Author Archives: Kathy Jourdain

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About Kathy Jourdain

Kathy Jourdain is a co-founder of Worldview IntelligenceTM consulting, curriculum development and program offerings as well as a steward and practitioner of the Art of Hosting Conversations That Matter. This has her traveling internationally working mostly in Canada, Brazil, Europe and the United States. In 2009, she launched Shape Shift Strategies Inc. for her consulting practice. She is an author and keynote speaker. Her first book, Embracing the Stranger in Me: A Journey to Openheartedness has been hailed as an inspirational, deeply authentic sharing of the journey that has contributed to who she is today. She is contributing author to Gift of the Hit where she shares the story of her own soul journey with her mother, dementia and death.

Immoral Power or Powerless Morality?

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I am still basking in the glow of my ALIA Institute experience last week (my 5th one, by the way) and this morning find myself pondering concepts offered by Adam Kahane from his new book Power and Love.

Kahane said, power properly understood is nothing but the strength to bring about purpose and love is the drive to unite the separated.  Both power and love have generative and degenerative sides.  What makes power degenerative rather than generative is the absence of love and what makes love degenerative rather than generative is the absence of power.

The idea of this continuum for both power and love makes absolute sense to me.  The idea of experimenting with the blending of power and love with greater awareness has me on the edge of my seat.

I was particularly struck by the expression: immoral power and powerless morality.   We have come to believe that power corrupts, is held in the hands of a few and is the source of much that is bad in the world.  We believe that people who sit in the place of love are ineffectual and weak – other than a few prominent examples like Mother Teresa or Ghandi whom most of us have trouble identifying ourselves with.

While we  may believe the antidote to power is love, when we swing too far in that direction it often becomes inaction and ineffectual.  How many of us have avoided stepping into our power out of fear and the belief that power is bad?  How many of us have self-righteously sat in the place of love waiting for it to right all the wrongs of the world – or have just given our power away?

Kahane says it is not a choice but a paradox.  We can’t choose just one.  We need both.  We just need to find the balance between power and love.  In any given situation, what is needed of me?  If there is too much power, act with love.  If there is too much love, act with power.   When we work with this consciously and intentionally, then power and love  gradually overlap and we find our place of greatest effectiveness and greatest movement for any given situation.

“Shape shifting, shape shifting,in a soulful way, leaning in, claiming it back, leaning in, growing open, shape shifting, shape shifting in a soulful way” – some of my  “blues band” lyrics that just spilled over onto this page as I consider the journey of power and love I have been traveling the last 5 years.

The Mind Cannot Take You Where the Heart Wants to Go

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The mind cannot take you where the heart wants to go.

I wrote this statement at the bottom of a random piece of paper that has been floating around my desk for some time now.  I do not remember how it came into my awareness but it has caused me to pause and reflect every time I happen upon it.

This simple statement is why so many dreams go unrealized.  Our dreams reside in the heart and beyond any logic.  The mind seeks safety through logic and analysis.  In so doing, it has the potential to paralyze the dream – and often does.  It shuts down vision, beauty, aspirations and possibilities while looking for the right way or the right time to do things or waiting to have enough – information, money, time, experience.

In waiting for the logical evolution of things, there is no right time.  And yet, right time and right timing emerge through heart space and consciousness if only we pay attention to what is whispering in our awareness.  It requires a different kind of listening born out of quieting the mind, stilling the body and surrendering to the inspiration of the visions and dreams that call out to us, reminding us what is ours to do in the world right now.  It takes courage and fierceness, even gentle fierceness will do.

We do need both the heart and the mind in order to realize our dreams and our potential and to contribute to others doing the same.  We have however, tended to lead with our minds and, with the shifting shape of the world, it is time to lean into leading with our hearts – in our relationships, our work and our lives.  This is how we will contribute to the healing of the world we live in and the regeneration of its people – us included.  The more we live our inspiration, the more we gather and feed the energetic field that is also shifting the shape of the world.

The mind cannot take us where the heart wants to go. We need to grow our wisdom, capacity and faith to lean into the calling and movement of the heart.  Once the heart choices are clear, the mind becomes a tool to move mountains to achieve what it originally thought not possible.

As we lean into and lead with our heart choices, the shape of our personal world will shift and so will the shape of the world we work and live in.  I see it now.  I experience it now.  Many of my friends experience it now.  If we stay true to where the heart wants to go and connect with others who are doing the same, it is only a matter of time before this movement is more real, tangible, recognizable and palpable in more and more places.  It is not about not doing hard core work, transformational work, difficult work, systems work.  But it is about leading it with heart and noticing how much more powerful all of our work and our relationships become and how much more able we are to create the shift we want and need to see for our future, the future of our children and their children’s children.

Shifting Perspective on My Mom and Dementia

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When I walk into the dementia ward of the long term care facility that is now home to my mom, her eyes light up when she sees me.  Does she know I’m her daughter?  I don’t know.  But she sure knows that she knows me and she knows that she loves me and that I love her back.

It is this language of love that is causing me to shift perspective on my mom and her dementia.

We think her symptoms began the year my youngest son was born – 2002.  Naturally enough, it was my dad who really began to see them – the forgetfulness – forgetting how to do things she had done all her life, even simple things like how to make a sandwich or turn on the washer.  Tucking folded tissues all over the house – in drawers, under pillows, in her purse, in her pockets, in the toilets.  Watching the weather network for hours on end and complaining that it was the same thing over and over again but not remembering she could change the channel.  Falling asleep in her chair.

Like so many other families dealing with this issue, we eventually faced the dreaded decision about long term care.  My dad was her main care giver and had reached the point of exhaustion with 24 hour care for her and especially interrupted sleep both because mom began to wander a bit at night and because she had incontinence.  My dad showed a whole new dimension of himself and of his love for my mother as her caregiver – something I never imagined I would ever see.

The day we took her to “that place” and walked away and left her was one of the most difficult days of our life as a family.  To see a wonderful woman lose her capacity to speak coherently, to dress herself, to care about her appearance, to become someone other than the woman we all knew and loved, living with a ward full of people who have also become someone other than the person their family and friends all knew and loved.

My mother has been there for almost two years now.  The scope of her life is this ward.  She has some mobility issues that make it very difficult for us to take her out.  It’s hard to get her moving without assistance and if she refuses, well, that’s it.  She used to just sit in a chair, looking out the window.  Now she has a wheelchair and can that woman move!  It is hard to pin her down to one spot.

I reconciled some time ago, that this was no longer the woman who raised me and I just needed to be present with the woman who was now there.  If I responded to her incoherence as if it was a fully formed thought and created a repartee with her, her spirits were fine.  If I was to get stressed or upset, she would too.  That was the first level of my discovery.

I have often wondered as I walk through the long term care facility filled with very old, sleepy people, to the dementia ward in back, what is the meaning of life when you are so old and incapacitated, just waiting to die or living in your own little demented ward with a whole bunch of other people also living in their own little world.

As I’ve pondered this, and visited with my mom – being present with her – I moved to my next level of discovery that is really shifting my perspective on my mom and her journey with dementia.  This is a soul’s journey.  When I visit with my mom I am not visiting with the personality and the ego that inhabited her body for all those years before dementia.  I am visiting with her in the spirit of her soul’s journey.  If I can look past unbrushed teeth, unkempt hair and incoherence,  and my own sorrow for the loss of this vibrant woman and mother in my life,  I can actually be with her in spirit and it is her spirit that shines through her eyes with delight when she sees me.  Her soul is connecting with my soul and she is relating to me on the level of soul, not the level of this physical plane.

I need to see her with new eyes in order to be in a place of appreciation for her journey.  I know that sounds odd and yet I can’t change her journey as much as I might like to.  I could be stuck in lamenting what I perceive to be her loss, or I can begin to see her in the beauty that is called forth in her as I greet her in the context of the soul journey.

“That place” is her home now.  She is well cared for by all who work there – people with special gifts of love for their charges that shines forth in how they treat them and interact with them.  There is a community of support – not just for her, but for my dad too.  Because it is in a small community, the irony is that there are a surprising number of friends who show up at the same time in this place – each living in their own little world that most of us would consider a confined space, each traveling their own soul’s journey.

Yes, it’s tragic but there is a strange kind of beauty that also shines forth and really shows up when invited.  And – when you’re visiting, there is never a dull moment.  Lots of stories that may be told someday or may have already served their purpose in causing laughter and making for a little brighter day.

The Wolf at Twilight – A must read!

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In the past I have heard about the need for people – us, white people, in North America – to understand the impact of colonization on the story of this land – a story begun many thousands of years before there was ever a European landing on the shores of North America.

This story is compellingly told by Kent Nerburn in his book The Wolf at Twilight: An Indian Elder’s Journey Through a Land of Ghosts and Shadows. Nerburn is the story catcher for a Dakota elder, named “Dan” in the book, who he journeyed with a number of times over a couple of decades.

In telling Dan’s story, he also tells the story of the First Nations people, of how they welcomed newcomers to their land, wanting to learn from them and willing to share with them.  How cultures, beliefs and ways of life clashed so dramatically that the First Nations people were practically wiped out in a land as vast as North America.

European ways of being were forced upon a people and a land with a system of property ownership that went beyond just land.  A significant portion of the population was wiped out because of their lack of immunity to the diseases brought by the European settlers.  The very rigid religious systems played a part in attempting to wipe out the remainder by crushing the heart and soul of a people and their culture through “educating” them in the white man’s language and traditions – and through the use of force.  The impact of residential schools on families and a people was devastating.

There was a time in our history when the white man wanted to drive First Nations people into extinction and when they couldn’t kill the people anymore, they killed their food supply, deliberately laying waste to magnificent herds of buffalo that once roamed this land.

The path to alcoholism and drug use emerged as the light of the soul dimmed, flickered and was almost extinguished.

The sense I got from reading The Wolf at Twilight is that it is not really about laying blame, although it very well could be.  It is about generating understanding of a time, history and culture that is fundamentally important to what is happening today in the world.

In my travels and work, I am seeing a growth in interest around indigenous practices and ceremonies – circle council, vision quests, sweat lodges, drummings, sundance ceremonies, an honouring of the life breath that is in everything and everyone and shamanic practice.  These practices are being reclaimed by First Nations people as they relearn traditions that have been almost lost to them and work to heal the soul of their people and their culture.  These practices are being adopted by white people who hear the whisper of the sacred in these practices and are also seeking healing – for themselves, their communities and the earth.

This book is a must read for all of us interested in shifting the shape of our future.  We need to understand our history – not just what we consider to be the good parts of it, but the shadow that shows up in how our ancestors treated the people who lived on this land before they arrived – as less than human beings.  It is only in living into our own history that we will be able to transcend it and really generate the level of healing that is being called for in the world right now.

The resilience of a people who were brought to the brink of extinction and are now reclaiming their heritage is brilliant and an inspiring example of what is possible for everyone and for the healing we all need.

Social Media Changing Social Norms

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Had a fascinating conversation with a small group of people at #PodCampHfx last Sunday about the role of social media in shifting the shape of the world.  I was particularly interested in its influence along the chaordic path – that place between chaos and order we seem to be navigating more and more frequently in the world right now.

The Chaordic Path

The Chaordic Field

I wanted to understand more the influence of social media on the chaordic path and  what the opportunity is to influence it more strategically or with greater intentionality.  I also shared the stepping stones of the Chaordic Path: need, purpose, principles, people, concept, limiting beliefs, structure and processes, and practice.

Social media facilitates networks or webs of people in making interconnected relationships more visible.  Partly because of this it is also driving greater transparency in today’s world.  Buzz spreads rapidly through Facebook or Twitter and it is a lot harder to hide information, indiscretions, faux pas’ or worse.  Even with privacy settings, you cannot control what someone else posts.

There was a time that technology was isolating for people.  It was easier to sit at home emailing people half way around the world than it was to go knock on the door of the next door neighbour.  The rise of social technology though is enabling people to connect and reconnect with each other in ways that also generates in person contact.  Friends in a city will find each other through social technology – on the web and in person.  There are examples of how Twitter friends, who may or may not have actually met each other,  arrive at conferences and then set up the opportunity to meet face-to-face.

What was most interesting in our chat at #podcampHFX was how often the word community popped up.  I have noticed that people are yearning for community and sense of connection and social media seems to have created pathways to community in surprising ways.  And the most intriguing thought: social media is transforming our social norms, changing the parameters of acceptable and non-acceptable behaviour, doing this broadly and maybe more swiftly than any other social norm shift in the history of civilized society.

I’m still reflecting on how social media is shifting the shape of our world and contributing to the regeneration of community.

Shifting into 2010

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Shifting into 2010, for me, has been shifting into high gear.  If there was hype about the end of a decade and the beginning of the next one, I somehow missed it.  It only sunk in on the waning days of 2009.  What I haven’t missed is the promise, potential and energy that is bubbling like crazy around 2010.

It is captured most magically by this You Tube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3zJm98UXzQ from Sedona.  It is not that I think all of the predictions in this will come true as much as I believe in the expansiveness, potentiality and hopefulness that this conveys – elements that I believe are positively influencing the shifting shape of the world right now.  It is the kind of world I am living into, influencing and shaping in the work I do, the way I live my life and how I show up in relationships.

I am extraordinarily blessed to be on this journey in supportive relationships, communities of practice and with guidance from spirit.  Bring it on.  Bring it all on!

Giving Birth to Freedom

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Giving birth.  I have been thinking about this a lot this past year.  I have given birth to a new company: Shape Shift Strategies Inc.  I am giving birth to a new book: Healing Across the Ages; Releasing the Hold of Family Secrets.

Most importantly, 2009 marked the year I gave birth to the second half of my life.  This birth had a nine year gestation period and it is only now I realize its correspondence to the last decade.  How lovely that 2010 is  marked with this newness for me.

As I’ve been reflecting on the quiet and alone time I have had this holiday season, what has registered for me is also the birth of a new feeling of freedom – and that brings great joy.

It is the freedom that comes from being really good with my own company – not feeling martyred in being alone or feeling sorry for myself, but truly settling into being with myself.  It doesn’t have to be happy alone time – it can also be time to just sit with what arises in me, especially as I consider the journey, and the people who have influenced it, over the last three years or so.

The freedom of not wanting, and not being lost in the wanting, of what isn’t.  The freedom of accepting people, situations and relationships for who and what they are.

The freedom of accepting myself for who I am,  for the essential soul qualities I have been unearthing and sinking into and for the talents I have been allowing to flower so I can do what is mine to do in this world, in this lifetime – boldly bring my healing gifts to the shifting shape of the world and the regeneration of its people.

2010 is the beginning of a new era.  It is for me for sure.  I sense it is for others too and for the world.  I believe we are at a pivotal time in the evolution of the human race, where we really know that the old ways of walking through life and tackling big issues do not work any more.  We are more ready to wake up than we have ever been and it is for the waking up process that I have been preparing.

I am only in this place of freedom thanks to a decade long awakening journey that I’m sure is not completed yet but is now on a new plateau, a new level of vibration.  It is thanks to people in my life – good people, friends, colleagues, coaches, and some challenging relational experiences over the last decade – including the challenging relationship I’ve had with myself, that I am able to be in and recognize the birth of this freedom.  These have all been great gifts to me and, at the beginning of this most important decade, I sit in a place of deep gratitude and appreciation for all those people and all those experiences.

The best is truly yet to come and, my intuition is, that it will look very different than what we’ve seen and what we can imagine.  I have never been more ready!  Happy New Year, happy new decade and Happy Birthday to all that is good in this world.

Training together for clarity, love and courage in 2010

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This New Year’s Eve posting has been evoked by my friend Chris Corrigan.  He said: “Let’s let this next decade be one where we train together in clarity and love. The fierce love of courage and maturity that it takes to bring peace in the world, in our collective and individual realms.”

The shape of the world is shifting and never more so than right now.  We all bear witness to it.  Some of us focus on the doom, gloom and fear of it.  Some of us focus on the hope inspired by passionate, creative people of all ages who are awake or waking up to the notion that we are all connected and that what I do as an individual, no matter how small or localized, really does make a difference.

If we inspire one other person by the way we live our life, by our optimism, by our hope, by our actions, that will have been enough.  But the hidden, still yet to be fully discovered story in all of this is what Paul Hawkins speaks of in Blessed Unrest.

We are part of a movement that is greater and deeper than we know or can know.  This movement is flying under the radar of the media and mass culture so far.  It is a shared understanding arising spontaneously – everywhere and across all boundaries all at the same time.  It is a civil rights movement, a human rights movement, a democracy movement, a social and environmental movement.  It is marked by kinship, community and symbiosis. It has no center and no one spokesperson. It is humanity’s immune response and it continues to grow.

As it grows it is beginning to see itself more.  People from around the world are beginning to connect in both the obvious and the strangest places – Copenhagen, list serves, FaceBook – in person and through social media.  There is a heightened sense of it coming out of Copenhagen as more and more people become aware of the need to take responsibility and act – rather than let our fate wait in political speak and negotiations.

I think the characteristics of this movement are exactly what Chris said – The fierce love of courage and maturity that it takes to bring peace in the world, in our collective and individual realms.

We all need to be warriors in this training ground of clarity, love and courage.  This is my call to action for 2010.  I’ll be there.  Will you?

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