What we do with our pain: Grief, Hope and Responsibility
Letesia was at Future Days festival back in June, and one of the speakers - Payal Arora - talked about “The privilege of pessimism”. She shared her analysis of how the Global North was in a deep depression fuelled by loss of how technology was taking away from them and their lives, leading to a rise of dystopian thinking. Whereas the Global South, who on a mass level were starting with fewer expectations, were excited by this upcoming era of optimism, of promise, of potential about who and what they can be in the world, precisely because of digital advances and technology.
Her observations about Pessimism Paralysis are bigger than technology, as people in the Global North are reckoning with grief and loss on a grander scale; identity and what it means to find optimism about who we are in the context of colonial histories, late stage capitalism and systemic racism; the absence of moral leadership and ethics as we knew them; the day-to-day challenges of feeling scarcity - whether funding, job losses, closures, cost of living impacts - and the tensions and frictions this creates in communities. And before we know it, dystopian plans become a normalised part of conversation because we cannot imagine a different way of existing and have lost our ability to fall in love with the future again.
We hear you, but we cannot stay there! There’s simply too much to do and it will need our energy, momentum and imagination.
With the sad passing of Joanna Macy this last month, we're drawn once again to her teachings about what it means to work with one’s grief in ways that increase one’s contribution to society. Her spiral guides us from getting out of paralysis (gratitude), seeing what is real in front of us (acknowledging pain honestly), looking at it in the context of systems (seeing with new eyes) and figuring out what we can uniquely do from our position to make meaningful change from here (going forth).
In fact, it was in discussion with Mutima, who Letesia was lucky enough to speak to as she was working with Joanna on the decolonised version of The Work That Reconnects, who shared with her the concern that people (especially Europeans) get stuck at personal pain and cannot move beyond it, which brings us back full circle to Payal’s analysis about pessimism being a privilege. Perhaps our obsession with solving grief is in part what stops us from properly sitting with it, respecting and witnessing it and then using all of that as a springboard for purposeful action.
One of the great distortions of leadership in the Global North is the myth that leaders must carry it all and shield others from difficulty. But what if these moments of challenge were a way to open up and connect to shared responsibility? What if we were able to co-create our unique response to what feels hard? What if we trusted that people could step into the challenge and work together with us? What if we spoke of what good leadership actually looks like in the context of the world today? We're great believers that leadership is a mindset as much as it is a job title or label. What can you uniquely bring to these challenges of our times?
What we’re practising
Co-Leadership Prompts: Making Space for Grief & Moving Forward Together
Here are some question prompts that might help open up a meaningful conversation about what feels challenging at the moment - whether that’s something you or your team is grieving, something unresolved, or something quietly weighing on you.
They’re designed to spark honest dialogue, surface what matters, and invite shared responsibility. You might use them in a team check-in, a moment of transition, or whenever things feel emotionally sticky. There’s no need to rush toward solutions - these questions are about noticing, naming, and reconnecting before deciding what comes next.
Starting with What’s Real
“Are there any endings or changes we haven’t had time to talk about?”
“What feels like it’s been missing or lost lately?”
“Is there something we’ve lost that we want to honour or learn from?”
Noticing Each Other
“Are there any unspoken things that might be affecting how we show up?”
“What do you notice in yourself when things feel emotionally hard?”
“What does support look like for you and how can we offer it better?"
Making Meaning Together
“How are your values guiding you right now?”
“What feels important to notice about what is going well?”
“Where are our actions hurting us all?”
Imagining a Different Future
“What is one thing we could do differently to move through this moment better?”
“Where could we do more to act in a values-aligned way?”
What would make us feel really proud of ourselves right now?”
stories of impact
Power, Realised
One of the stories that’s stayed with us recently was from a participant who came into our Community of Practice Session for the first cohort of Beyond White Supremacy Unlearning, feeling stuck, frustrated by hidden organisational values meaning that power was hoarded and the wrong group's needs were being prioritised, to harmful effects on the personal wellbeing of marginalised folks.
What unfolded was a shift we’ve now seen many times: the quiet but powerful realisation that power doesn’t always feel like power when you’re holding it.
They hadn’t connected their seniority to that deep safety and positional influence that came with it. They assumed that if they weren’t ‘the problem’, they weren’t central to the solution. But with support from the group, they began to see the ways they could use their role, identity, and organisational safety to open up space for others and take low-risk but high-impact actions that others simply couldn’t.
By the end of the session, they landed on a simple but powerful takeaway: personal responsibility. They could invite the shift and help shine a light on the change with more assertion because of who they were. It was one of those moments where you could almost feel someone move through the spiral - from frustration, through perspective, into agency. Just gorgeous.
What's resourcing us
Celebrations
At New Ways, we close each week with a small ritual: a celebration session. There isn’t always a lot to celebrate - some weeks are harder than others, but we always make the time. And often, we surprise ourselves by finding more to celebrate than we anticipated.
It’s a mix of personal and professional. This week, Letesia celebrated her growing sense of rootedness and community in Barcelona, having relocated there earlier this year. Eloise celebrated officiating a friend’s wedding and finding confidence in public speaking.
Even in the darkest, most exhausting stretches, these check-ins become a quiet form of resistance - a way to honour what’s going well together, and to keep sight of what’s still possible.
Rest & Recuperation
We’re also appreciating what it takes to stay resourced for the long term. Letesia recently went on a yoga retreat (the photo above is from the retreat), and Eloise has taken a couple of trips with friends and family. While neither of us has returned bursting with energy, particularly given all that's going on in the world, time away from our desks is a vital part of how we keep going with integrity and care.
Falling in love with the future
We’ve been finding hope in an interview with Rob Hopkins about his new book, How to Fall in Love with the Future. Hopkins reminds us that we can't bring into being a better world if we don’t first have something to inspire us. If we live only amidst the despair and chaos, the cupboards of our imaginative capacities remain bare.
But when we surround ourselves with bold, joyful stories - of people and movements who use visions of the future to inspire real change - we begin to refill that capacity. From the radical imaginings of Sun Ra to the pop-up communities formed during protest occupations, Hopkins shares examples of people making brave, beautiful claims on the future.
He reminds us that the future isn’t an abstract concept - it’s something we all have the responsibility to imagine and co-create.
You can listen to the interview here.
A FINAL PIECE OF INSPO
As we’ve been asking ourselves what it means to sit with pain - without getting stuck in it - the below quote from our Grief & Joy Community Conversation with Poonam and Emily last year continues to ground us:
“The kinds of societies and liveable planets that we want will need fully alive humans - people able to access all their parts: the joyful parts and the grieving parts. That’s what will enable us to organise, adapt, and build something better than what we have now.”
— Emily Bazalgette
This gets to the heart of what it means to lead with responsibility, not by bypassing grief, but by tending to it as part of how we go forth together; choosing action rooted in honesty, connection, and care.
