Tag: commitments

Deciding to Leave Higher Ed: Strategies for Career Discernment

Today the next installment in “Outside Higher Ed” appears in Inside Higher Ed: 

This hyperlinked screenshot shows the article (black text against a white background) as it appears in Inside Higher Ed.

As the title promises, this piece shares seven steps for career discernment. These include:

  1. Talking with confidants.
  2. Making lists, and writing to learn.
  3. Pairing downside with upside risks.
  4. Finding my “strong yes.”
  5. Taking steps toward a new career.
  6. Seeking a reality check.
  7. Processing grief and other emotions.

For each, I describe how the strategy played a role in my decision to leave academia, a discernment process that stretched over multiple years.

Whether or not you’ve been following along as I’ve shared my decision to transition into public writing and entrepreneurship, I hope this piece offers useful discernment practices.

Through career discernment, I continue to learn the importance of slowing down, listening to embodied wisdom, and building emotional literacies. Decision-making involves more than well-reasoned answers, and it holds potential for healing when prioritizing commitments and alignment with our better/best selves.

I continue to wish for personal and collective healing and believe our working lives play a role in this process. How might our careers—and ongoing career discernment—contribute to grieving and growing? To greater acknowledgement of both/and? To the willingness to tread alternative paths?

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This post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, you might try “Announcing ‘Outside Higher Ed’ in Inside Higher Ed,” “In the Midst of Big Changes,” or “Listening for/to the ‘Strong YES.’” Please also consider liking this blog on FB and following the blog via email. Thanks!

Blessed Change

What does it mean to turn our lives upside down?
How might looking at the world differently inspire new perspectives?
What new perspectives are needed to enact more equitable relations?

This card from Doreen Virtue’s “Magical Mermaids and Dolphins” oracle deck says “Blessed Change” in large letters at the top. An image appears below these letters and in the card’s center showing a mermaid floating upside down among seaweed, coral, and shells. At the card’s bottom appears the message: “A major life change brings you great blessings.”

In recent weeks, I’ve been pulling this “Blessed Change” card whenever using Doreen Virtue’s “Marginal Mermaids and Dolphins” oracle deck as part of everyday divination, a meditation practice for grounding and interpreting lived experience. I started pulling divination or oracle cards seven years ago, when I began learning Reiki. I chose this deck because of its blue color scheme (water colors and themes), which connects to my love of swimming, Epsom salt baths, and, more generally, immersing my body in water.

As a practice, the use of oracle cards helps me see patterns and seek guidance, slowing down to notice and reflect when I’d otherwise move too quickly through the day. I don’t pull cards for fortune- or future-telling, but instead as a sort of meditation on life. An openness to listening to what I might be blocking. A willingness to open my heart to divine guidance. A reminder to expect miracles in everyday life.

Over time, I’ve become frustrated with this deck’s mythical-norm representations of people (gender, race, size, and more) and its reliance of Christian symbolism (another part of what Audre Lorde so aptly named the “mythical norm”). At the same time, this deck has taught me a lot about trusting wisdom when it comes in unexpected ways. It continues to teach me about sifting through complicated emotions, imperfect situations, and kernels of truth.

Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that I’ve been pulling this card regularly in recent weeks, as I’m deeply inside the chrysalis, or experiencing mess, mess, and more mess. In many ways, I feel that my life is upside down, up for review. Nothing is too small to question. Everything deserves consideration:

While asking these questions, I’ve had several conversations reminding me that I’m not alone in feeling upside down at this moment. I’m not alone in wanting a different way to live that honors life and builds justice rather than seeing some beings as valuable and others as expendable. I’m not alone in grieving and desiring deep change. And I’m not alone in struggling to see this moment of possible change as a “blessing.”

So, in the midst of grief and anger and fear and trauma, here are some questions this oracle card raises for me, as I seek “blessed change”:

  • How might the pain (vast injustice) of this moment be prompting changes that too many of us might be too comfortable to confront otherwise?
  • What does this moment (I write during the Kavanaugh hearing and #WhyIDidntReport) have to teach me about what needs to change, personally and collectively?
  • What changes might I prioritize today? Tomorrow? Going forward?
  • What changes bring me closer to everyday living—falling down, turning upside down, and still striving again and again—for justice?

Postscript:
One thing I know from years of practicing yoga is that literally getting upside down (inverting the body or getting the feet above the head) does wonders. Legs-up-the-wall pose is both calming and stimulating, both quieting and energizing. It’s both deeply embodied and deeply contemplative. What I realize when thinking about being upside down is that changes, similarly, are full of both/and qualities. Perhaps it’s the recognition of both/and that will help move us toward blessed change.

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This post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, you might try “Countering Resistance Fatigue with a Both/And Approach,” “Inside the Chrysalis, or Experiencing Mess, Mess, and More Mess,” and “Today Healing Looks Like …” Please also consider liking this blog on FB and following the blog via email. Thanks!

Beyond Self-Care: How Hiking Invites Self-Work

Time outdoors and along hiking trails is especially important time to me. As I’ve written previously, it’s time to consider the steps involved in making change, including learning to tread alternative paths. It’s time to slow down, notice beauty, and appreciate life, even in the roughest of conditions. It’s also time to do important intrapersonal work toward disrupting biases and internalized inferiority + superiority.

It’s possible to consider activities like hiking purely as self-care. And refueling is important.

More than self-care, however, hiking—and perhaps any meaningful time outdoors, with the self—invites contemplation, which is so greatly needed for more mindful communication, for more emotional resilience, and for more equitable relations. Slowing down to reflect on ourselves, our responsibilities, and our response-abilities is needed regularly.

Photo taken near Sedona, Arizona, showing a green prickly pear cactus in the foreground, red soil and rock, a shrub in dark shadow, and mountain peaks and blue sky in the background.

As recent hiking experiences have reminded me, time outdoors invites contemplation and communion with the self, with other humans, with non-human animals, and with the natural world. It strengthens, for me, the commitment to ecofeminism and the need to intervene into brutally enacted hierarchies (represented as a pyramid pointing upward) that place god over men, men over women, women over children, children over animals, and animals over the earth.

Though not typically articulated in explicit terms, hierarchical belief systems provide justification for so much oppression: not only sexism, ageism, and speciesism, but also racism and other -isms. Such hierarchies justify dehumanization and devaluation of the earth, as the lives and voices of powerful men (those ranked as closest to god) are expected to take priority. Hence, the “mythical norm” is reinforced in multiplying subtle, socialized, and systematized ways.

Triangular visualization of the hierarchy of oppression (motivation for ecofeminism) showing god over men, men over women, women over children, children over animals, and animals over the earth.

Rather than seeing this hierarchy as natural, I’m able to learn from the natural world (along hiking trails) how all life is related, of value, and part of the whole. Though I’m small within the desert landscape, I still take up space, neither shrinking nor puffing up.

Rather than seeing this hierarchy as natural, I’m able to see the historical-cultural-social construction of this and other oppressive hierarchies (e.g., hierarchies that rank people according to race, nationality, and other constructed identities). While I understand how I’m (expected to) function within such hierarchies, I can push back and create other understandings, much as I choose to walk differently.

Rather than seeing this hierarchy as natural, I’m able to see myself as deeply embodied: not only experiencing life in my body but also having a body that carries historical meaning and present privileges. As an embodied woman (white, middle/upper-class, cisgender, adult, able-bodied, U.S.-born woman), I feel the anger flush through my body at sexism I experience and perpetuate. And at the related racism, classism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism, nationalism, and other sorts of -isms I’m conditioned into, take into my body, inevitably perpetuate, and yet want so desperately to undo.

To put this more simply, hiking helps me dive deeply into systems of oppression that I’m striving to understand and intervene into. It helps me see myself not only as I self-identify, but also as I’m identified and constructed within the collective (within social hierarchies that do injustice to people, animals, and the earth). And it helps me linger over everyday interactions and actions, with time along trails to think and talk and turn over possibilities.

Coming off the trail, I am renewed in commitments to racial justice, social justice, and environmental justice. Contemplation and communion lead me back to these aspirations:

  • Unlearning what’s wrong, no matter how deeply socialized and internalized.
  • Affirming, holding up, sharing out, and amplifying work that helps with envisioning more just futures.
  • Studying and teaching histories that are largely suppressed, yet hanging over us as specters shaping life (e.g., histories of enslavement, genocide, colonization, and forced/blocked immigration in the United States).
  • Learning about, leveraging, and working to deconstruct my socially constructed whiteness (part of white supremacy) toward truer ways of showing up in the world.
  • Bringing joy in the midst of struggle (pure delight in the midst of physical pain) off the trail and into everyday living/striving for justice—holding onto and creating more intense love and possibility.
  • Making more explicit the connections between everyday actions—like eating, moving, and speaking—and structural hierarchies (systems of oppression and injustice) that limit that love and possibility.

As an everyday action, hiking invites intrapersonal self-work that’s so needed alongside interpersonal work-with-others and institutional work-within-institutions. To engage in intrapersonal work is not to turn away from other responsibilities and interventions needed in pursuing justice. It is to do this work more mindfully with attention to one’s own positionality and to what learning and unlearning are needed.

May I continue to engage in self-work through hiking and other means.
May this self-work allow me to show up more fully and fiercely for myself and others.
May I show up ready to work within families, communities, workplaces, and other spaces.

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This post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, you might try “Mantras to Stand TALL for Justice,” “Choosing to Tread Another Path,” and “Do It Scared.” Please also consider liking this blog on FB and following the blog via email. Thanks!

Single-Serve Chocolate Avocado Pudding

This summer, in the midst of a cross-country move and big career changes, I’ve found myself falling into old patterns with sugar. I’ve been binge-eating sugar only to propel myself into a downward emotional spiral and increased inflammation—stirring up old back, neck, and other embodied pains.

In the process, I’ve been getting clearer on what I want to change about my relationship with sugar and noticing when—and why—I’m craving sweets.

With greater awareness of the cravings, I’m more often choosing to drink water and vegetable broth instead of turning to sugar. At times, I’m making my familiar banana, cacao, and peanut butter mash that typically satiates cravings. And, because my naturopath recommends daily avocados, I’ve been allowing myself avocado pudding with dates used for sweetening.

Here’s the recipe for single-serve chocolate avocado pudding. It’s not only sweet and chocolatey (fulfilling emotional cravings for sugar), but it’s also vegan, gluten-free, nut-free, soy-free, and refined-sugar-free.

There are many recipes online for chocolate avocado pudding or mousse. What I like about this one is that it’s simplified (few ingredients and no refrigeration required).

Combine the following ingredients in a Vitamix or other high-powered blender, and blend until creamy:

  • 1 large avocado (or 1 and ½ smaller avocados)
  • 2 tablespoons of cacao powder
  • 2-3 dates, depending on the sweetness desired (more dates = sweeter)
  • ¼ cup of unsweetened almond or other plant-based milk
  • ½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon

This recipe can be easily doubled or tripled, if making for two or more people. It also keeps well in the refrigerator and can be used for snacks throughout the day.

My relationship with sugar, as part of my larger relationship with food, is important for healing—for turning inward and learning more about who I’ve been and who I want to be. Though I’ve shown up to this relationship inconsistently, I want to build a more loving, truthful, and committed relationship for the long haul.

This long-haul commitment to self-love is the same long-haul commitment I make to staying in the work for social justice. May I keep showing up to/for myself and to/for work that matters in the world. May I invest in a nourishing relationship with food toward participating in nourishing, affirming, and accountable relationships in all aspects of life.

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This post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, you might try “Banana, Chocolate, and Peanut-Butter Mash: Changing My Relationship with Sugar and Rethinking Self-Care,” “Three Chocolate Smoothies for Fueling the Road Ahead,” and other vegan + gluten-free recipes. Please also consider following the blog via email. Thanks!

“Pedagogical Too-Muchness,” Or a Call for Shaking up Schooling

This year I turned 39, and it’s my first in which I won’t be returning to school. I’ve spent my life in academic settings—as a child and adult, as a student and teacher, as a researcher and writer. Many of my friends are teachers, too, so I understand how August brings both angst and anticipation for the upcoming school year.

Recently, I’ve been having conversations with friends about syllabi and course designs. I’ve been reading social media posts about the start of school. And I’ve received emails from several people asking me to share my experience teaching “Writing for Social Justice.”

The combination of these conversations, posts, and emails has reminded me of the importance of rethinking what we know and have typically experienced as education. So much of schooling needs to be shaken up/off, as traditional schooling perpetuates social inequities, damaging discourses, and injustice. What we’re typically conditioned into—conditioned to accept and expect from schooling—does harm by contributing to the status quo. (I’m thinking here of scholarship by bell hooks and Paulo Freire, in Rethinking Schools and Teaching Tolerance, and in research journals like Feminist Teacher and Equity & Excellence, among many other sources.)

Given the recognized harms of schooling, August seems like the perfect time to question what we know about teaching and learning.

  • How might we intervene into and rewrite the scripts of schooling?
  • How might we rethink not only curriculum and content but also assignments, assessment, and activities that structure relations in and out school?
  • How might we change our approaches to education, even if/when those changes are considered “too much”?

I raise these questions and share my own attempts at trying to teach differently—perhaps “too much” differently—through a newly published chapter, “Pedagogical Too-Muchness: A Feminist Approach to Community-Based Learning, Multimodal Composition, Social Justice Education, and More.”

As part of the collection Composing Feminist Interventions: Activism, Engagement, Praxis edited by Kristine L. Blair and Lee Nickoson, this chapter describes my approach to “Writing for Social Justice” and situates feminist, critical education as “instead of” rather than “on top of” more traditional approaches.

Throughout the chapter, I share several guiding principles:

1. engage our full selves—not only our minds, but also our bodies, emotions, and spirits;

2. prioritize relations, or put the time and effort into building and sustaining meaningful (and often cross-status) connections among people and organizations;

3. understand power as related to (in)justice so that efforts against sexism and for gender-and-sexuality-justice are linked with other justice-oriented work, since identities and issues are intersectional and injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere;

4. cultivate agency so that students and other actors see themselves as having the responsibility to act, as well as the questions and insights to ask who is responsible to act, when, where, why, and how (troubling savior and victim narratives);

5. seek interconnectedness among ways of seeing, thinking, doing, and being in the world so that we work toward coherence across spheres of activity and recognize that our work occurs within complex socio-cultural, historical, and rhetorical systems.
(pages 337-338)

I share this chapter and these principles as part of ongoing conversations about how to do education differently—toward making commitments to justice actionable. My hope is that the more we think of social justice education as the core or center of schooling, the more we shift away from schooling that leads educators to dismiss critical approaches as additional, extra, or “too much” to take on.

Truly, we all—students and teachers alike—need courses that are complex, critical, and transformative. We need educational practices that humanize people and develop relational responsibilities. We need concerted effort to disrupt the status quo, foster commitments to justice, and build agency beyond the classroom.

Though I won’t be returning to the classroom this fall, I’ll be reading, writing, and engaging as someone with much to shake up/off about my own educational history. May we share in this ongoing work and lifelong learning. May this new school year invite new ways of approaching education and learning to take action in this time of urgency.

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This post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, you might try “Triangulating the Heart, Head, and Hands for Justice,” “What Is Justice?” and others posts on teaching. Please also consider liking this blog on FB and following the blog via email. Thanks!

A New Spell for a New Space

These past few weeks I’ve been focused on moving and settling into a new home. The move has called attention to all sorts of stuff, habits, and emotional swings—things I’d like to keep and release, to shore up and tear down. This process has reminded me, too, of the contemplative practices that contribute to a sense of grounding: grounding needed to stand TALL for justice.

One of these practices is spell-casting, which I learned from activist-writer-healer adrienne maree brown. In Episode 10 of the Healing Justice podcast “New Years Practice: Cast a Spell with adrienne maree brown,” brown shares what I’ve similarly come to believe from my experiences writing, teaching writing, and researching writing. That is:
(1) Words have power.
(2) We can channel this power through writing.
(3) Writing mantras and other wishes-desires-intentions helps bring them into reality.
In other words, writing supports manifestation. To put these beliefs into action, I write what I want to manifest in life.

As I did back in January, when recovering from a concussion, I’ve written a spell of mantras to help ease the shifts (the letting go and calling in) that I’d like to experience in my new space. This spell now lives under my bed and again taped to my bathroom mirror.

Printed copy of the spell (words that appear in this blog post) taped to a bathroom mirror with a colorful shower curtain showing part of a tree reflected in the mirror. The photo has a pink tint.

I share this spell here as an accountability practice—holding its potential not only in physical space but also in digital/online space. I hope it might motivate others to write. I can already see that it’s inspiring me toward further writing to make commitments to justice actionable in everyday life.

A New Spell for a New Space

I detangle my self-worth from my productivity, release goals of perfection and positivity associated with white womanhood, and believe instead that “I am enough” (neither better-than nor lesser-than)—affirming my own and others’ humanity.

I release the pattern of “butt in seat” to get work done and instead allow myself to write-work-play-move wherever I am called, including curled on the couch and sitting alongside the bouldering wall.

I embrace play: swimming, hiking, climbing, and moving my body regularly toward shaking up/off what I’ve internalized and still hold within my body as trauma, as pain, as injustice.

I make decisions based on my “strong YES,” asking regularly which way brings me closer to my divine purpose, listening for what’s next, and engaging in discernment, even/especially when the answers don’t seem to make sense.

I look for direction in everyday life, slowing down to practice divination as a meaningful, woven-through-the-day contemplative practice.

I keep talking with my future self and my ancestors, working to heal backward and forward in time.

I get comfortable working on my own and enjoying my own company, while noticing who shows up as accomplices, companions, and guides in the work for social justice.

I read “for fun,” and I learn through reading-listening-witnessing how to amplify the voices of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), especially feminists and womanists of color.

I nourish my physical, emotional, and spiritual self: heart, head, and hands. In doing so, I invest in my relationship with food, building a relationship that’s full of integrity, consistency, forgiveness, appreciation, and love. I absorb nutrients and release inflammation. I show love to myself through the foods I take into my body.

I learn more about what it means to show up as my authentic self, getting to know Beth.

I treat myself gently, with tenderness and humility. I open my heart to forgiveness and peace. I allow myself to receive and give love.

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This post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, you might try “Spell-Casting and Other Contemplative Practices for Reflection and Recovery,” “The Pain and Pleasure of Moving,” or “Mantras to Stand TALL for Justice.” Please also consider liking this blog on FB and following the blog via email. Thanks!

The Pain and Pleasure of Moving

My cross-country move from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Washington, D.C. has stretched over weeks turned into months. From traveling to find an apartment to now unpacking boxes, I’ve upturned almost every aspect of life. In the past weeks, I’ve sold my furniture, driven hundreds of miles, lost and found items shipped through Amtrak, lived out of suitcases in a temporary residence, and now moved into the apartment-to-be-home (hopefully for some time to come).

From Wisconsin to Washington, I’m still seeing red Ws in every direction I turn.
From Wisconsin to Washington, I’m still seeing red Ws in every direction I turn.

This moving process has offered numerous life lessons. Among them are the importance of qualities like humility and humor and the beauty of loving relations that keep me laughing even when crying.

In the midst of these lessons, I’ve been noticing again the function of both/and thinking for preventing a single story or flat understanding of lived experience. The more I hold onto the framework of “yes … and …,” the more I am able to think creatively beyond the lies of internalized superiority and inferiority. Both/and thinking helps to prevent the traps of either-or, this-or-that, divide-and-conquer, and conquer-to-divide, which enable injustice.

In the case of my move, the traps are too clear: I readily focus on pain without noticing pleasure. Likewise, I share stories of pleasure without noting the pain. Truly, life is richly textured in dialectical tensions (seeming contractions) that, together, get closer to truth. Toward truth-telling, here are some of these tensions I’m recognizing now, while moving:

1. Stuff brings both pain and pleasure.
Despite downsizing significantly in recent years, I’m still amazed by the bulk of my possessions. I’ve found myself complaining: “How can we have this much stuff? I can’t possible carry another box.” Moments later, I’m unpacking and hugging Larry, the teddy bear who accompanied me to summer camp in my youth, and I’m delighted and grateful for keeping at least some impractical stuff. The speed with which I’m complaining and delighting over “stuff” is a sure sign that it’s both: both painful and pleasurable.

A grey teddy bear sits next to a cardboard box, which is full of books.

2. Habits are both hurtful and helpful.
Moving creates the conditions for reviewing routines and patterns of living. While it’s easy to abandon all habits (the good and the bad), it’s also possible to assess which work and which don’t. When something as simple as taking daily vitamins falls away, I’m noticing how my body responds. On the one hand, my belly begins churning, reminding me not to forget the heating pad and probiotics. On the other hand, adding back in vitamins one at a time allows me to figure out which hasn’t been sitting quite right and to create a new nutritional plan.

Similarly, a new neighborhood leads to discovering new foods, activities, relations, and embodied experiences. The move has me asking: Which habits are serving me now, and which are asking to be released? What do I want my days to be like? What habits are (mis)aligned with my commitments?

3. Emotional swings are both flattening and fun.
Dialectic tensions like pain and pleasure, hurting and helping also lead to emotional swings: from downtrodden to upbeat—from falling on the floor in exhaustion to frantically cleaning in bursts of energy. Such emotional swings remind me of the presence of sadness alongside joy, disgust alongside delight, effort alongside excitement. They remind me why emotional literacies help with valuing the full spectrum of emotions, which convey important information.

The move has me experiencing a wide range of emotions and really trying to recognize them as messengers: not blocking any emotions, but asking what each has to teach me. This process, I hope, will funnel back into decisions about which “stuff” and habits to keep and which to release.

As I continue unpacking, I hope these reflections highlight again the value of a both/and approach to life, activism, and more. And if you’re in or near or visiting DC, please know that I’d love to connect and build community, as I make a new home.

View from inside my new apartment of a window seat: two windows are framed with rose-colored curtains, a long grey cushion seat, two decorative pillows with prints of birds, and a green palm tree (indoor plant).

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This post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, you might try “Countering Resistance Fatigue with a Both/And Approach,” “In the Midst of Big Changes,” and “5 TED Talks for Developing Emotional Literacies for Racial Justice.” Please also consider liking this blog on FB and following the blog via email. Thanks!