Letter to Changemakers

Dear Changemakers,

Thank you for coming together with honesty, depth, and a shared willingness to sit with what's real.

In our last Peer Support Circle, the space we created didn't just hold an intention, it invited us into a deeper conversation about how we show up in the world and why.

I wanted to share with you things that I heard - as reminders, or prompts for your continued work.

Clarity about multiplicity
You reminded us that you are not one thing. You are movement workers and artists and social workers, all at once, functioning within an ecosystem. Labels can help, but they also risk flattening the abundance of who you are.

"A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one."

Behind the visible surface lies the real work
The conditions you create, the listening you support, the people you care for, the weaving of relationships that makes change possible - it's not about what people see; it's the work that sits behind it.

Narration as choice
Visibility is a choice about what to name and what to hold quietly. Some of you spoke about not wanting to disappear in your work or be reduced to a single descriptor, and about the tension between doing the work and telling the story of it.

"Changemaker – It's not going on my bio."

The ecosystem
Change work happens with others. You spoke to belonging to an ecosystem and to the value of collaboration, not heroic individual effort. Your work lives in dialogue and that interdependence is a strength.

As you were leaving I scribbled down five questions:

1. Where are you now?

2. What do other people say about your work?

3. When you think about the change you make, can you describe a moment you most often witness in your work?

4. How do you describe the energy, quality, dynamic of you and your work?

5. Where are you now?

(The same question at the start and end, because sometimes where we land is different from where we began.)

So my gentle invitation, if you want to keep this moving: use this letter as a reflective prompt. A reason to keep finding words; more of them, different ones, for the work you do and the change you make.

There was something very alive in the room around this tension: how do you tell your story without being reduced by it? How do you hold visibility with intention?

Thank you for making this space what it needed to be. I am always quietly amazed by what happens when one person speaks honestly and those words turn out to be exactly what someone else in the room needed to hear.

With love,

Catherine x

P.S there is a resource below that I use with groups if you want a space to let go and write.