Perhaps your business or career has been affected by the global pandemic, resulting in financial uncertainty or loss of identity. This too requires that we navigate the uncharted waters of figuring out what’s next in our work world.

Or your family is affected by educational systems falling apart, or of course the impending political cliff we find ourselves teetering on in the U.S. all require us to make choices about how we respond.

Life throws us these curveballs.

The kind that there’s no way in hell we can anticipate, they’re so surprising.

Sometimes we pick them up and participate in the game. Mostly we just try to get out of the way, letting them roll on by, not noticing there was something important in the circumstances.

The 2020 curveballs have been obtrusive enough that we can’t deny their impact.

I’m calling this transition phase the Death of Denial.

And in many ways, that’s a good thing. We’re not going back. Much of the world was stuck in a former paradigm while we humans have been evolving.

Yet the skies will clear. We will see blue again.

And a lot will have burned down, literally and figuratively.

Accepting the Loss

And grief is a common response to the loss of so much of what we knew- the abstract conceptions of “life as we knew it,” and for many of us, the true loss of natural ecosystems, homes, jobs, possibly loved ones.

A friend of mine passed along a pertinent poem Bearing Witness by Laura Weaver of Luminous Poetry, whose last stanza seems to apply here.

What if our grief, given as a sacred offering,

is a blessing not a curse?

What if our grief, not hidden away in corners,

becomes a kind of communion where we shine?

What if our grief becomes a liberation song

that returns us to our innocence?

What if our fierce hearts

could simply bear witness?

Chaos Leads to a Higher Order

What will be your response, following the grief, when the ash finally settles on this 2020 debacle?

Given that out of chaos emerges a higher order of coherence, many of us will be more determined, more intentional, more certain that now is the time to transition to the new way. The new world. The new earth.

What’s emerging in you?

Who will you be on the other side of this paranormal 2020 experience?

Since my book published mid-pandemic, it’s been a challenging ride for me too. Lifetimes of grief now ready to release. There are always cobwebs in the shadows behind the things we haven’t touched in a while, right?

The more evolved version of me, a result of my book and all these cobwebs I cleared in the pandemic, is unleashing my next contribution in the world. I’m creating a new version of my business, a new brand and a new “collective” where we can be together to emerge as the next version of us. All of us. You’ll hear more about that shortly.

What’s your vision of the “newly emerging” version of you? Your magnificent new normal?

I’m holding loosely the rudder as we make this shift, attending to the emerging winds. Hope you’ll join me for the ride