Leadership Developer • Coach & Facilitator • Writer

Welcome to the October 2024 Newsletter

We're most definitely turning towards soups rather than salads now.  My heating comes on regularly and I'm doing my morning walks in the dark.  I'm swimming in a wetsuit, and nature is giving me plenty of clues to slow down, let go and drop inside. I do love this shift. 

It's been a lovely month though. 

I had a week in Mallorca, snatching a final week of heat before autumn arrived.  Walks, swims and wonderful food.  Although a few days with Dom's step mum when we hadn't realised how advanced her Alzheimer's had got, was both a tricky and a tender time. 

Many sea swims at Goring.  This was the summer that I hooked up with really experienced outdoor swimmers and I realise that I'm going to have to up my hours in the pool this winter if I want to keep up next year!

I hope you enjoy what's here this month and please do pass this Newsletter on to any other folks who might like it.   

I'll be back in November, and in the meantime, hold tight to what matters most to you and keep what you love close.

With love
Helena x

THE LOVE LAB
   DETAILS AND BOOKING HERE
22 Nov, in London, in person. 
 

I've been delighted at the level of interest in this workshop - and there are just one, maybe two, places remaining. We'll be exploring ways to cultivate loving connections between us - and there'll be short bursts of input come some wonderful conversations, interspersed with experiential activities (bold, playful, safe ...) to help us do that.

ACTS OF LOVE FOR TOUGH TIMES (online)
BOOK HERE for Tuesday 15 October between 4-6pm BST
BOOK HERE for Weds 11 Dec between 8-10am GMT

What sustains us in tough times? How do we stay connected to love when things around us can feel unloving?

That's pretty much what we explore together in these (always free) monthly online sessions. We begin with a connection to what we're finding difficult.  Because in the wise words of James Baldwin, not everything that we face can be changed - but nothing can be changed until it is faced.  

And then in each session we take a couple of different things each time and ask 'how might this be a form of necessary love for these tough times we find ourselves in?'.  November's session will include something on how it's a form of love to let ourselves be 'weathered' by life.
 

This month, I also had two wonderful conversations exploring elderhood that I'd hoped to write up and share this month.  But it wasn't to be.  Next month, and that's a promise. 

But along the way, I did come across something that's sort of related, and that's Sharon Blackie's Rules for Midlife.  Different age and phase from elderhood, yes.  And she tends to write for women, and this piece is no exception, plus it has a focus on the menopause.  But if you're a man, or a women who's well before or past the menopause, try reading it with a soft gaze as there's wisdom here for many of us. 

(art: Shoreditch street art)
 

Is anyone has a child with autism and could do with finding some support and encouragement, as well as inspiration and sometimes practical guidance, do check out Catherine Newell and Autism on Facebook.  Cath writes here about life with her 18yr old son, Axel, who has Severe Autism and Severe Learning Disabilities, and also has details of the support groups she runs for parents.

It's beautiful and important, what she does here.  But she's also one of surely very few people who runs workshops to help young people with additional needs and their families with 'private time', talking about the sexual needs of young men and supporting people who are displaying an interest in masturbation and are needing guidance with where, when and how. As Cath says: 'the impact of not being able to meet this need in a healthy way can result in frustration, inappropriate and challenging behaviours, inability to concentrate, infection, physical bodily harm and vulnerability'.

If that work isn't an act of love, I don't know what is. 

(pic: Garry Gay)

I spent a couple of days at the Tavistock, exploring system psychodynamics in supervision.  It was good (and 2 more two day blocks to come) but I haven't had learning that's been so theory-and-slide heavy for a long time and where the tutors were so intentionally 'neutral-like-a-therapist' in their responses to the group. 

I didn't love it, but it was provocative and interesting.  And it being the Tavistock, I am of course invited to look at my own projects and transference in relation to my experience of studying there!

Sometimes I fantasise about what I'd do with large chunks of uninterrupted time.  Ok, actually, very often I fantasise about that.  And when I do, something I imagine I might do is take all the back copies of The Marginalian and immerse myself in them, soaking up the richness and the wonders to be found, clicking on links that open doors to even more rooms filled with jewels. 

If you don't already know it, please do check it out as the most rich and imaginative source of some wonderful things. 

If you liked the work of Tony Schwarz and The Energy Project, back  in the day, about managing our energy and not our time, some new research from Nick Petrie is great. Nick says: Humans, to be at their best, need to pulse between the poles throughout the day. 

Nature pulses.
Tides rise, tides fall
We breathe in, we breathe out
Our heart contracts, our heart relaxes

It explores how we might aim for performance but not at the expense of our well being - aiming to avoid burnout.  And it found that those who seem to manage that tricky balance, well 'pulsed' between several polarities over the course of a day.   If you find Nick on LinkedIn, he regularly posts on this new work. 

Because even the word obstacle is an obstacle

Try to love everything that gets in your way:
the Chinese women in flowered bathing caps
murmuring together in Mandarin, doing leg exercises in your lane
while you execute thirty-six furious laps,
one for every item on your to-do list.
The heavy-bellied man who goes thrashing through the water 
like a horse with a harpoon stuck in its side,
whose breathless tsunamis rock you from your course.
Teachers all. Learn to be small
and swim through obstacles like a minnow
without grudges or memory. Dart 
toward your goal, sperm to egg. Thinking Obstacle
is another obstacle. Try to love the teenage girl
idly lounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo:
Cette vie est la mienne, This life is mine,
in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep.
Be glad she’ll have that to look at all her life, 
and keep going, keep going. Swim by an uncle
in the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephew
how to hold his breath underwater,
even though kids aren’t allowed at this hour. Someday, 
years from now, this boy 
who is kicking and flailing in the exact place
you want to touch and turn
will be a young man, at a wedding on a boat
raising his champagne glass in a toast
when a huge wave hits, washing everyone overboard.
He'll come up coughing and spitting like he is now,
but he'll come up like a cork,
alive. So your moment 
of impatience must bow in service to a larger story,  
because if something is in your way it is
going your way, the way
of all beings; towards darkness, towards light.

Alison Luterman

(art: Tino Rodriguez)

... and thank you, Pete, for sending me this poem.

I had a week's holiday and that always helps a bit (a lot ...) with reading time. 

Benjamin Myers's latest Rare Singles was wonderful.  A love story, really.  And then Brotherless Night, from V.V. Ganeshananthan that won the Women's Prize. When that's the title and the main character has four brothers, you just know it's not going to go so well for them.  It doesn't - it's set in Sri Lanka and this family are Tamil and it's a wonderful book. North Woods was interesting too - came highly recommended by my local Waterstone's. 

From the non-fiction shelf, Weathering from Ruth Allen is a look at the ways that geology and therapy are partners.  And Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave and Sean O'Hagan is the most wonderful look at creativity, faith and grief. 

I do love a bit of TV too, and Kaos on Netflix has been great, plus We Might Regret This, plus Ludwig and Nobody Wants This.  Picking up Season 2 of Industry, since Season 3 is getting such good reviews. 
 

Delivery-wise, highlights have been the final action learning set with a group of senior Civil Servants, reminding them all about the power and necessity of just having time to talk out loud and be witnessed in that. Plus, a second day of SLT development with a housing charity exploring leadership in messy times and helping them develop a team charter to act as guiderails for the year ahead.  I always enjoy working closely with small groups. 

After a very quiet 9 months of the year, suddenly things have picked up.  A big new piece of work with a manufacturing client means lots of meetings and thinking - always exciting. A smaller but fascinatingly complex client in social housing.  And a fast moving tech/energy business too.  So heaps of meetings and emails in service of building strong foundations. 

(pic: a deeply disappointingly dry omelette in Old St)

Do get in touch and let me know how you're finding these Newsletters, or if you'd like to see more info or anything I could include.   I love hearing from you.  You know where I am on LinkedIn, or connect via Email. Or call me of course, whichever suits.

Helena x

helena@helenaclayton.co.uk
07771 358 881

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