Monthly Libation
January 2025
What We Are Feeling (Heart)
The C&A team is feeling grounded and grateful! We were blessed to take some extended time off, during which we each savored time with family and friends. Most importantly, we took time with ourselves. We reflected on our individual and collective work, both with our client partners and our internal work as humans committed to loving our communities and disrupting generational trauma. We visited and revisited some of our favorite small businesses, parks, and museums. We wondered at the plant life at W.W. Seymour Conservatory, every corner a new miracle or color, texture, and life.
While grateful for the space and time to do that, we each also came to feel daunted by so much data. Our reflections included what was experienced and felt, written and unwritten, said and unsaid. In the face of so much – 365 days, countless hours of research and design, deep, complex, and important work with our client partners, team meetings and solo development – one can get overwhelmed, even paralyzed as to what to do with it all! To ground us we turned to scholarship and offerings from folks like Lily Zheng, whose scholarship and insights remain bold and innovative in the face of many leaders and organizations turning away from DEI efforts. They practice a beautiful balance of the conceptual and the practical, centering our humanity through hard, even polarizing conversations and systems change.
How did you take note of the lessons your learned in 2024? Where and how can you call them forth when you need them in 2025?
What We Are Thinking/Reading (Head)
As we refresh and refine our offerings we are continuing our deep dive into Race, Work, and Leadership: New Perspectives on the Black Experience. This text is a rare but critical collection of essays on the experience of Black leaders. Not only does it feature research that has been woefully underrepresented, it informs DEI practitioners the ways that racial dynamics are shifting, and how to best do our own work to create the conditions for Black leaders to thrive in their career trajectory. While this is often the intent for boards and hiring teams, we know from reports like Race to Lead and The Perils of Black Leadership that non-white leaders experience contested authority, inadequate support, and less compensation than their white counterparts. C&A is working on offerings – facilitated dialogues, training, and coaching curriculum- to support boards and executives is the accountability practices and investments required to make the system and organizational culture improvements to better support and leverage the gifts of incoming leaders of color.
What We Are Practicing (Loving and Intentional Action)
In the spirit of practicing daily intention, we have each picked a word to guide us closer to our purpose this year.
Kellie’s word is cultivation – a commitment to keep cultivating the seeds she planted in 2024 – through creative pursuits, self-love, and moving from doing to being
Pat’s word is trust – a commitment to trust that what falls apart is making space for something new, better, and sacred. Relationships often rupture, partnerships dissolve, and sometimes trusts are breached in the work we do. Pat is allowing these endings rather than resisting them with a knowing that new beginnings bring hope.
Annie’s word is reclamation – a commitment to a full and loving declaration of her truest self, embracing her Blackness and all her identities; an honoring of her roots and ancestral knowings, even in the spaces that do not value or welcome it.
Morgan Harper Nichols shared a fun, interactive post on Instagram inviting you to take a screenshot to help you find a word to be your north star in 2025. She also wrote a longer post on her blog to give you more ideas. Check it out to get your juices flowing!
What is your guiding light/word/intention for 2025? How can you incorporate it into your daily practices and decision making? Who will you call on to hold you accountable?
Lastly we have completed a refresh to our website that includes an updated list of our offerings and work together. Thanks to our Project Manager, Jaeda Ballard, for managing this project, and Silong Chuun for his gorgeous images of Tacoma!
We hope you enjoyed this month’s offering. Please share with those in your network who might enjoy it. Please follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn to stay informed of our upcoming work and/or events, and to keep receiving the Monthly Libation. If you are looking for organizational development consultation, support, or coaching, you can email us at info@colemonassociates.org.
Stay safe. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other.
C&A Team
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