Ode to My Dad – Raoul Hector Jourdain – on his 79th Birthday

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Kathy Jourdain

March 29 is my dad’s birthday. This year he will be 79. I’m sure when he came into this world, and as the beginning days of his life unfolded, had he looked ahead, he would not have imagined where his journey would take him – the good and the bad. I would not have imagined the shifting shape of it either.

I didn’t meet my dad when I was born. It was some weeks or months later when he came into my life – or I came into his. And then, for him, it was love at first sight. Maybe for me too but I don’t remember. What I became aware of later is the connection I’ve always had with my dad.

He was not always an easy man to live with. There was a lot of tension in my house growing up and even after I left. He and mom had their share of battles and I had some of my own with him, though few.

Having said that, people were always welcome in our home – from the earliest days of my memory. No one was ever turned away – visitors, from near or far. My friends from school came to play and often stayed for supper. Always room for more. It fostered a sense of hospitality in me that only grew over the years. That, and friends could be like family – experienced over and over again during Christmas holidays in particular for quite a few years as a large group of friends gathered for a traditional Gaspe meal after midnight on Christmas Eve.

The sea has always been in my dad’s blood. He has owned a few boats over the years but his pride and joy was a beautiful wooden boat, the Bluefin, which he owned for thirty years. With care and craftsmanship, he rebuilt that boat from stem to stern over the time he owned it. If that boat could talk, many a story would it have to tell.

I already lived in Halifax when the Bluefin came to dad. He and my mom always enjoyed having guests aboard – and that remained true to the final summers we went out on it. In the early years, it was much more of a party boat. I and my friends were always welcome. Most of the time, anyway.

There was one time, during Chester race week in August, that a fairly large group of my university friends arrived for the weekend. We boarded the boat, loading up with supplies we brought – food and beer… and a bit more beer. My father watched as we brought two-four, after two-four, after two-four on the boat until he finally said to me, “How much is enough?”

Then there was one spring when we offered to help him paint the inside of the boat to get it ready for summer launch. It all started off well enough… until the beer came out. And then… well, let’s just say dad found yellow paint in places it wasn’t supposed to be for years afterwards. I still can’t figure out why he never really responded to future offers of assistance!

When his first grandchild came along, he beamed. It was probably the only time he stopped by the house unexpectedly on his way to and from the airport. It was an unexpected delight – maybe for him too.

When my first marriage was ending, I knew I needed to tell my parents. I took that journey alone. Fear was in my belly and my mouth was all gummed up. I was disappointed about disappointing, along with all my own disappointment about my marriage ending. I thought when I shared the news – saying to my dad, “We are living under the same roof but it was like we are living very different lives,” that he would fall off his chair. Instead, I almost fell off of mine when he said, “I kind of noticed that.”

No questions asked, he and my mom helped me move. No judgement – not to me anyway. A lot of love and caring. I saw that love and caring demonstrated over and over again in obvious and less obvious ways. In particular, I saw the love and caring my dad demonstrated towards my mother in the final decade or more of their marriage – more and more consistently than I had seen it at any other time.

If someone would have asked me years ago (and maybe they did), I would have imagined that my father would have died comparatively early in life (he did have his first triple bi-pass surgery when he was 45 – thankfully his health status leading up to that also triggered his decision to stop smoking) and my mother would still be living in the full vibrancy of who she was well into her 90s.

Instead, it was a different path that unfolded. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 20o1, again in 2005. Somewhere in that period of time was the onset of dementia that ultimately took her into long term care in 2008 until her death a few weeks ago.

My father became my mother’s care giver. At first it was in little ways. Noticing the little things that were not quite right. There were a few conversations about my mother forgetting this or that… like forgetting to turn off the oven, or turn on the washer. Then it became more obvious, like mom put the banana bread in the oven, went to take it out five minutes later and couldn’t understand why it wasn’t cooked.

This eventually evolved into my father watching out for my mother 24 hours a day. He watched over her day in and day out, night in and night out – including taking care of her hygiene – at home and sometimes in public places.

When my mother died, my parents had been married for 54 years. On their 50th wedding anniversary in January of 2008, my brother and I had planned a celebration for them. We had hoped for a big celebration. It ended up being a small celebration in their home. I spoke a few words. I had already planned to speak about the two things I felt I integrated into my life from my experience with my parents – that sense of hospitality or everyone being welcome and unconditional love and support.

This took on whole new layers of meaning in the week before the 50th anniversary when I learned that I had been adopted and had never known or suspected it at all. The feelings of unconditional love and acceptance were magnified as that story unfolded and I had a conversation with my father about aspects of my life I had known nothing about.

As the story emerged, I was asked if I was angry. I pondered the question and then responded, “If I looked at this from the perspective of people have been lying to me all my life, maybe I would be angry. But I look at it from the perspective that people made the best choices they knew how to make. They wanted to do the right thing and choices were made out of love.

My father is a man who wants to do the right thing. This was most evident in the latter years of his marriage to my mother. He loved my mother. He wanted to do well by her. He exhausted himself as he watched over her, tended her and took care of her until the very last minute when we admitted her into long term care. Then, every day, he went to visit her for over a year. It was hard for him seeing mom in her diminishing world while he still lived in the house that had been their home for over 3o years.

There are many stories in this man’s life. I only know some of them. They are not all pretty but they are all representative of a man who has lived a complexity he might never have imagined, who has given a lot, cares about craftsmanship and doing things well. He has traveled many roads and still has a few to go.

Dad is in hospital, yet again, as I write this. This too has been a pattern of our relationship over the last decade. He has an amazing will to live and is incredibly resilient despite health problems that have been challenging him over the years. We live into and learn together – through thick and thin.

There are things I know about him and things I don’t. We have a pretty dynamic relationship and a few patterns that have been showing up. One thing I do know about him is that he loves me. On the rare occasions when I tell him I love him he always says to me, “I love you more.”

I wish him a happy 79th birthday knowing he would be much happier if he was home for it. I also wish there will be many more for him with a quality of life that allows him to pursue, in ever more gentle ways, the things he loves to do and do well.

Human Tragedy Story Often Obscures Soul Journey Perspective

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Kathy Jourdain

For a long time, I have believed we are soul journeyers having a human experience. The beauty and challenge of life is that our assumptions and beliefs get tested along the way. Most recently for me, one way has been through my mother’s journey.

When the symptoms of my mother’s dementia were becoming more obvious in the years before she went into long term care, I knew it as a soul journey and experienced it as a human tragedy story. This became more pronounced when she went into long term care. Instead of being the only person in a household living out a bizarre new set of behaviours, losing her capacity to communicate and do simple things like change the channel on the TV, she became one of many old and dying people no longer able to care for themselves, most living in their own little diminishing physical worlds.

The human tragedy story is amplified in these circumstances and places. It is hard to see past the story of tragedy when it stares you in the face as you walk down hallways that evoke very visceral reactions in what you see, smell, hear or otherwise encounter – even in a place as loving and caring as the place my mother experienced as home in the last four years of her life.

How many people came up to me, my brother or my father after mom’s funeral to share amazing stories about her that captured the essence of who she was and then proceeded to talk about how they just couldn’t visit her at Harbourview Haven. How hard it was if she didn’t seem to recognize them. How hard it is to be in that building when as a culture we have become disconnected from the death chapter of the life cycle. We no longer experience it as part of the natural flow of life but as something to be feared. Walking in a place where death is imminent generates fear and discomfort for many of us. It did for me when I first began visiting my mother, but through my mother the shape of my experience shifted.

For the few who were able to manage a visit or two, they expressed how amazing it was when there was a flicker of recognition in something she said. I learned how many people besides me she called “little one” (really mom?!) and that was a point of reference for them.

There are others who saw enough through the human tragedy story to visit often. My mother had a few of those regular visitors although we often didn’t even know it since she couldn’t remember who visited or when they did. Deeply grateful for those dear friends.

The length of mom’s journey with dementia and her stay in long term care, invited me more deeply into this paradox of understanding the human tragedy dressing of soul journey. The phrase “oh, that poor soul” makes me chuckle now. We use that phrase to describe the human tragedy perspective. It is the physical experience that appears poor, not the soul journey perspective if you believe, like I do, that we make some choices before we manifest into physical form about what it is we want to experience for our soul journey this time around.

As my mother become more disembodied, I embodied the soul journey perspective from a deeper, more encompassing place of understanding. Towards the end, her human tragedy story didn’t register for me anymore, only the soul journey perspective. This gave me a high degree of peace during her long transition process, allowing me to live my life fully even while being present to my mother’s journey and our family care around it.

For the gifted people who work at Harbour View Haven, it seems to me they also see past the human tragedy perspective, treating each individual with full dignity and respect. Treating them as if they are fully functioning, fully present human beings. It was a gift to observe this most keenly in my mother’s final hours. It made me wonder what would happen if we all treated others all the time with this kind of dignity and respect – whether we thought they deserved it, whether we thought they were fully human or not.

Living simultaneously with my mother’s journey, my journey and the rest of life, I’ve been thinking about how to express this all so it does not fuel the human tragedy story. I now speak about “the many streams of life”. We are all in many streams of life all at the same time. Stuff happens. Stuff comes up. There is a life giving invitation to be well in all of it, although a more typical response is to be stressed by all the things that come our way that we have to take care.

I’m leaning into this invitation to flow with the many streams of life as though that is what they are, rather than challenges. Greater spaciousness beautifully shows up.

And then there are the lessons of embodiment that have been present for me in a big way already in 2012. As I embody my experiences and my learning I understand more deeply my life’s events, my relationships and my soul’s calling.

I’m not saying the human tragedy story isn’t real. But the soul journey perspective is also just as real although harder for many to see, obscured by the human tragedy story. The soul journey perspective allows me to live into joy and delight and allows me to fall in love over and over again in a way living into the human tragedy story does not.

For my mother, I continue to experience a dance of joy, delight and lightness as her spirit soars free from the human tragedy unfolding of her physical body. She continues to be my teacher and my friend and very, very real in my human experience.

Death and Dying – Lessons I Learned From My Mother

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Kathy Jourdain

Never having been present at a death before, I didn’t know what to expect; and, it wasn’t what I expected. My brother, father and I held vigil, practically holding our collective breath, as my mother, Mary Patricia Ann Ritcey Jourdain, drew her last, peaceful breaths on Wednesday, February 8, 2012, falling quiet at 12:30 pm.

Then there was silence. Her silence. No more rattling breaths drawn with some effort through her lungs into her ravaged body; ravaged from dementia for many years and the refusal to eat for many months.

Our silence. In reverence for my mother, her journey and the honour of witnessing the final stages of her transition from physical form into spirit. I already believed much of her consciousness was active in the subtle realms even as her physical presence diminished. With her last breaths I imagined her spirit gently tugging until the last wisps of it were finally released into a delightful little dance of joy and freedom.

My mother’s journey with dementia was a long one. My journey through hers was an inspired one. Her greatest teachings for me may have been in these last few years when she could no longer string coherent sentences together, during the contrast of those times when she seemed to have no awareness of my presence to when I knew she was aware I was there.

I had one of those moments of her awareness the night before she died. We had moved her to a special room where I could stay with her overnight. One of her medication times was missed. I was aware of that but she didn’t seem to be in distress. So, I sat on the arm of the couch, eye level with my mom. I looked into her blue eyes and she held my gaze.

When I say she held my gaze, I really mean she held my gaze. She was just as present as I was. In fact, I was mesmerized. I couldn’t take my gaze away.

So, I talked to her. I told her about some things in my life. I told her how beautiful she is – not was, is. I told her how gifted she is and how loved. I thanked her for being in my life, for being my mom. Mostly, I held her gaze with love. Until she began to exhibit signs of distress and I went for the nurse. And then she was gone again until the moment of her final breath.

Four of us still in the room but now the shape of our lives fundamentally shifted. As long as we stayed sitting in the room, it was like she was still there in her emaciated form. But, of course, now she was free of form. Eventually we had to move and leave her next steps in the capable hands of the Harbourview Haven staff who would transfer her into the equally capable hands of the Dana L. Sweeny Funeral Home.

The staff at Harbourview Haven taught me about human dignity and respect through how they related to my mother. Even up to the last moment, they treated my mother as if she was fully present and aware. They called her by her name. In the middle of the night they would come into our room. “Mary,” they’d say, “We’re going to turn you over now.” “Mary, we are going to give you your meds now. It might sting a little.”

On the morning of her death, a care worker came in to wash her face and freshen her up, providing a depth of love and care, dignity and respect to a woman in her last moments on this physical plane. I can’t say enough for Harbourview Haven and the care they provided, not just in those last few hours but in the three years and eight months (plus a few days) that my mother lived there. And not just care for her. Care for my dad too. For our family. They understand about death and dying. That it is a process and a transition.

My nine year old understands about death and dying. Enough to ask to visit his grandmother with me when I told him I was going to see her. He hadn’t been there much lately. I told him what his grandmother looked like and how she was. He still wanted to come, even when the call came to say it might be her last day. And his older brother and his girlfriend came too. We all sat vigil the day before she died, for hours. Watching my mother with sidelong looks every time her breathing stopped – for the eternity that shows up in a moment.

I am now aware that dying and death requires the same kind of loving care and attention as birth does. It is birth. Birth back to spirit.

When my older boys were young children their grandfather on their father’s side died. Their dad and I had already separated. They went to the funeral and afterwards I asked them how it was. We began to talk about death. They said to me, “We think it’s kind of like this. You know when you dream and when you are in the middle of a dream it seems real? But then you wake up and you know it was just a dream. We think life is like that. It’s really just a dream but it seems real. Then you die, but really it’s like waking up and realizing it was just a dream.” Such wisdom out of the mouths of babes. Closer to source.

I wonder how my mother might be reflecting on the 79 year dream that was her life as Mary Patricia Ann Ritcey Jourdain this time around?

Hosting Lessons from the Field – Dancing with Design Flow in Brazil

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Kathy Jourdain

How many of us have had the opportunity to enter into hosting a day or a training (Art of Hosting style) without any design for the day, completely sensing into what is needed in the moment and fluidly dancing with five other hosts with offerings to meet what was emerging in the field moment by moment? How would you meet that invitation? Excitement? Trepidation? Both and anything in between?

It is one thing to do this on your own or with one other person as Bob Wing and I did last summer in work we’d been invited into that turned into Hosting Ceremony. It is a whole other thing to do it with a new hosting team constellation of six of us on the third and last day of working together – in this case for the first Warrior of the Heart training completed in Brazil in January 2012.

Warrior of the Heart is the work of Toke Moeller and Bob Wing coming out of many opportunities they had to jam together combining Art of Hosting and Aikido practices and principles. Playing together they imagined Warrior of the Heart training into being. I’d participated in a couple of Warrior of the Heart trainings – on Bowen Island in August 2010 and then at Windhorse Farm in Nova Scotia just this last October, 2011 with my 9 year old son. I’d also had the chance to work with Bob where Warrior of the Heart became a component of the Art of Hosting training we were delivering.

In September 2011, after the Art of Hosting training in Porto Alegre, Brazil that I’d been co-hosting, Thomas Ufer, Najara Thamiz and I sat down with Jose Bueno and crafted an invitation to Bob and Toke to bring Warrior of the Heart to Brazil for the first time to seed the field for more and build the ground for the amazing expansion of the Art of Hosting and social change movements happening there.

Working with a larger hosting team for a training the two of them were used to offering on their own invited Bob and Toke to some new learning edges. They invited the rest of us to go there right along with them. There was already a huge reservoir of trust in our hosting field even before we began. We built on it during our preparation and hosting time together. On our last day, it was Toke who invited us into the dance of hosting together without an agreed to advance plan.

I felt in me my own skepticism at the invitation which arrived after morning practice, before breakfast, where we had actually invoked this flow already. I really wasn’t sure how it would work and whether we would all find our own place to play in this day – but I was willing to step into the challenge – because with this team there was nothing to lose and lots to gain.

As the six of us stood in a tight circle on the stone patio outside the training building, a staff was in the centre with the challenge of who would take it first and offer something to the group to begin our day. Silence. A deep collective breath or two. I could feel the tremble in me. Another breath and then I reached for the staff.

I had been preparing during our time together to do a teach with the sword – in this case the wooden representation of the sword – a bokken. Bob had been coaching me. Perhaps because I was preparing to step into the challenge of a teach on something I was still very much learning myself, I had taken Bob’s feedback and coaching in in a whole new way, embodying the teaching and the sword movements with more fluidity and confidence than I ever remembered feeling. I had been preparing for a teach and this was apparently the moment it would be offered.

I started the teach – the four directions – and forgot how to do the step to turn from one direction to another. Without being hard on myself, I asked Bob to step in and help — and he did because he had my back. All six of us had each other’s backs and none of us needed to shine or take up too much space and yet we were all invited to offer our brilliance when we felt the call.

It was the beginning of a rich dance that included all six of us throughout the day. The experience was playful and fun and ended with a touching and powerful ceremony.

Raising the Sword in the Warrior of the Heart (Brazil 2012) Closing Circle

The willingness to let go of control and design flowed into the Brazil Stewards Gathering that followed the Warrior of the Heart – in its own way and to its own degree because, of course, the team and the circumstances were different. But the fluidity of the dance was just as hesitant and joyful in its own way.

I’ve been reflecting on what makes this kind of dance possible? One is definitely trust in the individuals and the collective of the team – knowing that each individual is there to serve the good of the whole and with no need to shine on an individual basis – although, as I mentioned above, of course each person does shine because of the gifts they have to offer in service of the whole.

A sense of knowing when what I have to offer as an individual is exactly what is needed now. This is a complete dance with the subtle energies, with intuitive capacity. The courage to offer it when it is called. A certain level of trust or confidence in my own skills and abilities. A willingness to let other people shine in their mastery or even in their apprenticeship.

It takes a certain level of maturity in each individual, the team and even in the field.

Would I want to completely free flow it every time? I don’t think so. Every situation requires us to be tuned into what is wanting and needing to happen. Different situations will call out different things. And many situations invite a free flowing of design and offerings to different degrees. I and we are already practiced with working with emergence. Practicing to this degree honed my skill and my sensing capacity and invited me into new levels of mastery. It is embodied in a new way. It will always be with me – and with each of us.

Having had the opportunity to host immediately after this experience, I know it’s in me in a new way and for that I am grateful. Looking forward to the next opportunity to dance in the ultimate emergent design – and to all the other variations of that that will show up along the way. Thanks Toke for the invitation and to Thomas, Narjara, Jose and Bob for being willing to dance the beautiful dance that shifted the shape of my hosting experience to new depth.

Interrelationship of Circle-Triangle-Square

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Kathy Jourdain

Many people are so frustrated working within hierarchy and bureaucracy that when they are introduced to beautiful engagement processes like World Cafe, Circle Practice and Open Space, a new love affair begins. These methodologies are powerful in re-igniting passion, hearing every voice, creating mindful and thoughtful conversational spaces that take individuals and groups into new territory.

The love affair becomes a bit jaded when people begin to say, “Conversation is great, but what about doing something? Where is the action in these methods? Where does decision making rest?” As if creating meaningful and relevant conversational space and decision making or action are mutually exclusive. In many cases though, people haven’t figured out how to make them work well together. It is not either/or. It is and. What is the leadership and understanding necessary to find the balance that invites both broad based engagement and effective decision making leading to wise action and movement on initiatives, especially social change initiatives inside organizations and systems? What does it take to truly shift the shape of the world we live and work in?

Recent conversation with with Toke Moeller and Bob Wing in Brazil has sparked my curiosity and reflection on the relationship between the circle, triangle and square that we often reference in the Art of Hosting.

The circle represents the social technologies that engage people in deeper, more inclusive ways, tapping into human longing for connection and meaning. Circle is an ancient and universal symbol of unity, wholeness, infinity, the goddess, and feminine power. It represents the sacred.

The triangle represents hierarchy and structure within which so much work happens and decision making takes place. When the triangle points upwards, it symbolizes fire, male power and the masculine archetype. The energy of doing and of action.

The square represents the physical world in contrast to the sacred. In relationship with the circle and triangle, the square represents new forms of governance, stewardship or strategic thinking partnerships.

Power of Circle-Triangle-Square Interrelationships

Much of the intention behind or underneath circle or engagement strategies is to share leadership and responsibility more broadly. We are not always clear on what that means. Sharing it doesn’t mean foregoing it as sometimes happens as people begin to experiment and play with engagement strategies. A point is often reached where things feel stalled because we are not always clear where decision making fits or how to do it well.

Sometimes change processes fail because leaders are not clear on how decisions will be made in conjunction with engagement methodologies. They then “take back” decision making which seems to disempower the move toward shared leadership and shared responsibility.

Yet, very little gets done without decisions being made. Clarity around decision making allows for stronger relationships and more powerful work processes. Understanding the need for and how the circle and the triangle work together creates the space for more intentionality in processes and relationships.

There is not just one form of decision making that should always be used. Sometimes consensus decision making is the most appropriate decision mechanism. Other times decision making will be vested in an individual or a team that sits elsewhere in the organizational structure. The lack of clarity around who makes what decisions when and how information flows is more likely to lead to problems more than the type of decision making structure. The degree of trust inside of the relationships also has an impact. In organizations or systems where the trust is high, decisions are trusted and respected no matter who makes them. In organizations or systems where the trust is low, of course decisions are questioned and sometimes disrespected. Quality of relationship can be improved through the circle, thus supporting the triangle better. Clear decision making processes improve quality of relationship.

The circle and triangle are nested inside of the square. If the square is equated to stewarding or governance, the role of the square is about holding space and perspective from a strategic, bigger picture point of view. Not so active in the decision making structures or in the conversational space but bringing the awareness of deeper patterns that relate to or underly any given process, initiative or movement, providing insight and perspective that then feeds back into the engagement (circle) and decision making (triangle) processes.

The danger lies not in any of these specific shapes. It is in becoming enamoured with any one of them to the exclusion of the others or disenchanted with one to the point of not wanting to engage it at all. As I consider the work in front of me now, I will bring this deeper curiousity about the interrelationship between the circle, triangle and square into my process and coaching considerations, particularly as it relates to new leadership competencies required in a rapidly changing world.

Hosting Lessons from the Field – Inviting Innovators and Pioneers in Health Care

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Kathy Jourdain

It is just the beginning of 2012 and already the year has been rich in hosting lessons from the field, diving deep into new levels of awareness around hosting subtleties. It began in Utah early in the month, hosting Healthier Health Care Systems Now with Tenneson Woolf, Steve Ryman and Marc Parnes.

Marc Parnes

Marc, who is a physician, gynaecologist and host from Columbus Ohio, started us off on day 2 with a story intended to set the tone and challenge of the day. He told of what was to be a routine surgery he was doing on a woman. When he opened her up and looked inside, what he saw not only surprised him, it alarmed him. Things that were not supposed to be stuck together were. He could not see the path for the surgery. He was not able to see his way. He did not know how to proceed with the surgery as he stared at this jumble of internal organs.

All eyes were on him as he then he stood up in our circle. We could feel the anxiety of that moment. Standing there, Marc planted his feet shoulder width apart, just like he did on the day of the surgery, to ground himself. As he closed his eyes, he described doing exactly this as he stood beside the woman on his operating table. Then, with his eyes closed, he reached into the woman and began to feel his way around, searching with his hands for the openings he could not see with his eyes.

When he finished, he knew what to do. He opened his eyes. He could now calmly begin the surgery, having expanded his vision of what was possible by “seeing” with other senses. The surgery was successful.

There was a collective sigh of relief in our circle.

We began to reflect on what Marc’s story had to do with innovation in health care, what it had to do with hosting.

After coming through the first day, we checked in as a host team and invited the voices of others who showed up to participate in the design process. We tracked our day around purpose and intention. We felt good about the design and flow of the day and we felt we had challenged people beautifully in our opening circle on day 1 by asking them to speak to the pioneer and innovator inside of them that had responded to the invitation, but not to speak too deeply to their work, promising that would come later. We sensed that though the day had been good, something was missing. With reflection, we realized we were still on the ground of old territory and familiar conversation, not the new conversations we had invited people into.

The invitation was to be in a different conversation about health care. The challenge for this group was to move into what would be a new conversation for each of them. This amazing group of individuals carry in them irrepressible dreams for healthcare systems that thrive; for simplicity that doesn’t deny the complexity, yet responds well to it. They continue to have high hopes for healthier healthcare despite having been in many, many conversations about shifting the systems within which they work and play. Those who responded to the HHS call were already innovators and pioneers in health care. Maybe the new conversation was not a collective conversation about a new global vision about health care but was about individual systems of influence and what was at the edges of their own learning that might be new territory.

Our challenge, as a hosting team, we realized, was in making sure we really did travel to new territory – not an easy challenge given the experience of the people who came.

We continually scanned what we knew that could invite people into new territory. We brought play into our process – a beautifully renewed learning edge. Collaborative play, allowing us to see and experience our learning beyond the cognitive or intellect. Then, through reflection, seeing our patterns in work and relationship in whole new ways. Allowing inspiration to enter in.

At the end of day two, despite traveling much ground in the day, there was still a sense of restlessness in our hosting team that took awhile to fully sense into. Something edgy. Something still not quite arrived at.

Checking in as a host team and, like the day before, with others interested in our design process, we recognized that we were happy with our design and the flow of the two days. We briefly wondered if we should be satisfied with where we were and consider how to enter and close our last day well. Yet there was something we still had not quite arrived at. Something about the new conversation we hadn’t quite dug into.

We reflected on what we knew from our Art of Hosting experiences that would push the edges of where we were. If we were looking for a groan zone or acupuncture point in our process, normally we would look to a point in day two. But this timing did not show up in day two. Were we willing to push our own learning and hosting to bring in something even more edgy in the morning of day three?

We knew we would not get to where we wanted to go through another conversational or intellectual process. We decided to invite this group of physicians, health care administrators and others into a guided visualization process, to invite them to explore their own future journey in healthier health care now. Following the visualization, we invited them into drawing or illustrating some representation of their experience in the visualization process, followed by a conversation with a partner to really dive into this experience in depth.

The experience was intense and provocative. It shifted the shape of some individuals. It shifted the shape of our gathering. It broke the pattern of the old and invited a new pattern. The World Cafe that followed was amazing. It was sparky. Ideas flowed quickly. There was a new quality that had entered into our space.

Once we saw it, experienced it, we could name it. We had shifted from conversations that came from the head to conversations that now came from a deeper place. The conversations were now embodied. People began to look at their own path and their own systems of influence rather than at points of the system too far beyond their own systems of influence to have any real impact. We were in new territory. We observed that embodiment shifted the conversation to deeper and more meaningful places.

As a hosting team we agreed to continue to push the edges of this group, knowing we still had a whole day ahead of us, even though if we had planned a visualization process, we would likely have planned it for the end of day two. But sensing where we were, knowing what we were aiming for, keeping our essential calling questions close, we pursued our purpose and intention. We continued to host potential right up to the moment of preparing to close our circle.

It isn’t over until it’s over. We know that. I have often heard it said in a hosting team. And this time we lived it fully with a trust in each other, in what we were sensing and our willingness to flow with what was there. Even as I write this, it is hard to describe the exact edge we were on or the truth of our experience. But I’ve been reflecting on it a lot. These reflections flowed into the last couple of weeks in Brazil, during Warrior of the Heart and a local Art of Hosting stewarding gathering, where we danced with flow to the most amazing degree – letting go of design to sense into what was alive and needed in any given moment. More reflections on that later.

For now, the richness of the host team learning in Utah stays with me, embodied in my own experience in the best of ways. I feel myself growing my capacity in hosting in the most delightful of ways, brought out by those I have the privilege to host with. This year has started off so rich in learning, it makes me deeply curious for what the rest of 2012 will bring.

Innovators and Pioneers in Systems Change

Posted on January 15, 2012 by Kathy Jourdain

In Utah for Healthier Health Care Systems Now (January 11-13, 2012), we used the 2 Loops Model of Systems Change as one of the framing references for why we were gathered. It is a tool and a framing to understand the work we are individually and collectively in that shifts the shape of health care. The two loops model looks like this:

The first loop represents the old system, the one we often name as the dying system. The second loop represents the new system, the one we keep claiming we want, the one we think cannot emerge by fiddling with the old, the one we believe is needed to bring our current systems out of crisis.

The problem is, when we begin to think about the complexity of something like health care, where there are so many jurisdictions, so many players, so many interlocking systems, trying to imagine what this new system or systems could be becomes paralyzing. The conversation often becomes philosophical and theoretical. It largely comes from an intellectual and cognitive place focused on all the things that need to shift that are outside our circle of influence.

Some of the frustration in being innovators inside of systems is that the systems begin to push back on the work in small and large ways, leading to the exhaustion, frustration and disillusionment so many leaders in health care experience. This is all part of the old narrative. Of course this showed up in our conversations in Utah to greater and lesser degrees depending on the questions, depending on who was in the conversation at any given time. Any time we were in that conversation, thinking about the new system, it didn’t feel like a new conversation.

So, how could we be in conversation about Healthier Health Care Systems Now without focusing on the second loop or the new system? Well, by remembering who we are – pioneers and innovators in health systems – working under the first loop – in the in-between spaces – championing the new or being championed. We began to focus in on and explore new questions: Where are the edges of my work? What is the new territory I could begin to walk when I go home? How can I draw on the resources in the room to expand my thinking, even turn it upside down and on its head – like the person who relies on gift economy in her practice, for her livelihood? What more becomes possible in generative spaces with other innovators? This was a different conversation, in tone, texture and energy. This one did not come from the head. It was embodied in a whole new way – the beginnings of a new narrative of health.

The awareness of the old narrative and of the stuck places infiltrated us in the best of ways at the end of the first day of our three day gathering. Someone suggested what we needed to do was create a vision of the new. Ordinarily I might agree. In this case though, that didn’t feel right. It felt like it would take us further off track given that our roomful of people were geographically stretched from coast to coast across two countries with countless “systems”?

So, without taking our eye off the intention of shifting the narrative of health, we refocused on innovating and pioneering and guerrilla tactics of hosting, collaborating and co-creating, engaging those around us in this journey that is health. We didn’t leave with a specified vision of the new system. We left heartened in our respective journeys, knowing the way to the future is through new processes, deeper conversations and finding our way with as many of our friends and colleagues as we can attract, engage and embolden along the way.

As we continue to shine the light on the experiments already underway, the successes, the challenges and the “failures”, and tap into the individual and collective resilience that is fighting to emerge, we can remember it is a journey that will shift and change as we go. We remember life actually wants to help and it wants to heal. If we focus on how to expand our individual systems of influence and share those stories with our friends, our collective system of influence automatically begins to expand. What seems like isolated work informs pockets of work elsewhere and we grow an energetic field that is part of the new, part of the second loop and is fueled by everyone stepping into innovative, courageous and pioneering ideas and projects.

I still can’t see what that second loop is for health care – other than it is about health and it is healthier. I’m not sure anyone who showed up for this conversation can see the second loop either. But I am absolutely sure that the innovators and pioneers are already prototyping what’s possible, what’s new, and in this work more and more of the new and the new narrative will show up. I am reinvigorated by what’s possible, by the people who continue to explore these questions, who challenge the status quo, despite possible personal risks in doing so and know that there are better and more healthy ways to engage health care.

I and my hosting mates are committed to convening more of these conversations with people compelled to be in them to grow the field. We envision large gatherings of people convening in new ways, continuing to innovate our way into the new system(s) so that maybe one day we will wake up and see in front of our eyes what we once thought impossible – a new generative system of health resilient enough and healthy enough to be sustainable in unexpected and beautiful ways. If we take our eyes off the urgent need for something that feels impossible and put it in the places where possibility thrives… well, what more is there to imagine or say?

Steve Ryman, Tenneson Woolf, Kathy Jourdain, Marc Parnes

: 2 loops of systems change

Healthier Health Care – Now! A Little Taste of What’s Cooking

Posted on January 15, 2012 by Kathy Jourdain

We wondered what would happen if we invited friends from across North America to convene in Salt Lake City, Utah around the question of Healthier Health Care Systems Now? We were amazed. We began by sharing who we are – the innovator and pioneer in us that compelled us to come to this conversation. Then we shared the exciting work we are engaged in. We talked about the “system” and discovered “it” was never A system and “it” was not about health. We moved from talking about systemic issues that felt as philosophical as we know they are real and moved into embodying the conversation, coming from a place of deep connection to ourselves, each other and the work that continues to call us in the worlds we work and travel in. The insights, themes and cool learning are just beginning to percolate for each of us. More, much more, is cooking.

It was beginning to cook before we even arrived in Salt Lake City. We discovered healthier health care was such a compelling question people went to great lengths to get there. Some initially said no and then found a way to come. Others felt the question so urgently they used vacation days and airmiles to get there. One person even crowd funded her flight.

Twenty-six of us arrived on January 11, 2012 – physicians, naturopaths, other practitioners, administrators and consultants from heath, public health, dentistry, acute and long term care from Nova Scotia, Ontario, Alberta, Ohio, Minnesota, Winsconsin, Illinois, Texas, Oregan, Washington and Utah. Everyone an innovator or pioneer already working diligently on shifting the shape of health care within their spheres of influence. We all brought stories of change and deep and compelling questions. We made instant connections that inspire us to go deeper and to keep at it.

This will continue to simmer and cook for quite some time to come. I will have more to share here about this conversation at the beginning of 2012, curious to see how it might grow as we convene a community of practice for those who were there, those who wanted to be and couldn’t make it and those who begin to find their way to this particular conversation in their own way.

You can find snippets of harvest on Twitter by searching #HHSUtah. Thanks to Amanda Fenton, who was with us from afar, for stepping in and compiling our tweets @Storify.

I offer here a little taste of a quick and fun harvest at the end of day 2 as we went around our circle and each of us added a line to the unfolding story of our journey together. I didn’t catch every word, but it will give you some small essence of the experience, recognizing some references are very specific to our experience, and it will have to tide you over til the next post.

“There were a bunch of hooligans in a house by the mountain. They thought of themselves as pioneers, radically re-engineering, brought together by living systems that taught them how to transfer what they are learning and experiencing into what they are doing now – open to possibility. In sharing, they saw new connections and unique opportunities. They described them as opportunities to change and blow shit up. These hooligans had so much to think about, they sat in circle, played, visualized and created on many levels a new vision of what they were yearning for – simplicity, wellness, with open heart toward the future to bring this new narrative to everyone. Envisioning systems that bring forth vision and health, letting go of the old to release into timeless universe. They pondered next action. In the middle, they went deep into the cellar to share unique fonts and forms of creativity. They came together to discuss the topic but it was more than the sum of its parts – human nature – own beauty, higher power and purpose run in each of them and each other with gratitude, although we do fear discovering in horror on FB the shaking moments, with brains exploding in chaos, guerrilla gardening and permaculture parties. But then, a pause for reflection and even more to emerge. Finished. No shame. Amazing thing, working hard to create something different.. but in the end, they were different, a community – and in their differences they found their common humanity from which to go back to the places they came renewed, reinvigorated, inspired to innovate on!”

With gratitude to all who were there, all who held the rim of this gathering from afar and specifically to my fellow hosts Tenneson Woolf, Steve Ryman and Marc Parnes for an experience that will be long remembered, in a gathering where the new narrative of health was activated, the field of innovation in health care where we meet was amplified and shifting the shape of health care in our spheres of influence has been accelerated.

Intentionally Shifting the Shape of the World in 2012

Posted on December 30, 2011 by Kathy Jourdain

Wow. 2012 is a breath away. When I started the Shape Shift blog I wrote: “the shape of the world is shifting. It is constantly shifting but never more so than now. This is evident in health care, education, finance, communities, technology, organizations and other systems that have become vital to how we function today. We can be passive recipients of the impact of these shifts in the world or we can become active participants in shaping the future of the systems, organizations and communities that we feel passionate about – that are near and dear to our hearts.” This was true when I wrote it, and started Shape Shift Strategies Inc, in August of 2009. It is even more true as we are on the brink of 2012 – a year that has been much prophesied and written about.

If we are paying attention we can literally and figuratively feel the earth shaking underneath our feet as significant shifts take place – in the natural world and the manmade world. Earthquakes and tsunamis in New Zealand and Japan, the Arab Spring, Occupy to name just a very few. I say paying attention with the full awareness that there are many of us who see the greater scope of these stories and feel the significance of them in our very beings and there are many who do not yet see the stories under the stories that show up in mainstream media – a medium that is struggling with seeing and understanding the deeper patterns of these movements in the world.

If I am to imagine into 2012, I can only imagine that the chaos and complexity of our systems, our social structures and our communities will increase. This because of the reluctance and deep resistance of letting go of what we know, even when we know it doesn’t work anymore, to embrace what is waiting and wanting to be born. It is so hard to see new ways when all we can see is what we have already built. I’ve seen it in the conversations surrounding the Healthier Health Care Now gathering set for Utah early in January. “We want you to be different, but please do it in familiar ways. Because we don’t know how to support something that looks and feels different, especially when you cannot tell us exactly what it will look like in the end. We have to be accountable, after all.”

How do we become accountable for our future when we are anchored to what we know, what we have always known, what already exists? This is why the chaos will increase. It is already telling us what we know no longer works. Our collective response? Hold on tighter. Don’t let go. How deeply shaken do we need to be to let go, let fly into the void of the unknown?

Thank God for the growing pockets of people, teams, communities and communities of practice who see a different future and who steadfastly work toward it in the not knowing. There are so many I can name – because I am part of them – and so many I can’t because I don’t have knowledge of them but I am not so insular as to believe they don’t exist. Paul Hawken’s work in Blessed Unrest is just one indicator of this world wide revolution that is taking place right under our very noses – whether we see it or not.

Those of us working and living in the spaces of not knowing the specific shape of the future or of what new systems could emerge from the old as we are shaken free in the chaos, we are Warriors of the Heart. To be a Warrior of the Heart and be well, we need personal practices that keep us connected with source and allow us to access our own resilience, courage, compassion, strength, joy and love. There are individual and collective dimensions of practice. We build personal capacity in our individual practice. We amplify, accelerate and activate so much more when we come together in our collective work and journey.

2012 may show us more and more the intersection between the relational field (love and loyalty) and the strategic field. We have treated love and loyalty somewhat dismissively – the soft skills side of the equation. In business we need to be hard – hard nosed, make hard decisions. What if this is not true? What if our greatest path forward is to embrace more fully the relational field so that our choices are actually more strategic, have a longer term view and value all the things that are important to our survival in a time when so much of what we have always known seems threatened? What becomes possible when we sink into what we’ve known even longer than what we’ve always known – the wisdom and knowledge accessible to us in ancient wisdoms that become more present to us as we pause and listen deeply – to the earth, to the whispers in our own hearts, to the yearning we have to be connected to something that has deep meaning and purpose. What would a world look like that connected through love and loyalty and then developed strategy for the highest good of us all?

The shape of the world is shifting. It always has been. Is it shifting faster now? Feels that way. What is the intentionality we can individually and collectively bring to amplify, accelerate and activate the shift we desire to see in the world? What is the shape of the world you want to live in to?

I experience such deep gratitude and appreciation for my friends and colleagues (the ones I know and the ones I haven’t met yet) around the world. You inspire me. You lift me up in the moments when I have lost sight of my own light. You give me great hope for what is possible in a new world order. I am humbled and honoured to do amazing work in the world with people I care deeply about – from a place of open heartedness and a field of love and connection that makes possible the impossible – only seeming impossible because we can’t always see the how. The how stops us. The vision and intention for shaping a future we want to live into compels us all forward.

Walking the path of not knowing. Setting strong, clear intentions for what I want to see unfold in my own path of shifting the shape of the world in 2012, letting go of the how and inviting what is ready – and urgently wanting – to show up.

Contemplating and Celebrating Turning 50!

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Kathy Jourdain

2012 seems like an auspicious year to be 50 – for me anyway. For the last 3 years or so I have been saying I am almost 50, unlike some who fear that round number of age and wish they were sneaking their way backward, I find myself boldly and excitedly walking my way into it. Which makes me smile and even giggle a little bit.

From 2005 to 2009 I was in a period of great upheaval and transition. After saying repeatedly over those years I was in transition I began to wonder if that cycle would ever complete itself. Then, in 2009 on the heels of a one day vision quest in Gold Lake Colorado and then the first Shamanic Convergence in Nova Scotia, I began to sense the transition process had shifted into a more gentle unfolding process and that I had given birth to the second half of my life, complete with the articulation of a personal purpose statement: from this place of deep rootedness to my spiritual lineages, I boldly bring my healing gifts to the shifting shape of the world and the regeneration of its people. It is a statement that 2 years later still resonates deeply for me even as I grow less sure of what exactly it means.

This was also a period of time when I began to embrace gifts of awareness of the non-physical or subtle realms – and began to feel deeply embraced by non-physical entities – guides, guardians, angels. As a person who lived a very ordinary experience of the physical world up to my late 30s, this was an area I had always believed in and felt could be accessed — but by other people, certainly not by me. My journey brought teachers and mentors to me and took me to places where the existence and substance of the subtle realms and my ability to connect with them became undeniable. It has been a significant part of the rebirthing process and will be a growing part of the journey forward. A few years ago, one of my teachers said this is a time when there is a growing need for and a growing number of people who can walk with one foot in the physical world and one in the non-physical world – with greater ease, seamlessness and ordinariness.

If I gave birth to the second half of my life through that lengthy transition period, now I feel like I am beginning the Fool‘s Journey all over again, dancing the dance of possibility with time and space as a playground. In the Gateway to the Divine Tarot (my favourite at the moment), the Fool is pictured drifting high above the Earth, implying an unearthly aspect to him, with innate wisdom that lies outside the ordinary and mundane realms. The Fool is both emptiness and infinity, bringing movement, change and fresh starts. The path is waiting but the full course of it cannot be seen.

I have been experiencing a sense of anticipation as I approach 50. When I was a child, even a teenager, maybe even a young adult, 50 seemed both a long way off and old, not the launching pad for something new. I’m not sure what 50 is supposed to feel like. It is half a century after all. In the millennia of life this is such a short period of time. I don’t feel old, I feel strangely and beautifully ageless and more and more like age as a number doesn’t matter. What matters is how we approach life and journey, what we are willing and able to embrace and how well we can surrender into the greater forces lighting our path.

Maybe I don’t feel old now because, in the first half of my life, I have often felt older than my years. This was partly through taking on lots of responsibility and finding myself in leadership positions at very young ages. While not feeling old now, I do feel like an elder in some ways. Steward might be a better word. I think of it as elder in the journey – this current physical journey in the world, but also in the sense of my soul journey and the vast expanses of eras I have traveled to be here, right now in this time. To be 50 in 2012. Did I plan that?

A lot of attention has been paid to 2012 – the year the Mayan calendar ends. Some have interpreted this to mean the year the world – or civilization – ends. It may well be the end of much of what we do know or how we have lived but I doubt it is the end of the planet. Likely it is the end of age old patterns, the end of blindly bringing destruction to our ecological systems, the end of allowing only a few voices to dominate. I am of the view that the Arab spring and the Occupy Movement are manifestations of the deeper shift that is already happening in the world, the trending to a greater level of awakeness in the world. A time of returning to greater consciousness that there is far more beyond the physical vessels our spirits inhabit and far more alive in this world than just the plants and animals, just what we can physically see. Maybe it is a time when our sight and awareness will collectively expand again so we can live with a greater sense of the sacred in every place and every one – including in us.

I am aware of this journey in me and of me in this journey. I am aware of a vast array of conversations I am with people in many places in the world where this is true. Of a greater hunger for deeper dives, greater understanding, more meaningful work, love and relationship in new and deeper ways and beyond only the intimate love relationship.

Perhaps we will look back on this time in a decade or so and see what a harbinger of change it really is. I’m certain I will look back on my journey and affirm what I know and sense as I move into 50. This is a time for me to break old, limiting patterns, to step more fully into what is mine to do, to completely embrace my purposeful path and live into all that has been on my own edges for awhile. It is the year I will publish my first book, Embracing the Stranger in Me: A Journey to Open Heartedness and begin writing the second book – its companion guide.

There is such a sense of newness on my horizon of 50 and of joyous celebration. I may have unconsciously created an association between turning 50 and embracing life in the fullness of all it has to offer. I have been growing into it for sure in the last couple of years as I have discovered falling in love everyday, have found joy as the baseline of my experience rather than as the exceptional state and have stepped into more conscious awareness of the experience I am living in any given moment. I have been growing my experience of and relationship with the non-physical world and particularly my own guides, guardians and angels.

I didn’t really have a plan for my life up to this point. If I did, it wouldn’t likely have included the things that have shown up. I wouldn’t have imagined I’d be divorced once, let alone twice. While I would have expected to have children, I wouldn’t necessarily have anticipated the quality of relationship that has emerged and been present throughout their growing up years – with them and their friends. I couldn’t have imagined the most amazing people who have shown up in my life and those that have shown me pathways, caused me to grow or reflected back to me qualities I have been invited to embrace – the delightful and profound, the challenging and mundane.

I also would never have imagined that a country like Brazil would play such a central role in my life and journey or that I would be at this point in my life and surrounded by the most amazing young leaders from Brazil and here that I get to play with, learn from and with and journey with. Yay for what I do not know and cannot see. And for the increasing courage and grace that allows me to embrace what is wanting to show up.

The invitation into 50 gives me shivers in the most delightful and shimmering kinds of ways. The invitation into deeper levels of trust, forgiveness, curiosity and joy are apparent. This invitation is flirting at the edges of 50, waiting to see my response. Like the first half of my life, it will be filled with the imperfections of life, of me in my human journey, ambivalent at times, sad at other times, anger more freely expressed when it shows up in my experience but in better and more life affirming ways, like other emotional experiences that are not joy and love dissipating quickly because of the freedom of expression in healthy ways. There will still be days when it is challenging to walk the path, days when my own inner judge will be alive and vociferous, days when I do not know what to do or make choices that will somehow feel wrong. It is a human experience I am living, after all, that we all live.

However, I have come too far to go back. Have I come far enough to fully surrender and embrace all that is waiting for me here on the edge of 50? It seems that is part of what I will discover as I begin the Fool’s Journey anew. I begin with child like curiosity and playfulness and anticipation. I begin with joy brimming over the top. I look forward to seeing where and how your path intersects mine and I am eternally grateful for the path, people and circumstances that have brought me here to the edge of what’s next. 50, here I come. Are you ready for me?

ShapeShift

The shape of the world is shifting… embracing and being intentional about it

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