Forging community within the fires of burnout: Marion’s Regenerators story

Content warning: Mention of fire, wildfire, burnout, climate crisis.

Friday, January 10, 2025: We at Team Regenerators, like many others, have been devastated by the tragedies of the fast-moving wildfires currently engulfing the inhabitants and lands of Los Angeles, US.

Our thoughts are with everyone and everything impacted, and we grieve for the loss of life, shelter, and safety for so many. We grieve for the land and wildlife. All are interconnected and impacted.?

This crisis is the latest evidence of the ecological crises taking place across Earth, and being experienced in real-time. They are also a reminder that although the effects of these crises aren’t experienced equally by all – with the Global South disproportionally affected – no country is completely protected from their impacts.

The story we are sharing was written and finalized before the current wildfires; planned and ready to be shared today. It’s a story of finding hope and community in the aftermath of burnout, which uses the imagery, language, metaphor and realities of fire.?

With this week’s news, we had considered not sharing Marion’s story, out of sensitivity for what is still an active crisis. However, after discussing as a team and with Marion, we have agreed to share the story in its entirety, and unchanged from its original form.?

The crises facing life on Earth are our shared reality, even while the causes and impacts aren’t equally borne. We believe it is important that we are intentional and specific with the language and vocabulary we choose when describing these crises. And, we believe it is essential to be able to tell and hear stories of what these crises look like, their impacts, their causes. And to also tell and hear stories of what hope as a practice looks like. Never has a regenerative way forward been more needed.

We wish to signpost to two resources related to support, as well as a video posted by Lyla June on the LA fires:

• Blair Imani Ali’s ‘Smarter in Seconds’ on the five P’s for evacuating during emergencies?
• LA Times’ curated list of regional and local organisations in need of funding, donations and volunteers: How to help those affected by fires raging across Los Angeles County
• Lyla June: Indigenous Women speak on LA fires

Sending care to all.

Marion Brastel is the Co-Founder of Regenerative Changemaking , an organization that supports burned-out changemakers using regenerative practices. She was part of the first Regenerators Academy cohort, in 2022. And this is her story.

The crackle and roar of fire can be life-giving. And it can be destructive.

It may be a candle, perhaps. Or a campfire, or hearth, around which we gather, we cook, we find light. It may be the sun itself, as it warms the skins and scales of creatures here on Earth, and is taken in by the leaves of plants as nourishment.

Or it may be a wildfire, out of control. A volcanic eruption whose lava eats up all in its path. A sun, even, expanded and grown beyond its natural limits, engulfing the planets that have encircled it for millennia.?

It may be a planet that burns.

As humans, we are drawn to and yet also fear the power of the flames.

Our myths and folktales, traditions, and nature show us that from the ashes of fire can come new life. The phoenix rises anew. Certain conifer trees will only release their seeds under the heat of fire. We light flames on the darkest of nights as a promise of longer days.

For Marion Brastel, as for so many others, that crackle of fire too has been the crackle of burnout. And for Marion, our bodies are the landscapes within which our burning planet is experienced.

And yet, from those flames of burnout, has emerged new life.

Experiencing burnout within burning systems

“Burnout is climate change in your body”, come the words from Regenerative Changemaking, the organization Marion co-founded with Erinn Woodside in 2021.?

Meeting in Iraq in 2017 while working for an international NGO, both Marion and Erinn quickly bonded over their shared experiences of burnout within the humanitarian and aid sector.

Marion had just returned to work after needing a year and a half to recover and heal from burning out in 2015, following a humanitarian mission. In that time, she discovered the power of Somatic Experiencing; a modality that helps people work with their nervous systems to release trauma stored in their bodies.

For anyone who has experienced burnout, the language and imagery of fire come naturally. The body, spirit and self literally burn out; they reach a point of having nothing left to give, forcing rest and recovery.

For Marion, that ‘having nothing left to give’ became the start of a learning journey of self-care; having all the tools needed to look after yourself. But it also became a learning journey of community care, of structural care. And a journey towards regenerative growth as a transformative and healing practice.

The pull towards humanitarian work for Marion had been rooted in her family’s military history; an early rebellious streak within her had often pulled her towards the contrast of being a peacemaker. The work was impactful, as she took on roles such as facilitator, trainer, civilian protection, project manager, head of programme. But ten years in high-stress, war-soaked environments took its toll.?

The flames of burnout had started to roar.

But it was here – in the space cleared by that fire – that the dance between self, community and structure began to emerge for Marion.

Care for self, community, and structures

In the Global North, much is made of ‘self-care’; having all the tools and practices we need as individuals to protect and nourish our own wellbeing. We are told that if our wellbeing is corroding, we just need to ‘do self-care better’.?

But what the focus on self-care often hides from us is another truth: we are interdependent, relational beings. And all the self-care in the world won’t protect you from a system that harms you. Nor from a lack of community. We need our own practices, yes. And we also need each other.

“There was a limit to self-care. It gets to a point where you can’t do it by yourself; you need that other person to hear you, witness you. I almost burnt out a second time in 2020. I had the best self-care plan, I had all the tools, weekly Somatic Experiencing sessions. But the environment around me at some point got so unsafe, or all my support and pillars were gone. I realized even if I have the best tools, I can’t sustain this.?So then came another exploration for me: how do you find that community care? And where is that sense of wanting to do it yourself hiding? Asking for help, realizing you can't do it on your own is very counter-dominant culture, which tells you need to do it by yourself and for yourself.”

Marion, returning to work in 2017 while training as a Somatic Experiencing practitioner, could now truly see an absence of care. All around her was burning: people, systems, relationships, communities, lands.

A grief began to emerge, and in 2020 Marion found herself being sucked back into a system not designed for care, edging once again towards the precipice of burnout. Who and where was her community? Were the people around her – just about managing themselves? – able to care for her, and she for them? With all the self-care tools at her disposal, and a new somatic practice, why was she still being pulled into the vortex of burnout?

Both Marion and Erinn could see the desperate need for support and learning, not only for self-care but for community, embedded in an understanding of systems.?

They were both also nature lovers, drawn to the outdoors as a space of healing and connection. Marion would find herself questioning why she could feel more community in the middle of a forest, with no other humans around, than she would in the middle of a bustling city.

The pair began to dream of helping change-makers heal from and resist the returning edge of burnout; not only individually, but at organizational levels too.

“We were trying to build a bridge between the individual part – the self-care, having your tools, which is important –?but also how do you navigate systems that are designed to burn you out in the end? ...We didn't have the language, but knew there was something that could bring this all together.”?

Finding and harnessing ‘Regenerative Leadership’: A book with questions ?

In 2021, Marion and Erinn’s organization Regenerative Changemaking was born.?

As Marion and Erinn were feeling their way into working with their first clients and designing their first programme, they began reading a book called Regenerative Leadership: The DNA of life-affirming 21st century organizations, written by Laura Storm and Giles Hutchins.

And it was then that it all began to click.

All they’d learned, were practising and had experienced was in this book: burnout, the need for structural and community care, sick systems, the body as an ecosystem, the burnt-out body as a microcosm of a burnt-out planet, and more.?

The book also had questions to live by and models and exercises to play with. They tried out the exercises in real-time, finding them so powerful that they instantly integrated them both into the work they did with those first clients, and also into how they ran Regenerative Changemaking itself.

“We were already starting a beta programme; we had a few clients, we were creating the content of the programme week by week. We were reading the book at the same time, and would have moments reading it where we’d get excited: ‘This is what we were talking about!’ Or: ‘Here’s an exercise we can use and test with our clients!’ It’s really been part of the creation of what we’ve done.”

The rhythm of life – with its seasons of winter, spring, summer and autumn – gave them language for understanding individuals as rooted in nature’s cycles. And it helped them see how organizations also go through their own cycles. The learning helped shed light on a key element of burnout: a tendency to live in ‘spring’ and ‘summer’ as both individuals and as an organization is not sustainable. Not regenerative. They learned of the need for ‘wintering’ and for rest.?

Ecosystem mapping, too, became an exercise for clients to understand the systems around them. And it became a crucial tool for how Regenerative Changemaking itself would work as an organization run by just two people. Mapping became something that Marion and Erinn would do together every three months, helping them sense the pain points needing attention, potential blockages, areas of strength and health.

The exercise has proven so powerful for them that it was loud in its absence when they missed their window for doing it in March 2024. Within a few months, they noticed they had slipped into survival mode and needed a wintering, a slowing down, both as individuals and as an organization. Marion is sure that this is something they would have caught earlier if only they’d been able to have their March pause.

Another model that has proven transformative has been the Berkana Two Loops model. Discovering it has helped both Erinn and Marion not only recognize themselves as ‘pioneers’ trying to change systems, but as needing to work with others who are ‘stabilizers’ for the systems they’re trying to birth and mature.

The book proved transformative and became deeply woven into how they were designing and running their organization, and working with clients.

Marion’s next step came at the turn of a page.

Joining the journey and deepening regenerative practice

At the end of the Regenerative Leadership book, came an invitation to join a journey in 2022.

And Marion felt a moment of huge heart expansion, taking form in a single word: ‘yes’.

“It was a no-brainer. You can read, and that's what we tell our clients. But it’s not until you put it into practice, and are surrounded by people also thinking about these things and struggling, finding answers together. Joining [the Regenerative Leadership Journey] was a chance to be in community with people also thinking and feeling through this. It was a chance to do it directly with Laura.?And a chance to talk directly with people who are pioneers in this field: Daniel Christian Wahl, Lyla June, Bayo Akomolafe, and so many more. It felt very special.”

Marion signed up, while Erinn needed to focus her spare time on a PhD she was working on, researching the relationship between burnout, the climate crisis and power.

As the year unfolded, the learnings and practices from the journey continued to be woven into Regenerative Changemaking, by way of Marion and Erinn’s own personal and emerging regenerative practices. Nothing that was brought into their programme for clients wasn’t first practised and tried on themselves.

Moments of deep resonance from that year have stayed with Marion, such as hearing from Lyla June about Indigenous wisdom as a blueprint for regenerative leadership.?

Another came early in the journey: students were invited to meet and introduce themselves to their ancestors and descendants. It’s a visualization exercise that Marion has brought to other groups since.?

Then, towards the end of the journey, Marion savoured the opportunity to hear from others’ work of integrating regenerative practices in their lives and organizations. It became a moment of “I’m not alone”.

The years since have been ones of continuous learning, and embodying regenerative practice. For it is a practice, Marion reminds us. And while she couldn’t make the most of the Regenerators community at the time, it is now – almost two years on – that she is forging meaningful friendships and connections. Her journey didn’t end in 2022.

Regenerative practice hasn’t cured the ill of burnout, nor the systems that Marion and her clients still need to work within. But regenerative practice has helped provide tools, practices, concepts, understandings, and relationships – communities – that help keep the flames at bay.

As Marion and Erinn have this year felt the grief of ‘where are the elders who can help us see a way forward?’, regenerative practice has helped them connect with some of those elder voices. Elder voices who may not have the answers, but who can walk beside us while, as a collective, we live the questions together.

Reflecting on her time with Regenerators, Marion believes the journey isn’t for the faint of heart:

“Be ready to be changed, to be challenged, and for it to not look the way you expect it at the end. Even the people who are the pioneers in this field, no one has the answers; it's a continuous learning.”

Be ready to leap across the fires that reach up, licking at your feet. And know, always, that in the wake of those fires, new seeds can spring free and grow.

Doors for the Regenerative Leadership Journey 2025 close on Wednesday, January 15, 2025. Find out more and register. We would love to journey with you ??