Working with a heavy heart

November has been a challenging month for me.

The switch to daylight savings time means that, in Berlin, it starts to get dark around 4 pm right now. When it grows dark outside, it is difficult to stay alert and productive for most of us. Living with chronic depression makes it all the more challenging for me.

I’ve been needing to practice patience and gentleness with myself. I shifted my working hours around, to allow for a two-hour lunch break to get some ‘outside time’, before the day grows dark.

As a leader, I am also inviting my team, clients, and partners to be gentle with themselves and acknowledge that we are all working at reduced capacity right now, and that’s ok. The feedback has been overwhelmingly appreciative.

In addition to the seasonally induced challenges, November also brought us Transgender Day of Remembrance (Nov. 20th), International Day against Violence towards Women and Girls, as well as the devastating jury verdict acquitting the vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse, who murdered protestors at a peaceful demonstration for Racial Justice.

Ooof.

Just listing those feels heavy on my heart.

I have deep and personal grief connected with each of these days. I am sure many of you do, too.

I need time to be with and process that grief. And make space to rest and to nourish myself with things that bring me joy and a sense of connection and community, to create some balance.

It is my sincere hope that together we can begin to make space for those feelings. For grief and loss. For pain and anger. And even for rage. For a long time, work has been the place to (pretend to) leave our feelings at the door. “Be professional”, “Have your sh** together”, “Don’t show weakness”.

I’m grateful, that slowly workplace cultures are shifting. That we are beginning to practice new ways of being and working with each other.

I encourage you, to explore what that means for you. There is no “right” way to do this. No perfect solution to the messy and complicated experience of being a whole human being. And that’s a good thing ??

Ask yourself, what you would need to make space for the heaviness that is part of your experience (and we all have some heaviness inside of us). Ask your team (if you work in one) what kind of rituals or practices you could try out together, to create ways of working that make room to be caring and kind towards one other – even and especially when we’re struggling a bit.

We’re all in this together and asking ourselves and each other these questions benefits everyone.

I promise!