Reflections from Uncomfortable Conversations Autumn 2024
Inviting you to slow down and reflect with us together.
Thank you for joining us here as we explore how this uncomfortable expedition might unfold in the coming months…
Thank you for being up for this experiment, for taking the plunge, trusting us and stepping forward in being uncomfortable together. We’re really excited that so many of you have already found us here and are making space in your minds, hearts and days to get better at being uncomfortable together.
After a lovely autumn of happenings and momentum, there are lots of ideas, projects and potential offerings bubbling up around where working with discomfort might go next. So we’ll be sharing more ways we can listen, learn and explore together over the coming weeks.
But first, we’d love to share two invitations.
The first is a date for your diaries...🥁🗓️
A very warm invitation to join us for an ❄️ Uncomfortable End of Year Online Gathering ❄️ on Tuesday December 17th (12.30-2pm GMT).
This will be a place for us all to come together to reflect on what 2024 has meant to us. The things that have been comfortable and uncomfortable for each of us on a personal and societal level. The things we are hoping to take with us and lean into in 2025, and, the things we may want to shed…
This online gathering to mark the close of the calendar year is open to anyone who has been to one of our Uncomfortable Conversations Live sessions, who has spoken, shared, listened and participated, or is curious to hear about how to take part in next editions of Uncomfortable Conversations and spaces work together.
You can register here
There will be many more ways to work, think and play together that we’re excited to share with you in the coming weeks…but, in order to help us do that well, our second invitation is for you to join us in making time to slow down together, asynchronistically.
Reflections on slowing down from Charlotte
I wonder where you are reading this and what the weather is doing around you right now. I wonder what you can see out of your nearest window today.
Today I’m in Amsterdam in the Netherlands and I can see piles of crunchy brown leaves gathering on a picnic bench and a lovely big straggly fig tree whose large-handed leaves are turning vibrant yellow.
Someone who has taught me alot about what being Uncomfortable with grace and radical humility looks like is Sulaiman Khan. Whenever I have the chance to work with him, he often reminds me to prepare myself for the hard stuff by slowing down.
And so, just as Sulaiman shared on stage a few weeks ago on our Uncomfortable Stage at Blue Earth Summit in East London:
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” – Lao Tzu (author of Tao Te Ching, founder of Taoism)
Maybe right now this can be your invitation to take a beat and think about exactly this idea of accomplishment without hurry. As you consider what’s around you, wherever you are reading today. To tune in to what it feels like when you don't hurry. Even if just for a minute. Maybe as you pause now to notice the view from a nearby window pane. To feel your own breath, or take in the sight of a house plant, a tree on your street, a pet breathing nearby.
Maybe these words might encourage you to find some more time in your day to be outside today.
Often it can feel like the world is in crisis. That our magic blue dot, suspended in space is swirling with issues and problems that are fucking Uncomfortable.
It’s understandable, especially in the recent but all-too-consuming era of late stage capitalism, that this might lead us to hurry. To run, and hurtle. To act from this place of emergency.
There is also great wisdom in the idea that we must slow down in these urgent times.
“Sit, be still, and listen, because you're drunk and we're at the edge of the roof.” (Rumi)
We must make time because we cannot come from a place of scarcity and we can’t leave anyone behind.
This is really what we hope to do through Uncomfortable Love.
To support ourselves and each other to slow down.
To pause.
To notice when are we running away from what makes us uncomfortable.
To understand what is is that makes us most uncomfortable, and why.
And to notice when we are hurtling towards it, hurrying, blundering…rushing.
When we face this things, it’s interesting to see what happens if we and can sit there, with them. Not determined by oppositions, but together experiencing a participatory glimpse of being uncomfortable and safe simultaneously; in a contradictory, diverse glory.
We need these spaces.
We can be healed by those spaces.
It’s in these spaces that a lasting shift is possible.
We are interested in asking how we can each take time together to think differently about how we approach what is uncomfortable for all of us.
This journey will have different forms. We will share more about this in our upcoming Substack posts and our LinkedIn page. We’ll include some summaries, photos and videos from the Uncomfortable offerings and explorations shared at the Blue Earth Summit this autumn. Do subscribe to this Substack, and our LinkedIn page to keep connected to the work we do.
We hope to see you online soon at our ❄️ Uncomfortable End of Year Online Gathering ❄️ . Do register to join us there on December 17th to close out the year together.
With uncomfortable love,
Charlotte and Tess