Blog

Posted on

Under the Microscope

Systemic change is not meant to be examined under a microscope. It is intended to be viewed through the zoom-out lens.

Don’t examine the ant that is part of the anthill. Be the hawk flying above that is spending years surveying the changing landscape.

If you want to see if the needle has moved, the smallest time period I would recommend would be a 10-year comparison period.

And really the best view would be 40-50 years.

What has changed in the last 40 years?

Are we getting somewhere?

What issues have changed? Which ones are persistent and have remained?

If you are going to judge your systemic advocacy progress on the last 6 months of your work, you will absolutely frustrate yourself. You will feel like you have gotten nowhere. Which will not necessarily be true.

Systemic work is about seed planting. Things grow over time.

Creating a new normal that society just accepts. Raising the bar. Changing expectations.

Micro level advocacy progress: you can see the steps. You can see the incline or decline.

Macro level advocacy progress: the steps are invisible. They are forever moving and floating around, changing levels and going up and down. Constantly taking steps forward, one step back.

Save yourself the mental anguish. You are torturing yourself with your own mental framework. This is where we can become our own mountain. We all have our moments of frustration and wanting to scream from a mountain top. After we wake up everyone on the mountain top, we need to walk down off the mountain.

I highly suggest you save yourself and don’t apply the micro-level view to a macro-level problem. You will get bitter, burn out and weed yourself out unnecessarily.

Keep yourself in the game and change your lens. Examining ants = burnout = risk of health problems.

Understand systemic change = be the hawk.

All the little things add up over time.

Systemic advocacy involves multiple approaches from multiple groups. Which is why we need everyone. We need the legal route; we the community building route. We need the loud advocates, and we need the behind the scenes quiet advocates. We launch litigation and build case law, and different groups collaborate and pull people closer to us. We build. Slowly. One shovel at a time. Taking legal advancements and APPLYING it. Because laws are nothing unless they are used by the people who need them, especially when the system would prefer for them not to exist.

Systemic change takes teams, sustained over long periods of time.

It is hopeful to see so many people eager to engage with the process.

Posted on

Sometimes You Just Need to Laugh

Systems can be so ridiculous, so ludicrous, so illogical, so over the top that you just need to laugh, or you’ll go hysterical.

I come out of meetings with Ottawa and wonder what planet am I on. They must come from planet Make-No-Sense.

The circles that systems send you through and then defend them like it is purely logical is a friggen joke.

They can be so over the top; what on Earth is there to do? Where do you even start with this ridiculousness?

It all seems so HUGE.

Try to explain this to someone else, and you just have to laugh. It turns into a comedy show. I envision this all as a cartoon. A Broadway musical. All explained in song.

The sad part is, is that these systems cause a lot of harm.

And there is no quick fix.

No simple solution.

So, in those moments when you finish the most ridiculous meetings, you just don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Choose to laugh.

You have to look at the ridiculousness and make jokes around the office. Find the comics that resemble the meetings. And think of the songs that would be perfect to explain all of this in the Broadway musical of all this.

Save yourself to keep yourself in the game.

You can choose to keep yourself afloat, and a great way to do that, I have found, is through comedy.

Posted on

Consistency

Like anything in life, what is sometimes deemed impossible becomes possible through consistency.

It’s the little things that we do that really add up.

Systemic advocacy is no different.

The decisions that we don’t think are a big deal every single day are actually our foundation.

The larger system assumes that you will go away. That is why all of them engage in some form of delay strategies, or they come up with projects to keep you busy.

Whatever kind of self-care you can do every day, that is the consistency that will keep your cup full and at capacity to be at that level of consistency.

So, taking your vitamins, drinking enough water during the day, writing, meditating, connecting with friends, or whatever else you do to keep yourself healthy, that is all creating the foundation that will keep you in the best position to keep you afloat.

In terms of the long term systemic projects, ask yourself – what is the one thing I can do today that will help move things along? It can be as simple as one email. Or reviewing and prioritizing your tasks.

The machine doesn’t like the persistent, consistent ones.

Consistently take care of yourself. It’s a decision you make every day. You can choose.

Posted on

Move from “let it go” to “park it for now”

If you are doing systemic advocacy here are some truths you will need to absorb.

  1. This is not going to be solved today or tomorrow, or possibly anytime soon.
  2. This will be an issue that even if becomes “complete” will be forever fragile so never really over.
  3. Working harder, or doing more will not necessarily mean that it will be resolved sooner.

Some things you are just going to need to “let go” in that moment. However, it doesn’t mean that you are letting it go forever.

You will be returning to the issue, it may not be advantageous to focus on it now.

And so we park it.

We put it in our mental parking lot.

Write it down on the park it for now list, and you will come back to it later. There may be circumstances that will change, when suddenly it becomes the time to focus on the issue. Timing can sometimes be everything and you aren’t going to be able to solve everything at once.

So be gentle with yourself. Trying to force the pace to speed up will sometimes be shooting yourself in the foot. Review, and go over what you have control over and what you do not.

The machine would love for you to burn out and go away.

Self care and rest is resistance because it keeps you in the game.

Posted on

What is in our Control?

Do you want something to completely suck out your energy and make you contemplate quitting?

Try to control things that are completely out of your control.

You will drive yourself up the wall.

One of the things that I have found to give me peace amongst chaos is to reflect on what I have control over and what I do not. What is out of my control, I need to wash it off and let it go.

When the feelings are intense, I find the only way to do this is to either write it down or draw out a mind map. But some visual representation that I can post where I work is a constant reminder that I have found to be incredibly helpful.

Systems are huge.

They are interconnected.

It’s incredible how some things that are so small can make a difference, and yet some things can be such huge successes, and the machine fights back.

Do what you can. Develop a plan for what you can control.

It’s those little step-by-step tasks that matter the most. But if you are involved in systemic advocacy, there are going to be a lot of people and a lot of relationships that you will not even have access to. You will be dependent on other people. Focus on you and the rest; wash it off. Do the ritual to end your advocacy for that day. Close the book. Blow out the candle. Turn on a 3 min guided meditation on YouTube and carry on. Do something you enjoy. These issues aren’t going away; it is a work in progress. No matter how hard you work, it won’t be solved today.

Posted on

How to use Rituals as part of your Advocacy

When I have had a heavy emotional day at work, I come home and immediately hop in the shower to “wash it off”.

One of the aspects that helps with advocating at work is separating work from home. It’s done in a different location. I am wearing office clothes. I am speaking with people who don’t live with me.

We can take that concept and those features and apply it to help out other people who need to advocate.

For some people, advocating can feel so outside their comfort zones that they don’t think they can do it. But hey… put on a costume “office attire” or work someone else, and it suddenly isn’t as personal anymore.

Sometimes, to step into the role, having a ritual can help. We can go to a second-hand store, buy a blazer, and when we write our emails, put on our “office” attire.

We can light a candle when we do our emails or policy research, and when we are done, blow it out. The work is over.

Have a shower. Just as professional athletes visualize their goals, we can visualize that the words that stuck to us during that meeting are being washed off. I always shower in the morning, so for me to shower at another time in the day, it feels like I am starting a new day.

What are some rituals or symbols you can incorporate into the advocacy that give you the mental break that it’s done and you can think about other things now?

When advocacy is intense, it is easy to just have it ruminate in your head over and over. Replaying meetings. Re-reading emails. But you need to give your brain a break and have a balanced life to bring some gratitude and joy in your life and in your relationships with other people.

So, just like how I can leave the office and it’s done.

I don’t need to shower anymore when I come home from work, but if I ever have a hard day, I know I have a plan and an option to reset myself. I know what I need and what works. That confidence of knowing that I can cope helps to build my perseverance and my capacity.

How can people who are advocating for personal reasons use symbols or rituals to separate their advocacy time from their life? How can you?

The smallest things that you do will build up over time. It can be the little things that make a big difference over time.

Posted on

Isolation and Advocacy

I have heard over and over from people, “This is isolating”.

I think one of the benefits of working in advocacy at an office is that you physically get the reminder every day at work that you are not the only one doing this type of work. There are team meetings to discuss strategy. When something goes right, you can celebrate with others. When you get the most ridiculous response back, you have others just as shocked as you are.

If you are advocating for your own individual circumstances, you are probably just advocating from home. People feel utterly alone in their experience. It’s heavy, and it is exhausting.

Here is the thing.

No one is out there looking for you. No one is going to find you and send you an invitation to join this great group of people who are experiencing the same shit.

If you want to feel less isolated, you are going to need to be the person who puts in the work of “finding your people”.

It is going to take courage and some persistence on your part.

Support groups can be hit and miss, but don’t give up.

If you are going to be in any sustained kind of advocacy, you need to find friends. Otherwise, your mental health will suffer. Period. And there isn’t anyone else who can do the work of maintaining these friendships for you, other than you.

You are going to need to put yourself out there and risk being rejected. Risk it not automatically falling into place from the start. You will need to navigate through the weeds. It will take time and work.

When I started my student placement, my husband asked me how it was going. I said to him, “I can’t believe I am saying this, but I feel like I found my people.”

Communities are out there. They exist. Get involved. I can guarantee you, you are not the only one going through what you are going through. You don’t need to do this and be alone.

I have had a couple of friendships in my life; if I didn’t have these people, I truly don’t know how I would have survived the BC Human Rights Tribunal for as long as I did.

You may think you can’t take on anything more, but by getting involved, it may just increase your mental and emotional capacity, as the weight of doing this alone will be lifted and you will have more energy. Isolation is heavy. We need each other.

You don’t need to do this alone.

Choose to find your people. Your brain and your heart will thank you.

Posted on

The Pace of Change

“Change never happens at the pace we think it should. It happens over years of people joining together, strategizing, sharing, and pulling all the levers they possibly can. Gradually, excruciating slowly, things start to happen, and then suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, something will tip.” – Judith Heumann

********

The passage of time and how fast things are resolved can intensify pain and trauma greatly. If systems were more responsive to people and resolution weren’t delayed, the harm would be mitigated for many. Bounce-back time for those involved would be faster. Systems know that delay is harm. It’s why they use it as a strategy, hoping people will leave and move on for their own self-preservation.

While moving the needle for systemic change is not going to be fast, harm is still occurring while we wait. That is the rip-your-face-off reality that we all want. Change to happen now. Out of desperation and triggered energy, we seek dramatic and dynamic advocacy “tricks” to compel people to make new decisions and change their behaviour. Thinking that if they surely understood what was at stake, change would be delivered.

We expect empathy and motivation to change. Then when nothing happens, we are lost and confused. We do not understand the planet we are living on and who we are living with.

Recognizing that time is not on our side, or that it is even going to be used against us, is a hard pill to swallow.

When we learn to accept that the work will never be completely finished. And even if it is, finished work is fragile. We are just always taking a step in the right direction. It’s not like the finish line keeps moving because there is no finish line to begin with.

We aren’t going to be able to save everyone and stop all of the harm. Struggle and suffering is going to be a part of people’s lives regardless of what we do. It has always been and will always be. It’s just the level of intensity of struggle that we are fighting to reduce.

You can’t force people to learn or unlearn things at a rate that is faster than what they are capable of or what they are interested in doing.

You will drive yourself into a spin, and it won’t help you or your cause. If anything, there is the potential of you doing or saying things out of anger and frustration that will create more barriers and impact the process, so now things will take even longer.

You may not be able to press the fast-forward button on social change, but you can plant as many seeds as possible, in such a way that you build the most fertilized garden. So if and when people are ready, they will grow at the fastest rate, the most nourished rate possible. Focus on what you can do. And everything else…. Let. It. Go. Wipe it off. If you have to stand up and act out the motions of wiping it off, do it with grand sweeps. Your brain will thank you.

“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” – Martin Luther