After 9 years of public service, her current work at Collective Action Consulting focuses on preventing violence that happens in relationships, families, communities, and institutions, through policy and program development, while also building equity centered, trauma & healing informed environments. An avid journaler and papercrafter since she was a wee one, Erin also operates a small business called Journal As Altar that offers workshops and stationery items to all those interested in a creative practice that can be both low stakes and high impact. Erin envisions a world where justice and healing flourish, through actions we take together.
“I want my values to be evident in everything I do with my friendships and my romantic partnership, with my family, with work. I want people to know that my values are real based on my actions. So that takes some reflection time, especially in this world. The sort of binaries that capitalism produces doesn’t leave a lot of room for nuance.”
Additional Quotes:
There's a lot of connection between how we navigate a creative practice and how we navigate oppression and trauma and grief.
Leaving well means you are able to discern what is in your power and in the realm of possibility for you to leave in a way that aligns with your values and that recognizes the both and of leaving.
One of the core components of trauma-informed practice is to humanize what we're doing in a way that doesn't ignore identity and socio-political reality that actually is rooted in those experiences and what we need to be better with each other. I'm walking towards connections and relationships that are real and at least reaching towards not being conflict avoidant.
To connect with Erin:
Take the Workplace Transition Archetype Quiz.
To learn more about Leaving Well, click here.
My Bookshop.org Leaving Well library has many resources to support your workplace transition journey!
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This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.
Transcript:
I want my values to be evident in everything I do with my friendships and my romantic partnership with my family, with work. I want people to know that my values are real based on my actions. So that takes some reflection time, especially in this world, the sort of binaries that capitalism produces doesn't leave a lot of room for nuance.
This is leaving well. Where we unearth and explore the realities of leaving a job, role, project, or title with intention and purpose, and when possible, joy. I'm Naomi Hattaway, your host. I will bring you experiences and lessons learned about necessary endings in the workplace, with nuanced takes from guests on topics such as grief.
Leadership and career development braided throughout will be solo episodes sharing my best practices and leaving. Well framework expect to be inspired challenged and reminded that you too can embed and embody the art and practice of leaving. Well, as you seek to leave your imprint in this world. Erin Fairchild, MSW, is the founder of Collective Action Consulting, where she works with local and national partners to deepen our collective responsibility to prevent and intervene in all forms of violence and trauma.
Erin obtained her Master's in Social Work from Portland State in 2009 and has worked with children, families, and communities. impacted by trauma for over 20 years in roles ranging from domestic violence, child advocate, child protective services worker, child parent trauma recovery therapist, school social worker, trainer and curriculum developer, and program and policy designer.
After nine years of public service, her current work at Collective Action Consulting focuses on preventing violence that happens in relationships. Families, communities, and institutions through policy and program development, while also building equity centered trauma and healing informed environments and avid journaler and paper crafter.
Since she was a wee one, Erin also operates a small business called journal as alter that offers workshops and stationary items to all those interested in a creative practice that can be both low stakes. And high impact Erin envisions a world where justice and healing flourish through actions. We all take together, Erin.
I am beyond thrilled to have you on the podcast, and I would love to jump in and ask you to tell me in your words about a transition or change story that you'd like to share. Oh, thank you for having me. I'm so honored and excited to be a guest. I've been really enjoying what you're offering. So this conversation is just so present for me.
And even after the transition, I'm going to share about the big transition TM. No, no trademark. Um, what is about the big transition? It was about 3 years ago, but it's Still, like I said, very present with me. And actually I referenced it. It's referenced in my bio. I worked in local government for about nine years.
And before that had been primarily in social services and nonprofits and my transition out of local government was. Very needed and very difficult. And there was some empowering moments and there were some really painful moments. And, um, I think the way that my transition went really kind of symbolizes or is emblematic of.
Why I left and the way that I was able to make it. I mean, I can't say it was easy. The way I was able to make it doable was because of the connections I have with people who are my sort of parallel to me in the power structure. And so it was community and connection that helped me through that. And I'm happy to share more about that.
But the big transition was leaving government work. And I was working primarily in violence prevention. And In a local government setting and then moved into become a small business owner and a consultant and doing similar work, but on a different scale where I don't have a boss and I also don't have health insurance.
And I mean, I do have health insurance. I have to buy it. I don't have those benefits that I had. Those government benefits were so strong and losing them as part of the transition. And being willing to lose them says everything about why I need to go. So really, it was the transition from a giant bureaucracy in those very highly political politicized into a smaller, slower scale kind of coming doing the work, the difficult work on my terms and alignment with my values.
So I have a feeling we're going to have a lot of pivots and different paths to go down. Before we do that, though, I'd love to hear what three words you would use to describe your relationship to change transition. The response in my body, like immediately, is to think about the transition I just talked about, right?
Which is the words would be a little different than when I step back and take a breath and think about just separate myself a little bit from The stress of that experience and move into just like transition in general, right? That's not the only transition. Let me come back to myself. I think, in general, 3 words I would describe around change for myself.
The way I experience it would be adaptive emergence. And trepidation. Those are 3 really good words thinking about that transition from the government job. Is there a particular process? It could be something that felt powerful at the time. It could be something that felt small that really helped during the either planning or implementation of the departure.
Yeah, I mean, there are all the logistical things around, like, how am I going to make money and have a stable income going from a reliable income with benefits to going into the unknown of, like, small contracts and piecing them together. And so there's a lot around the logistics, I could say, and I'm happy to, because it was a pretty it was a.
A decision took a lot of time. Like I was very intentional about how long I took to do this. And because I was pretty scared about my financial stability, I, I met to the beginning, didn't identify myself to listeners. I'm a cisgender queer white woman. I am currently middle class. I grew up working class between kind of poor and working class.
And only recently in like a handful of recent years would say I've, I've sort of settled into middle class. Financial route, and that's important to the story because I don't have any generational wealth or financial resources outside of what I can make myself or in partnership with my partner. So that was a big part of the discussion is like, for with myself and my partner and my community is like, how am I going to do this financially?
So all that to say, there were the logistics around how to do that that I can speak to. But I think in the more, like, emotional sort of having the courage to leave and tuning into. And affirming that it was time to leave. You're not going to be surprised when I say there was a lot of journal work. Um, there's a lot of creative practice.
I use creative practices a lot to kind of navigate things to unlock things to get cozy with myself and make sure just I do a lot of work to see to remind myself what my core values are in work and in community and and personally, and that's a common thread for me. And at that time, I really relied on those things.
And and it took me a long time to be able to say. Thank you. This is forced, this work is forcing me to work out of alignment with my values, and I have to leave. I knew that was happening for a long time before I was able to leave, so I'll just say that. And my community in my workplace and outside my workplace consistently reminding me what is possible that, that helped me, I think, to rely on that and to, to, to write it down, to make art about it, to pull, I, I'm someone who likes to pull like a tarot card or an oracle card or something, some sort of ritual around it, that really helped.
And just coming back again to what my values are and and feeling really grateful that I already had a strong sense of my values because I would, I've been doing that work for so long. So it was ritual and routine around my values, I would say in connection with community. So you made a comment earlier and then I heard you just talk about it a little bit just now around doing the hard work on your terms.
So you didn't leave Government work and something that was misaligned because the work was misaligned because you continue doing the work. Right. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Oh, yeah, I'm really going to try to be succinct because I could talk about that for so long. Yeah. So I still do work related to violence and trauma and helping systems and communities and institutions and.
Those who interact with people who are navigating violence. I still do that work around program design, policy design, a lot of capacity building and training. I coach people who either are in supervision roles and want to create a more healing centered, trauma informed, equitable environment. I don't, I would never lead equity work, but as a white person doing trauma informed work, it's really important to me that I always bring.
The sociopolitical realities of life into that space. So that means centering the work in anti racism and in liberation politics and really being human centered and relational in the work. And I think that I think that's critical to this conversation because that is one of my core values. I still do that work.
It can be really difficult because I do focus on trauma and violence most of the day when I work with people in all of these different capacities. And my work in the government was starting to really feel Like a clash, because there's there's a few reasons, but I think I can get down to 2 main ones, which bumped up against my values are that and made me need to leave that.
I realized that what I was teaching under the umbrella of my government job to community providers, community partners, stakeholders, processes, I was facilitating to create change around policy and to get policy recommendations to our elected officials. What I realized is that what I was teaching was not the way that I was being treated.
Or other people in my work teams are being treated and that oftentimes I could lead in partnership and collaboration, really great transformative work with community and with stakeholders and then present the recommendations to the people of power. And they would say amazing. I can't wait to put this up on the Internet and we'll talk about this in our next board meeting.
And then we would never hear about it ever again. And nothing substantial come from it. And I started to realize that a, that we weren't. Thank you. Actually practicing what we were delivering in terms of like, you know, how to do this work. And I realized the part that really, when I, I settled into this, that really bothered me was that I had become, you know, somewhat in a complicit way in some ways.
And some, some ways not, I realized that I had become almost like a tool or a puppet. It was like, I don't even think it was like a manipulatively conscious plan. I'm a part of my leadership or, you know, I think multi layered. Lots of middle management, giant bureaucracies near politics, just sort of in America when they're rooted in whiteness end up this way.
So I'm not even saying it was 1 person's fault. I think it's the way our systems tend to be. But what happened, what happened is that I could do this work, bring community in was pretty successful with that. A lot of the time we get to get to some amazing conclusions and. Have these amazing recommendations and then leadership would put me in these places to talk about that work.
And I realized I was talking about yes, good work. I had done with community, but that wasn't coming to fruition. And I was like, oh, this I'm here. I mean, I don't think anyone's consciously putting me here. But what is practically happening is I'm making this organization not just me alone, but we are making this organization look better than it's actually performing.
And when they want me to go into all these meetings and say what I say. Thank you. Because it's representing the county and then I was like, oh, but people think it's real and it's not like, it's not real. It's not happening. Like, what I'm saying is aspirational and the work that I'm delivering with my community was always aspirational.
But we also thought maybe you would follow through. So it was those 2 things. It was like, I'm not getting treated in the way that I'm asking people. to treat each other in the workplace. Like I'm going to go into it, go do some talk about trauma informed practice and teach a team about how to navigate conflict when I'm embroiled in deep conflict with my own team, not me specifically, but my whole team is embroiled in deep conflict that no one is addressing, you know, is that sort of those contradictions that just made it feel untenable.
And then also just the highly stressful work of working near elected officials, whether They or their staff or the system again, I'm not talking about any 1 particular person, but working near elected officials, I find to be highly stressful. And I realized that I just don't want to do that work. I still work some now in on some projects.
So elected officials are involved in and I'm so happy to do that. And my role is really clear now. And I'm clear with my what my boundaries are. I'm not involved in the internal politics. Uh, and that feels really good, but working on initiatives with elected officials and their staff and everyone that surrounds them is not a match for me.
It's what I learned. Well, especially I think when most elected or appointed officials and I'm so glad that you don't have leaders after elected because that's that doesn't always go together elected leaders, but elected officials, I think, are often worried or working towards the next campaign cycle.
And so even thinking about initiatives and having them get legs and feet to go do the thing. It's just a horrible cycle. So, yeah, I'm with you on that. Early on, you talked about community and connection and those two things being a big part of your decision and transition. Do you want to talk a little more about that?
And you also mentioned. With a parallel power structure that I'm really curious about. Yes, I'm happy to do that. So there's such a big backstory to all that. I mean, I also want to make it clear that amazing opportunities were opened up to me through that work. And it was, there were a lot of really positive things for several years.
It was actually great. And I felt like I was working in my calling. Then there was a lot of shifting and people moving around and, and the work started to look and feel different. And. I'm thankful for so much about that experience, just to be clear about that. And it got to the point where what was happening was not sustainable.
It was untenable for me to continue and some of the things that made it untenable, there is a long backstory that would take so long to tell, but I'm not gonna tell it. But, you know, the short of it is over my tenure there, a major thing that happened is that, um, someone on a team I had worked with, I, I moved into a different team eventually, but at the time, filed a complaint against, she was a.
A straight woman who's a white, cis, white, straight woman. She filed a grievance essentially against me and four other queer and trans people on the team. And it was really an intent, an intention to get us fired. And it very much felt like discrimination. And that had happened years before I left. I mean, HR.
The investigation found no, there was, it was unfounded. There was nothing to the claims about, you know, it was like that. We were stealing work and whatever that we were stealing time and all these things that were, you know, she kept calling us unethical and no evidence was produced and the whole thing was closed and.
HR was only worried about their liability and I kept asking for, I have to keep working with this person. I kept asking for support and structure and I was much, I was, you know, this was 10 years ago. I was younger also in how I deal with conflict and I was really struggling and didn't get that support.
And they just sort of were like, well, the investigation is closed. Everything's fine. And this was in domestic violence work. We were coordinating our county's domestic violence system. And so it very much felt like it was just a very gaslighting and challenging experience. And then I moved on and things, you know, the, the 5 of us that were the 4 or 5 of us that were involved in that.
Accusation scandal, we're really close and so we had each other. So community got me through that. And then a lot of other changes happened and there was a lot of toxicity around the political nature of the work. I was asked to lead. I was coordinating a lot of. Multidimensional work across multiple county departments that had a lot of among them and.
Just trying to get that collaboration going was pretty challenging and political. So that is also what became toxic. And through all of that, what helped me as I was leaving is that my community at work and outside of work could really clearly. I mean. When people started saying your spirit is diminishing, like, I can tell you are not doing well, and I think you need to make a change because I'm worried about you.
And they're asking, like, how are you sleeping? And, you know, it's like, I'm not sleeping. Well, and every night I start thinking about work and my stomach drops. Like, I'm on a roller coaster that feeling of, like, or get butterflies in my stomach in a bad way when I think about going to work and I'm not sleeping.
Well, and, you know, friends saying. I can see sort of the life and passion sort of dissipating from you. That was a real wake up call. And I'm so grateful that some people in my community were able to say that. And then at work as well, people saying, yeah, this is not a good match for you anymore. That really, that sort of pushed to like, think about a different plan was really helpful.
And then at work, what was extremely helpful is that. When I was leaving, I decided that I was going to, since I was leaving and I didn't have to worry anymore about navigating the workplace with this person who had caused all this harm and who had moved on by that point. She was still in the organization, but we didn't work directly together anymore.
But. Decided as I was leaving, I was going to be really open and it had for the first time I was going to be really open with some trusted people in HR. And that's what it took is I found there was a, the person I spoke to in HR was part of the LGBTQ, um, ERP, the employment. I forget what ERP stands for.
The resource group employment resource group, so I knew them and I knew that there was like some safety there because we're both in the queer community and I just shared really openly about what happened and how disappointed I was the organization and how traumatizing it was and how it felt. Really difficult to be asked to do anti violence work in those circumstances and to have no support to even navigate it.
And the person I was speaking with, it was almost like an exit interview, but no 1 offered me an exit interview. By the way, I sought that out and it was almost like. You know, this person wasn't there for any of that. They didn't it had been a few years prior. They didn't know anything about it and they were so kind to talk to, and they apologized on behalf of the organization.
Like, I'm so sorry. This was your experience. I'm so glad you're sharing because we need to make sure this doesn't happen again. And, you know, that was really gratifying and helpful to just like, voice it to someone who had access to some type of power was really helpful. And I think that community supported that because people internally.
Thank Um, referred me to this person and like, they'll be a good person to talk to. And I know you and I know them and that'll be a good match. Uh, and then my community outside of work, but also in my professional world, really embraced and supported and people stepped into mentorship roles almost on. It wasn't even a formal agreement, but a lot of people in my life, when I decided to leave and go into consulting were like, you got this.
You can do this. I did it. Here's how I did it. And some people just kind of took me under their wing. Some people I really treasure and respect and admire. And that was incredibly helpful and also based on community. So it was all of those things together that supported. So. You know, it felt good to be able to say what had happened years before.
Um, I still felt like I couldn't speak openly about the current stress and the politics because it was just too tenuous. So I, I didn't, and I wish I could have, but it's also kind of a known quantity. Everyone, not everyone, but many people who work in government are like, yeah, that's the work. Yeah. It was this complex mix of, um, people telling me I needed to leave and, and sort of pointing out the why to me.
And also, honestly, some people in my life, like my partner in a very loving way, like, I don't want to paint them in any way other than loving, but kind of they were like, yeah, so you've been talking about how hard this is and complaining about the same things for a long time. So I love you and. Maybe it's, maybe we need to start talking about something else.
I was like, well, that is fair. I love that so much. And I I'm laughing and nodding my head furiously because that has happened in my own life with my husband and my daughter saying, we do love you. And you complain about this all the time. So maybe it's time for a change. That's right. Is there anything that you wish was available or that you wish you had done thinking about even, you know, kind of magic wand ish of what we could hope for in the future?
Wow. Yeah. So another thing I didn't talk about, but it's so important to this, like leaving government and going off into my own world and, and becoming a consultant and focusing on my, on journals alter my creative practice business. Uh, I had planned a whole week of transition, like, almost like sabbatical where I was going to spend a lot of time just being quiet and creative and reading and generating sort of how I wanted this next phase to feel what would it look like to.
Cool. Embody my values in my work. Like I want my values to be evident in everything I do with my friendships and my romantic partnership with my family with work. I want people to know that my values are real based on my actions. So that takes some reflection time, especially in this world. The sort of binaries that capitalism produces doesn't leave a lot of room for nuance.
So it just I really want to stay close to those things. Right? So I had set up all these activities and things I do for myself to be quiet and spend time doing that. And my last day of work. Was on January 4th, 2021, 1 day where I was like, 7 days in front of me before I have another meeting. And I'm just going to be here doing quiet things at 1 day of that vibe.
And I actually was still so kind of shell shocked and recovering from. Like saying goodbye to so many people and it was emotional so that I had one day and then the insurrection happened and then the remaining rest of the time was just I was completely frazzled. I was just out of body. Most of the time, like, just glued to the TV, which I wouldn't recommend, but it's what I did.
And it's what I did. It's fine. So, I would, if I had a magic wand, I'd go back in time and have that not happen for a variety of reasons, not just related to me. You know, I also think that. This is part of the really, I want to say kind of unhinged time that we live in, which is just constant high level stress and trauma so much so that it's kind of, I think we're sort of getting to this place of being numb to it in this way.
That's kind of scary. So it's just part of now, it's just part of the environment. And so it's like, how do you do this? How do you stay close to your values when these things are happening when you when sometimes you don't get that time to rest and recover, even though you tried really hard to set it up and.
And then I just found myself being like in this, this haze of scary time. And then I have my first meeting is happening and now we're in it and now it's happening. I didn't need that rest. Well, and I'm wondering about, could you talk a little bit about Journalist Altar and your creative practice around kind of the tenants of grief and processing through that and rest and even the beautiful tagline that Journal as alter is also a portal into what we need for ourselves.
So I would love for you to talk about that because that feels so resonant and it doesn't matter if I think for those listening, it doesn't matter. If you've never journaled a day in your life, there's some beautiful practices that you have Erin that I would love for you to just share a little bit about.
Oh, thank you. That's a nice warm invitation. Um, what I have found in my own creative practices and certainly since, uh, supporting other people to access creativity as a way to navigate grief and trauma and stress, and also to access joy and connection and beauty, one of the sort of key questions that keeps coming up or that people ask me a lot about and that I myself have experienced, and I also used to do, I should say, I I used to be a therapist for a while as a practicing therapist for kids who are survivors of trauma and I utilized art therapy and much of my practice with kids.
So I have that kind of experience and training around using art as a, as a soft landing place as a container as a holder as inspiration and process. So, I have just to be clear, I do have that background, which helps to shape the way I think about it. And, um, people consistently come to me with questions.
Like, I'm afraid to start because I don't want to ruin. My journal, or I'm afraid it's not going to look good, or it might not feel good because I'm not going to be good at it right away. Or I want my pages to look like yours or any number of people. There's like a huge community on social media. People who are really into journals and art.
And I love that community. And there's a lot of people that are really hindered by it that feel like if I. If I don't make pages that look like this, or if my creative process doesn't feel the way I thought it would feel, then I failed somehow. And what I've noticed is that our experiences with grief and trauma and oppression and and being socialized into whiteness or being and or being on the receiving end of any oppressive dynamics really show up in our creative practices and can inhibit.
And exacerbate our experiences can inhibit our capacity to sort of find balance at least some of the time and can inhibit our ability to just be present with the things that are hard when we need to be. Sometimes I want to say we don't need to be present with what's hard. I always want to say. Numbing out and disassociating or just like finding a way to escape is perfectly great and fine.
And I don't want to ever challenge that. I think it's a really important aspect of navigating life. And sometimes if you want to be a little more present and make room for the multitude of feelings, if you're trying to do that through creative practice and getting held up on binary thinking or on. What if it doesn't look right?
I think those things are often connected. The oppressive forces are our experiences of trauma and stress and disconnection from family and or community and or the earth environment really shaped the way we feel when we're trying to engage in something creative because we start focusing so much on what it will look like, what the outcome will be rather than on how it would feel.
And so I do really spend time working with myself and other people In affirmation and reflection questions and, and content that tries to invite us to be in the, how does it feel to make something, you know, it could be cooking. It could be gardening. It could be making music, playing music, knitting, crocheting, painting, any, any, anything creative, uh, that unlocks creativity.
How does it feel to do it? And what does it mean to release the outcome, the pressure of the outcome? And I have to always remind myself. How In these processes, especially when I was navigating, navigating this transition, as you spoke to a bit in my bio, is that this, this is really low stakes. Like me working in my journal is low stakes, even though I have a business around it, literally nothing hinges on how my journal page looks or what my lettering looks like, or whether I like made this collage look whatever way, nothing is like.
Reliant on that on that nothing. And so it's low stakes in that way. And it can also be really high impact because if I'm able to access this sort of freedom of creativity without being stuck in this binary about how am I going to monetize this? Which is ironic because I are not ironic. Just I'm just naming.
I do monetize some aspects of my creativity. That's kind of funny. Right? But many people don't and you don't have to. So. It's this question, like, how do I, how do I untie from the expectations to produce and just be present with the act of creating, which is often kind of mirroring in parallel to how do I be present with what's overwhelming?
How do I create a container for it? How do I make it? So I can feel it to the degree. I am capable of feeling it right now and then just let it be how it needs to be. So there's a lot of the, I think there's, I think there's a lot of connection between how we navigate a creative practice and how we.
navigate oppression and trauma and grief. I even thought while you were talking about the things that creative practice can unleash, also decision confidence can kind of come back. I think with the practice of being creative and being still and being quiet and tapping in. Um, and decision confidence is something I talk about all the time with leaving.
Well, it's like, you already know what you need to do. You just need the confidence in whatever decision you need to make. I also love that you talked about. Getting away from being so outcome focused. It's hard when you're thinking about a decision that has ties to your salary or benefits, but it does come back to ultimately how we feel every day.
Is there anything about change and or transition that. You believe fully that someone might be shocked or surprised to hear I've been thinking about this one a lot. I don't know that people who know me would be shocked to hear this. In fact, they won't be at all. Because I, I feel like I talk about this pretty often.
It's kind of part of my practice. I think that. The way that we navigate, change and transition is greatly shaped by our experiences with race in this country and, and many other factors. I just think that for people who are, who have white skin and are socialized into whiteness, which is me, so that's the only experience I can really speak to, um, with any authority or room related talk is that.
We are so acclimated to comfort and to being afraid of things that don't feel comfortable that I think white people in particular myself included navigating changes for us is maybe different than people who have survived. Oppression, especially based on racism and white supremacy through adaptation and through being open to what's emerging in a different way.
And I just think that being afraid of change because it feels uncomfortable is a really huge barrier to well being for all people. And I think so much of what white supremacy does, and what white people end up doing in part because of their inability, our our inability to change. Is based on this discomfort and fear of change, right?
Like, literally, like, letting go of dominance and a privilege is a huge change. And right now, I think we're in this, like, stage of extreme pushback, violent, dangerous, ugly. Push back around change. And so I don't think anyone who knows me is shocked that I'm saying that some people are like, yeah, we knew you would say that.
Uh, and it just feels really true to me that like so much of my creative practice and journal at journals alter, and I hope bears true in my consulting work is about untangling from that, about finding what is change and transition actually look like and feel like for me, if I can carve some way out from those oppressive dynamics.
Yeah, and I think about, you know, in the nonprofit world, there are scores of. Humans that are mostly white that stay too long in their roles and I think that you hit the nail on the head when you talked about the discomfort that comes from something that's different and that proximity to whiteness.
That's that's huge. I don't know if it's still a relevant term in the field, because it's been a while since I've heard it, but when you're saying that made me think of founder syndrome and there are so many I've had transitions from jobs. That were very much the white woman founder syndrome was what was making everyone flee actually that because that that was really just becoming not functional.
Um, so, yes, absolutely. I often I've been taught in my own life. My some of the biggest lessons I've had is that I, I thought that I was. Amazing. Because I would always raise my hand. I would always say, I'll do it. I'll show up. Showing up is one of my values. And then I realized like, Oh, every time I put my hand up, it's one less person that can also do the same.
So I've learned and I've had to remind myself and practice to sit on my hands so that someone else can do that. And I, you know, if you are in, if you're listening and you're in a role that you and your heart of hearts, no, it is time to go. I hope that you would maybe relisten to this podcast, uh, with a specific.
Bent towards lessons that you could learn about whether it's time to go, whether you've stayed too long. Okay, Erin, 2 last questions. What are you walking towards and hoping for as you continue? It's been a while since you've worked in government. You've established yourself. With your consultancy, with your creative practice, what are you hoping for as you continue navigating all of that?
It's interesting. That question is so related to what I want to do, whether I actually do it or not, is sometimes I live in a little fantasy. I have like a fantasy version of myself, right? I think we all do. It's a fantasy version of myself. It's like, now's the time of year where I'm going to start doing all this reflection about what I want to invite and welcome in the last quarter of the year.
And sometimes I do it concretely, and sometimes it's more abstract, and I think about it, and it doesn't look like an epic journaling session, just so listeners can feel that it doesn't have to always be that way. Sometimes it can't be. And to that point, you know, I think I am really walking towards work It's repeating myself a little bit, but walking towards work that is really work that really prioritizes the relational and that recognizes that how we are with each other is the work and some people and some organizations in particular, and I'm not not thinking of an organization, but some organizations are just not in a place where they can do that.
And I, I'm. Well, I'm walking towards recognizing that then I'm not the one for them. My best work is when we can prioritize being relational, even if it's in small bits that match what's going on in your org, even if your org is in crisis, there's a way that we can do this work that prioritizes the relational and humanizes, um, all of our processes.
And to me, that's one of the core components of trauma informed practice is to humanize what we're doing in a way that, that doesn't ignore identity and sociopolitical reality that actually is rooted in. Those experiences and what we need to be better with each other. So I'm walking towards connections and relationships that are real and at least.
Reaching towards not being conflict avoidant. I think I've done some confusing double negatives, but I conflict avoidant environments is what I want to move away from. So I want to walk towards environments that recognize that conflict can be generative and that it requires trust and being committed to anti oppression to get there.
I love that. How would you describe leaving? Well, or what is leaving? Well, mean to you? Oh, my goodness. Uh, leaving well. I think no matter what the circumstances are, because sometimes, honestly, there are circumstances out of our control. They're based on other people's actions and behaviors. Is that leaving?
Well, means you are able to discern what is in your power in the realm of possibility for you to leave in a way that aligns with your values and that. Recognizes the sort of both and of leaving. So leaving well is it can be painful and scary and sad. There can be grief in it. And it can also be incredibly exciting.
And when you use the word generative again, it can be full of possibility, a mix of all of those things and leaving. Well, I think for me, we'll always have to ideally involve. Naming what happened and what's real for me about what happened and to the best that I can in the environment. Some of us won't be able to do that based on the conditions of our environment.
It just won't feel safe. So then who in our lives can we have that conversation with that is safe to to receive it? Because I know for me pushing it down more, which I'd already been doing for a long time was just. I'm going to cause harm to myself. So whatever you need to do to not push it down, find that path and just honor yourself in that way is what I think leaving well means.
Erin, thank you so much for your impact and for this conversation. Oh, thank you for having me. I'm really enjoying this conversation and I think it's one of those. I just didn't know I needed it until it was here. So I'm grateful for you. Yeah, same. Thanks. To learn more about Leaving Well and how you can implement and embed the framework and workplace, visit naomihattaway.com. It's time for each of us to look ourselves in the mirror and finally admit we are playing a powerful role in the system. We can either exist outside of our power or choose to decide to shift culture and to create transformation. Until next time, I'm your host, Naomi Hattaway, and you've been listening to Leaving Well, a navigation guide for workplace transitions.