Tend the Sparks Consulting

these days, I am all about the “interpersonal stuff”

I suppose it makes sense in the end…me sitting here writing my first blog post off the cuff at my kitchen table. I became fascinated by all things organizational culture about six years ago when I started quickly gaining responsibility at a small nonprofit. It was puzzling, rewarding, and sometimes frustrating to see how much more the quality of my connections with my coworkers seemed to matter than any externally facing task or product. It was inseparable from the quality of the work we put out into the world and the quality of our hours spent together chipping away at addressing climate change. This may not have been news to y’all as younger professionals, but it still caught me off guard at that time that “all the interpersonal stuff” could get so much in the way of the work I thought we had all signed on for together, largely because we believed in it.

Learning that a shared purpose on paper was not enough to sustain myself, a team, an organization, or a cause was one of the best lessons I’ve ever learned professionally. The death of my naive idealism was compost for a line of inquiry that has resulted in some of the most rewarding growth and dearest friendships in my life so far. And a few grand adventures. These days, I am all about “the interpersonal stuff” and am in service to it, to the good in people, and to having meaningful conversations. Meaningful meaning alive with things that people care about, which usually ultimately unites and inspires them, when you are able to get down to it.

I have seen and experienced how far a group of people can go when someone creates opportunities for these conversations and tends those sparks of life with care. I have spent much of my time this year studying, getting better at these things, and finding communities of practice. Even as I start out as a consultant, I have also learned some of the ways I have been doing these things already, often on my own time. A friend kindly pointed that out to me today when I told him about a dinner party I hosted a few months ago.

The four of us intended to play a new board game but ended up spending hours talking instead. I was happy and in love with the sight of these women all chatting while I filled the dishwasher and slid cookie dough into the oven. I was also stunned by the depletion around my table: the overwork, overwhelm, despair over the state of the US and the world. So we leaned in and talked about it. Let ourselves go there and feel the weight of what hurts us. And then I asked what makes them feel good and alive and soft.

The length of the pause broke my heart. And the light I saw return to each of them as they accepted the invitation to come back to ourselves mended it again. We ended the night feeling playful and reoriented to things vastly more important than doomscrolling and anger, and grateful for the time, even though we aren’t all together as often as we’d like. Our connection is sustained by being together and keeps us buoyant, wherever we need to bob off to next.

Whatever the setting, we are the only ones that can do this for each other (the love of a dog notwithstanding). How we are together matters. With intention, it is nourishment for the things we are building: family, community, livelihoods, a better world. Without true togetherness as a starting point — just being human together — it is too easy to succumb to fear (our own and others’), shallow, transactional interactions, and polarization.

I don’t know about y’all, but after having experienced it for quite a while now, that version of the world sucks and I find it boring and brittle. We have demonstrated that we can survive this way and can limp along with things like never working in person and “shared purpose on paper,” but we cannot thrive there. We deserve and are capable of a much higher bar and that is where I choose to live.

The aforementioned friend and I had Zoom tea today and we talked about how much we care about being in the realness of life at a time when 1) lots of things are feeling both absurd and dark and 2) most of what we encounter online was created and/or curated by computers. He encouraged me to start my business right now with a blog, and to write what I know and feel. I will get to the rest soon.

Anne Lamott would totally agree with this good advice. And my past self who worked as a communications manager is cringing a little. Consider this the first in a collection of “shitty first drafts” (á la Bird by Bird) that I offer because it is something simple and human I can do that might be helpful to someone, somewhere, someday.

Back in March, a badass woman and facilitator named Kris Archie told a group of change makers I was a part of that reciprocity is a living thing; don’t overthink it, simply “give what you have.” Even if it is a beginner’s mind. What an invitation. I think about this all the time. She’s a friend of the friend who told me to sit down and write today. Go figure. All of this has called to mind one of my favorite Joy Harjo poems, Perhaps the World Ends Here, which starts with:

“The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.”

For me, it starts at a table, too. The first one I have ever owned. A table that my godfather built for me out of his neighbor’s downed walnut tree in my hometown. A table I told him I wanted to crowd with friends and food and books. A table I knew I needed to start building the life I yearned for when I moved to a new city two years ago. People I love have covered it in laughter and tears, made a mess of it, bared their souls, their teeth, reached for plates and each other, and filled my heart. There’s no better place to start, now I think about it.

-Cheyenne

Perhaps the World Ends Here by Joy Harjo

photo: my kitchen table, right after I finished writing this post