Our ceremony will be beautiful.

Family will gather.
Food will be cooked.
Our lineages will be settled.
Rings will be exchanged.

Ironically, our ceremony will occur exactly 365 days after I dropped C. at O’hare International. His worker visa had been denied after a lengthy appeal process, and we didn’t know when we would see one another again. Those following days were very dark — the I-couldn’t-even-brush-my-teeth kind of dark. So dark I’m not yet ready to go there in public.

But that’s not the story. The story isn’t about how we were tragically trapped in an emotional earthquake.

Let me tell you the real story:

A search party came to find us. We crawled out. We used the very rubble that fell on top of us to build a new life, a new home.

I’m thinking of our engagement ceremony as the ribbon cutting. These last twelve months have been filled with heavy internal lifting, emotional carpentry, and waiting out the weather so we could finally put the roof on.

God, I am so tired of building … and my fine motor skills go to shit when I’m tired.

I’m ready to cut that big beautiful red ribbon we wrapped around ourselves with ridiculously huge scissors. I’m ready to party.

So I’m slipping under the radar for a few weeks. I’ve got a ribbon to cut.

—

The Inside Scoop

You need to know / I didn’t kick ass.

In fact / I refused mouth to mouth  / I knew I was dead.

It wasn’t brave / I didn’t crawl out / I was pulled.

By God Herself.

This last week two of the most brilliant women I know, Daphne Eck and Loyie Weber, hosted a Naming the Year Retreat at the Peerless Gallery and Worksite; after a day of gathering with other women to play, create and set intention for our year I gained some surprising certainty about my 2012 intention.

I’m still waiting for an eloquent name to surface; though, of course, the magic isn’t in the name — the magic is in the intention the name holds. And this year it all started with Mary Oliver’s poem, Wild Geese:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

I’m a woman on a lifelong journey of learning to live below my shoulders — I’m most comfortable in my head, but it’s not where I’m most happy. The truth is, a lot of us have this struggle. I’ve found a few creative practices (poetry, photography & mixtapes) that help me counteract my headiness, and I’m sharing them with you as an invitation to explore how you, too, might be able to hold your 2012 intention in your whole body, rather than just your head.

2012 in picture: photography

2012 in word: poetry

The year of Shame Disintegration.
The year I Don’t Have To Be Good.
The Year of Freedom.

The year I become the queen,
the fierce ruler
of my own criteria.

The year of parking tickets,
running red lights and
walking right off the edge.

The year of lingerie,
mini skirts and
lots of leg.

The year of colorful language,
telling the truth and
being bad.

—

Fun will no longer die on my doorstep;
she will be given a spare key,
greeted with expensive wine.

—

The sensual smelling lotion
will be kept on the top shelf

with the expensive liquor,
just out of shame’s reach.

—

Ashes to Ashes style
shame will shrivel up,
disintegrate and die.

—

My breasts will peak out and wink
every morning at the breakfast table.

Not just at C,
but at me too.

If you don’t know by now,
I don’t have to be good.

2012 in sound: Mix + Tape
Listen online right HERE. You’ll have to open a Spotify account if you don’t have one already, but it’s super easy and totally worth it; I promise.

But first, let me introduce you to the PeerSpirit co-founders and dynamic duo, Ann Linnea and Christina Baldwin.  Put simply — Ann is a tall tree and Christina is a spark plug.  These two are fierce, yet gentle, brilliant, yet modest, and unbelievably grounded; when they speak, I listen.

Ann and Christina co-created PeerSpirit Circling, a model for healthy group communication, based on a sentiment that anyone who has ever sat in one too many stale, explosive, or one-sided meetings understands:  I will poke my eye out if I have to sit here one more minute. Ok, so they don’t exactly say it that way; the page preceding the table of contents in Ann and Christina’s most recent book, The Circle Way, says:  If we change the chairs, we can change the world. And it’s true

Always actively listen.  Never patronize.
Very early on in our partnership Ann and Christina expressed a number of concerns about the implications of social media usage and promotion on society in general and for their own personal work:  Are our young people losing the kinds of interpersonal skills needed for face-to-face interaction?  Is social media a replacement for a phone call or coffee date?  What about us writers … are we obsolete?  What about privacy?  As a naturalist am I undermining my beliefs about the value of the natural world by asking people to sit in front of the computer to interact?

There is a social media philosophy that bubbles just under the surface with an aggression screaming, “GET ON THE BUS OR GET OUT OF THE WAY!”  And another that rolls its eyes at concern about potential loss of interpersonal skills.  Ann and Christina’s concerns were too nuanced and thoughtful for that kind of dismissal; in fact, their honesty gave me room to consider a few concerns I hold too.

And so together we journey — always listening and never patronizing one another.  The deeper we go in our work together, the more I recognize just how important this posture is in our partnership. I’m beginning to understand why the stakes feel so high for my baby-boomer partners; this is the very evolution of human communication, we’re talking about here.  Is it worth the kind of care our partnership demands?  Damn straight.

Be fearless.  Be grateful.
We often joke about how we’re all standing near the edge of the Grand Canyon.  I’ve followed a little footpath about twenty feet down into the canyon.  Christina’s about a foot from the edge and Ann’s barely within shouting distance.  I’m giving direction from below, and they’re inching toward the edge.  It is no small thing for Ann and Christina that have a social media presence.

In just the last few months, I’ve created and managed a small social media presence for Ann to promote her book, Keepers of the Trees, and professionally network.  She now proudly sports a red ribbon with gold trim — the inscription:  Brit’s Favorite Luddite.  I may be guiding Ann as she tenuously eases toward Facebook, but the fearlessness in her forward inching is a signpost I look to in uncertain moments.  I honor Ann’s fearless contribution — and note that the sector in which I work could use more of these kinds intentional interactions.

Ask:  Is there deeper work for us to do together?
I think of the three of us as the Coalition of the Willing, as in we keep asking one another “is there deeper work for us to do together?” and we keep answering, “yes”. I offer my services because there is a need and I have the skill, but this is the essence question what drove me to my work in the first place.  The answer isn’t yes with everyone, but it’s always a question I explore with my clients, thanks to the way Ann and Christina modeled the asking for me.

So, what’s the deeper work in this case?

Social media consulting is nothing if not intergenerational.  I stumbled into social media coaching and consulting by responding to forlorn and weary pleas for help from a primarily baby-boomer population.  I was a young friend and colleague who, by virtue of the time period in which I was born, donned an online intuition that generally navigates social media spaces with ease.  Most of my clients are 55 and older and we often have to wade through a swamp of generational assumptions.  In the case of PeerSpirit, we bumped into a sleeping giant of an opportunity — acknowledging generational misunderstandings and assumptions only exasperated by technology.

Here’s to many more anniversaries and the kinds of collaborative parnterships that bring out the best in each of us!

No more moving from coffee shop to dining room table to porch swing back to coffee shop.  No more petitioning the wall outlet gods as I walk into the Dundee Blueline.  No more dropped Skype conference calls from our grass green astroturf front porch.

No. No. No.

Starting this week you will now find me, most weekdays, sitting at the long white co-working table/desk at Peerless, a new-ish gallery and artist worksite in Omaha’s Midtown Crossing.  Full disclosure here:  I’m not an artist … well, let me put it this way: artistic didn’t make it on the list of Top 21 Adjectives to Describe Brit Hanson (yes, that’s a real list).

So, what am I doing here?

The Peerless perks like location (within walking distance from my home), internet access, and good lighting (wide open white space) are fabulous, but they aren’t what this office move is about.

I hold a core belief that creative insight is a matter of emergence rather than production.

The Peerless space is a manifest intention of proprietors and artists, Daphne Eck and Caleb Coppock, who happen to know the truth about me (I’m not an artist) and want me to be here anyway.  No incognito requests of spray paint covered thumbs, charcoal smeared forearms, or a 33 mm camera slung around my neck. Our agreement is that I show up and do my thing, which most often includes Skype calls, poking around multiple social media platforms, and story board or mind mapping on recycled paper with crayons and clients.

It happened like this — one morning as I emerged from my slumber a question was sitting on the tip of my nose: “what could happen if I co-work in Caleb and Daphne’s space?”  I sent an email and asked ; they said, “yes.”

In his poem, What To Remember When Waking, David Whyte puts it this way:

In that first
hardly noticed
moment
to which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.

I’m answering yes to all of those questions that emerge in that small opening in the new day, before rational Brit has a chance to snap the door shut — and in another act of full disclosure, I have to admit that “should I join Google+?” was not one of those questions that emerged during the small opening.

The bottom line is that an energy emerged and we all said yes.  So here I am, sitting behind my little MacBook AIR as artists and patrons of the arts trickle in and out — and I already know something’s shifted for me.

In contrast, a few matters of acute importance:  how to meaningfully tend the mass of e-mails in my inbox, respond to the lingering voice mails, eat a nutritious breakfast with my partner, and convene an honest conversation with a new-ish client while demonstrating a bit of grace and (dare I even suggest) ease?

Not to mention the status updates and friend requests and event invitations and, and, and. I’m wondering if this multi-tasking juggling act really has to be so hard?

In light of the extravagant amount of information so readily available, I’ve started experimenting with a delightfully passé process:  STOP. SIT DOWN. TURN OFF COMPUTER. REGROUP. SET INTENTION. TRY AGAIN. Key parameters – curiosity, rather than judgment; emergence, rather than production. Key finding - wow, what a relief; is reclaiming sanity really that simple?

The times, they are a-changin’. Holding tension, confusion and frustration about what might be next, even about what is now, has become standard operating procedure. Our relationship with technology (and ourselves) needs an imaginative interruption.

I wonder if our anxieties over innovative technologies are indicative of disconnection with or distrust in our internal directives. Perhaps these latest social mediums are surfacing an issue we’ve left untended. Facebook, LinkedIN, Twitter (the list goes on) are not technological saviors on white stallions of innovation — and yet they aren’t evil ogres holding meaningful human interaction hostage in a deep, dark forest.

So we’re not just talking about Facebook, LinkedIN and Twitter anymore, are we?

What we’re really talking about is exploring identity – core, authentic, deep understanding of self (whether individual, community, or organization) in the context of a rapidly evolving moment. Now that is something worth recovering and sharing in whatever ways make sense today, tomorrow, and in a couple of years (when the social mediums will have inevitably evolved again).