I know I’m not alone in feeling like 2024 was a year. So many of us are still working through everything that happened as we wonder exactly what lies ahead.

As part of that reflection on the year past and preparing for the year ahead, long-time listeners may know that I am a big believer in debriefing. I debrief weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually, and each year, I share my annual debrief with you.

This debrief includes personal reflections about events in my life, how my words of the year brought some interesting data to light and guided my actions, and themes about what’s working and what’s not working as we begin the new year. 

Content note: Discussion of death by suicide

 

 

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How my words of the year–rhythm and reps–challenged some of my deeply engrained habits and unrealistic expectations
• How a series of events in my personal life led to shifts in my rhythms and reps and deeper healing
• What 35 tomato plants taught me about priorities and planning
• Wisdom that stuck with me from live talks by Elizabeth Gilbert and Anne Lamott
• Experiences that brought me joy last year and why joy is essential to doing the hard work ahead
• Managing anger and outrage in our political climate through curiosity and healing, unburdened leadership

 

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

 

Resources:

• Writer’s Symposium by the Sea
• EP 14: Consenting to Grief as a Leadership Practice with Dean Nelson, PhD
• Elizabeth Gilbert
• Redwood
• Anne Lamott
• Conclave
• Rent
• tick, tick…BOOM!
• The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron
• Real Fun, Wow!
• Brené Brown
• Virgin River
• The Office
• Parks and Rec
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine
• Community
• The Diplomat
• Lioness
• Timothy Snyder
• EP 70: Getting out of Shame and Into Power with Kelly Diels
• Kelly Diels
• Finding Mercy in Impossible Times (Father Gregory Boyle) | Pulling the Thread with Elise Loehnen
• Father Gregory Boyle
• EP 117: Rethinking Resilience: Moving from Bouncing Back to Relational Resilience with Soraya Chemaly
• EP 96: Rage to Action: The Leading Power of Women’s Anger with Soraya Chemaly
• Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, Soraya Chemaly
• The Resilience Myth: New Thinking on Grit, Strength, and Growth After Trauma, Soraya Chemaly
• EP 113:  Curiosity as a Bridge: Uncovering Fears and Building Connections with Scott Shigeoka
• EP 90: Engaged and Consistent Leadership: with Moms Demand Action Founder, Shannon Watts
• Moms Demand Action
• How Leadership Styles Will Change in 2025

 

Transcript:

[Inspirational Intro Music]

Rebecca Ching: I’m Rebecca Ching, and you’re listening to The Unburdened Leader, the show that goes deep with humans who navigate life’s challenges and lead in their own ways. Our goal is to learn how they address the burdens they carry, how they learn from them and become better and more impactful leaders of themselves and others.

[Inspirational Intro Music]

Hello, Unburdened Leader listeners! And hello, 2025! It’s so wild to be in 2025 and honored we go together. But first, and as long-time listeners may know, I’m a big believer in debriefing (weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually). I share my annual debrief here with all of you, and this one I’m sharing a little bit more of the personal stuff because it feels appropriate to share, and I’ve had some time to reflect, heal, and get clarity on my own first, which is a cardinal rule before sharing some personal stuff.

But first, I know I’m not alone in thinking for a while now about what it’d be like to be in 2025, primarily with the choices that were on the table in the US election. I feel like so much of The United States campaign and election cycle overshadowed the year and was so present with so much of what we did day in and day out, whether we were aware of it or not. And I know there are some of you who protected your peace and did your best to stay out of the political discourse, and you just kept your head down and did your thing. I respect that. I also know on the other side, there are folks, some of you, that were tracking everything going on daily, very consumed, deeply concerned about what’s happening in our country and our planet. Overall, it has been a lot.

2:03

Now, regardless of how you feel about the election or politics, how we engaged with it last year, looking back on 2024, the election coverage overshadowed a lot of the movies and TV shows I watched and, for me, hijacked much of my focus and energy outside of my work with clients and even in my work with clients. 2024 was a year, [Laughs] and so many of us are still working through all that happened and all that’s ahead.

And for me, after some much needed rest and time to reflect on all I heard from many of the incredible folks I get to work with day in day out, how they’re showing up for their families, at their places of work, in their communities, there are some themes of what worked for a lot of the people I’ve worked with and what didn’t. White knuckling, bypassing hard emotions, overthinking in place of feeling through, exiling emotions or parts of ourselves in stories did not work. But what did work, and what I saw folks do time and again, was witnessing what they were feeling, naming the thing that they were going through, looking at it head on, doing the work to unburden and build up the capacity so they can move through grief and vulnerability and uncertainty while holding onto their certainty anchors and grounding in safe and secure relationships. It’s pretty impressive when I reflect on the work that I have been invited to do this year, and it’s really been an honor.

Now, for me, I’ve always — not always but for a long time had words or a word of the year, and for 2024 I chose “rhythm and reps.” And focusing on these words, along with some things that happened in my life, brought up some interesting data for me as I reflected on how those words guided me throughout the year.

4:06

And now, I was drawn to rhythms and reps instead of words like “habits” and “goals,” and I wanted something like “rhythms and reps,” which had the sense of music or musicality and flow and spontaneity but also regularity and repetition because the research is clear, especially around reps, that when we put in the reps day in and day out, things start to become part of our DNA and daily actions.

I didn’t anticipate a few things, though, that would show up in my focus on these words. And first, it required a lot of grace and compassion towards the parts of me that are very driven and got frustrated by the slow pace of change, as some of the rhythms and reps that I wanted to develop really needed me to do a lot of pregaming and unlearning to get to the changes that I wanted to make and the additional reps I wanted to add into my day. And so, yeah, I had to do a lot of unlearning, a lot of rewiring, and my training tells me (and I know) it just takes a long time. And that was still frustrating.

And I also was confronted from some deeply ingrained habits that impacted my capacity along with some stealth expectations I had on myself that I was so used to. I wasn’t even aware of them, and they were on automatic pilot. So my biology and life circumstances made it hard for me to develop these rhythms and reps as quickly as I wanted, and that challenged my expectations of myself in making some changes and shifts. And this is so humbling. I’m in the helping space, focused on how to help people change and how it can be a huge mind F for people who often feel shame and disappointment when they don’t see the “results” they think they need.

6:06

And I had to look in the mirror on this and check the shame that was showing up in me because I didn’t realize how exhausted and burnt out I was. I say this with a little hesitation and maybe a qualification, and it comes from the fact that I love my work, I love my family, but I didn’t have much energy left to do anything on me, to make the needed shifts that I wanted to embed in my life.

So to talk more about this, I want to jump ahead to the end of Q2 when some significant things happened in my life and showed me why some of what I needed to unlearn were not simple and why things were kind of slogging for me. Okay, as I noted, I was burdened and burnt out, and I see how we look at what we think are simple changes and want to make — you know, it’s like an intellectual practice. We think we’ve gotta just, you know, “Put your mind on this,” but when our physical and emotional capacity is limited, our bodies stay shut down and cling to the known even when it’s not helping.

So in August and early September, some things came to light first. My oldest, she started a new school, okay? It was amazing, and for anyone who is in any kind of caregiver role, especially for those navigating any sort of chronic health or struggles, you don’t necessarily notice the impact of all the ups and downs because you love your people, you love your work, you show up, you do the thing. Sometimes you have a moment to shed a tear or shake a fist, but you just do the thing, and you do your best to take care of yourself but, most importantly, those in your charge, right? And I’ve seen this as I’ve been reflecting with those who I’ve known and have worked with that have struggled with their own chronic health issues or caring for those with chronic health issues or those in leadership roles where there was a lot, a high demand for those in their charge and care.

8:15

So for me, with my daughter starting this new school (and it was such a radically positive move, monumental, not hyperbolic here), I didn’t realize its impact. So my nervous system, which had been white knuckling and hypervigilant for well over a decade, all of a sudden the pressures lightened up and I had the space, but it was taking my body a beat to catch up and see that it was okay to relax.

So I’m in this weird disorienting space in August, and I had this narrator part of me explain what was going on, like, “This is what you’re feeling in your body, and this is why you’re responding this way.” It was this weird Truman Show kind of voice, weird feeling. And I had to laugh at it a little bit but I realized with having more space, my body didn’t need to be on alert or in crisis mode or hypervigilant and always planning and strategizing. There were parts of me that were nervous about sharing this because I’m definitely not looking for cookies or a pity party. I just want to share the real, human stuff because my system was fritzed. And then I got the space with my sweet girl doing better and feeling better, and I went from not having to be on call 24/7 and all these different related things that took up space and energy in my system to now having time to metabolize years of stuff I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

It was weird and disorienting. I felt like I was floating when I wasn’t working. There was this weird inertia shift. I’d been going hard, bracing, pushing, and just trying to catch my breath, and this way of being was normal, and I know many of you get this.

10:04

And I had to remind myself what I regularly share with my clients who have been in chronic recovery or caring for loved ones with chronic health issues or dealing with just chronic intensity at work, it takes time, a lot of time, for the body to catch up with the reality of the new demands and trust that it’s safe to relax in the new space available.

I feel like a detox or awed as your body’s trying to maybe default back to homeostasis. And I’ve been focusing on adding and shifting rhythms and reps geared towards different things like caring for my beautiful garden and building up different routines around movement like hydration, feeding, resting, you know, the basics. Side note: if you’ve worked with me, you know I believe there’s no hacking the basics in caring for ourselves and that the simplest things can take a lot in a world that is so noisy on what it means for us to be well, and I often say we have to just go back to the basics: feed well, move well, hydrate well, rest well, talk to yourself well, (and I’m adding one more) connect well because healing happens in relationship.

So I was really wanting to drill down and focus on these basics in really specialized ways for me and trying to make some fundamental shits, and it felt oddly hard. And it messed with my head as I didn’t understand why it felt so hard. So having this space, I started to kind of see some shifts in these rhythms.

Okay, so then big thing number two happened. A few weeks after my daughter started her new school, a family member of mine died suddenly, and I want to pause here and just give you a content warning because I’m going to talk about death and death by suicide.

So these few weeks after my daughter started her new school, I received the news that an estranged parent died and died by suicide.

12:02

And it took me a beat to be able to communicate it to anyone, and what I realized — and I think this is why I’m mentioning this here — not as much to get into the weeds about the estrangement, all of that. That’s my private stuff. But when you have someone in your life die by suicide, there’s this weird feeling to not talk about it so you don’t burden anybody. And I’ve heard about this from people I know and have worked with over the years, and I kept feeling like, “Oh, this is too much to share with folks. It’s too intense.”

So I sat with it on my own for a while. Then I started opening up to a couple very close friends and, of course, my husband, which I think was appropriate. Oh, my gosh. My poor husband. He received the news via text, so then he had to tell me, “Family, I tell ya.” And I felt so bad about it. And by the way, we had one of the worst fights that we’ve had in ages. I think he even was sleeping on the couch that night, and then he came into the bedroom and told me this horrible news so compassionately. And while the news was brought up so much for me, it gutted me how this family member died. I never want anyone to feel that way at the end of life thinking it’s the only way to manage pain, and I get it because of my training, but it still breaks me up whenever this is what someone needs to get relief.

So this weird kind of spaciousness I suddenly had quickly became consumed with processing this very complex loss, and I have worked really hard to work on befriending grief because it’s consistent in how it shows up in me and often with most people. But because of the nature of the relationship, I moved through this interesting mixture of emotions, memories, and thoughts, and it was this time that was deeply — I just was digging in, doing some work.

14:07

Okay, so then the icing on the cake, a few days later I had my annual physical. So a few days after getting this news, I do this yearly day of annual appointments. I block a day on my calendar and do all these appointments in one day because for so many years I didn’t even have the time or space to get them done, and I suspect a lot of people can relate. First, it depends on just even having access to decent healthcare, and if you even have the healthcare it’s hard to find the time to take off work and navigate childcare to take care of yourself, right? It’s not okay.

So I was sitting there in my doctor’s office. I’ve been with her for almost 25 years, and we were looking at a few health markers that were a little wonky and we were talking about that. She just looked at me and got really close to my face and just asked me, “Are you happy?” [Laughs] And I just lost it, and it wasn’t necessarily that I wasn’t happy, but I realized I’ve been holding so much, and I don’t think I’ve had anyone ask me that way where there wasn’t a swirl of, “Hey, how are ya? What’s up? How’re ya doin’,” right? We all do that. But this was this focused time for me, and no one had asked me with their full attention and dedicated space to how I was doing. And that kindness and care really shook me in the best of ways.

You know, I’m the one that asks everyone else how they’re doing, and so, this simple question coupled with space and clarity of focus on my health, Q4 really ended up being a time for a lot of unburdening of my own, a lot of releasing, a lot of integration, a lot of beautiful, deep work, and it helped me metabolize the election results. It was kind of like a byproduct instead of just push through or just stay in my head about it. And so, I still feel deeply concerned about what’s going on in our country and the world, but I have more energy and laser focus as we move into the new year.

[Uplifting Music]

16:12

So healing worked this year (oh, it definitely worked), along with stopping overbooking my schedule. It took me another year to really lean out my commitments and how I schedule and create new rhythms for writing like creating for the show and some other projects. The various systems I have in place for my business work, and we’re in the process of refining and tweaking them too.

What didn’t work? This may sound silly, but this was a huge metaphor. Personally, what didn’t work was planting 35 tomato plants. My default is go big, and this garden was such a metaphor. I’m a starter. I like to start things. I get a vision. But maintaining something you build? That’s like a whole other energy. And I know this, but I feel like with everything going on, about the time where the 35 tomato plants were kicking my butt was when all of this other stuff was happening, and I’m like, “Oh, my gosh.” It was running me, and I built something that took over, and it’s not the first time I’ve done that, and I suspect you can relate to that too. And so, to really maintain something well, while it’s not as exciting — it’s very unsexy. The pruning and the watering and the checking for worms and fertilizing. That’s not as fun as designing the garden and picking out the plants, right? It hit me with a 2×4 between the eyes as I’m working on my rhythms and reps that sometimes what I envision I need to slow down and really edit [Laughs] and consult a little bit more.

18:02

So this season I still have a plan on planting tomatoes, but I’ve simplified my design, got really picky about the types of plants I chose. Not all tomato plants are created equal. I know it’s captain obvious, but man, I found that out last year. So, for me, the garden is such a metaphor for life and with the things I’ve been working through this year and can tease out anything that needs your attention.

I realized with my rhythms and reps that it wasn’t until I had more space to metabolize loss, start healing from crisis mode, navigate an over-crowded garden that I discovered I was just getting into the rhythms and reps I desired. So when it comes to the words of the year for 2025, I’m gonna keep “rhythms and reps” because, again, I feel like I was just getting into the groove but I’m gonna add a little dimension like “rhythms and reps:” and I’m gonna spend some time really focusing on “priorities, planning, and preparing” as I reflect on what helped me get into the rhythms. I’m gonna play around with these a little bit more because planning and preparing can get a little wonky in how people approach them. But I want to create ease now with things that I’ve collected data on this year and the things that get in the way of flow and just getting the basics done.

So I’m gonna move forward with rhythms and reps but spend some more time in Q1 focusing on priorities, planning, and probably do this quarterly with preparing and planning and priorities. The other word, though (I wanna give it an honorable mention) that kept coming to me as I was focusing on this year is nimble. And the definition talks about this with having the ability to move quickly but with ease and adaptability. I’m gonna be thinking about that word as I look at the rhythms and reps I want to deepen and the practices that are aligned with my priorities and build on what I learned and kind of noticed from each quarter. So I’ll keep you posted!

[Inspirational Music]

20:12

Rebecca Ching: Leading is hard. Leading is also often controversial as you navigate staying aligned to your values, your mission, and your boundaries. Navigating the inevitable controversy can challenge your confidence, clarity, and calm. And I know you don’t mind making hard decisions, but sometimes the stakes seem higher and can bring up old echoes of doubts and insecurity during times when you need to feel rock solid on your plan and action.

Finding a coach who gets the nuances of your business and leading in our complex and polarized world can help you identify the blocks that keep you playing it safe and small. Leading today is not a fancy title or fluffy bragging rights. It is brave and bold work to stay the course when the future is so unknown and the doubts and pains from the past keep showing up to shake things up. Internal emotional practices and systemic strategies are needed to keep the protector of cynicism at bay and foster a hope that is actionable and aligned.

When the stakes are high and you don’t want to lose focus, when you want to navigate inevitable conflict between your ears and with those you lead, when time is of the essence and you want to make hard decisions with confidence and clarity, then Unburdened Leader Coaching is for you and where you deepen the capacity to tolerate the vulnerability of change, innovation, and doing things differently than you were taught. To start your Unburdened Leader Coaching call with me, go to www.rebeccaching.com and book a free connection call. I can’t wait to hear from you!

[Inspirational Music]

22:01

Gosh, what also worked — and this is not a shocker — moving from watching the news too much to reading. I subscribed to many more Substack newsletters from brilliant journalists and historians and thought leaders and authors, and I’m listening to some more podcasts. I expanded my listening, and I just enjoy engaging differently than getting this onslaught of TV personalities and commercials (the commercials, ugh) in my face.

I was talking to my producers. I was asking them about the commercials during the election cycle. They’re in Pennsylvania, so they got an onslaught of some of the worst of the worst stuff out there for the campaign. But here in California, it was like all things weight loss and plastic surgery, right? Go figure. I do not want that stuff around my kids and me either.

Some other things that really worked in 2024 is PAing again (it’s a program assistant role) with Dr. Frank Anderson and his Level Two IFS Trauma and Neuroscience Training. I’ve done (I don’t know what number am I) seven or eight, around there, in the last five-and-a-half years, and I love serving on these leadership teams. They’re always really intense and always leave me with powerful learnings.

I also started my MCC Training Program, which is a Master Coach Certification through the International Coaching Federation. It’s one of the two main coaching accreditation organizations, so kind of the gold standard, as they say. I know there are a lot of folks that have their own certs, but ICF is kind of one of the big ones. And I’ve appreciated it. The MCC is the top credential you can receive from ICF. You need a minimum of 2,500 coaching hours. There’s this long training program. I can’t remember how many hours. It’s like 60, 70, 80 hours. There are videos I have to do, live trainings. I’m there two to three times a month where I’m getting coached, getting supervision, I’m coaching. It’s just reminded me of my final year of graduate school.

24:18

It’s no joke. And I have a lot of eyes on me. I’m getting a lot of feedback. I have to say, this is a line for me. I know there are a lot of different views on this, but I really value receiving so much support and feedback on how I coach, and anything that will up my game and how I support others is really meaningful. So I hope to have this wrapped up by the summer of this year.

I travelled to Portland to work with a very well-known brand and do some high-touch work with leaders, and it was a blast and fun to be in real life with leaders, and I hope to do more of that this year.

I also went and saw Elizabeth Gilbert speak live. I’ve never seen her speak live. My Sunday School teacher Dee Nelson, who’s a friend of the podcast, he hosts this annual writer’s symposium with authors, and she came and spoke, and it was really — she had a talk, and then he interviewed her. But there were some cool and key nuggets that I wanted to share with you that have stayed with me from her talk. She said basic stuff but still essential.

So she said: “Saying no to things that you don’t want to do will make people unhappy, but the friends you keep will understand what you’re carving out your time for.”

And she talked about this revolution of women who are relaxed. I was like, “Tell me more! What is that?” She said it seemed reckless to be relaxed but that the most relaxed person in the room has the power, as they can see things people who are not relaxed can. That just is really a lot of the energy I want to go into this year because it’s so easy for me to get caught up in all the things I’m deeply concerned about. So I can be relaxed but that doesn’t mean I’m lackadaisical or laissez-faire. It’s like a focus. It’s like a peace.

26:12

She said: “A way to defeat anxiety –,” and I want to add shame too, “– is with curiosity.” And Elizabeth said: “Don’t be a precious diva about your work. You just make things and release the outcome.” And I feel like I needed to hear that in the midst of doing a lot of writing and creating.

In March, I celebrated 100 episodes for this podcast, which was really special! And I was reconnecting with former guests and celebrating with them. And I also saw the amazing Idina Menzel in Redwood, which has been greenlit for Broadway. Run, don’t walk to see this show!

And Dee Nelson also had a late writer’s symposium guest, and that was the incredible Anne Lamott, and that was ridiculously special. I love anything she does, and here are some awesome truths that she shared.

She said: “Grief is like the ‘it’ girl now. Grief is like a Lazy Susan, and it spins sometimes, the Lazy Susan lands on numb, and then the Lazy Susan spins, and then you’re a burn victim with no covering, and then the Lazy Susan spins again and you feel so connected to the person you lost.” It’s like, yes, so true. And she said: “If you have a habit and a prearranged time to write, there is communion. It’s like a sacred space.”

And she quoted Frederick Buechner and said that you can’t get far without community, and I think a lot of us are realizing that more than ever. And she said: “I used to care a lot about what my butt looked like, and it’s 60 when the real healing begins.”

“Asking for help is the sunny side of control.” I thought that was kind of cool. And this is also, I think, very timely: “A hundred percent of the time when I put down my weapons of being right and self-righteousness, that’s where I surrender to God.”

28:11

She said: “The pain is connected to growth, and when I’m trying to force things to turn out the way I think they should, I need to stop, breathe, left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, and then get the help I need.”

It was just so good returning to some of my notes from that talk. And speaking of control, I have to share this little speech from a movie I saw towards the end of the year called Conclave. Ralph Fiennes — I don’t know if that’s how you say his last name, so I’m sorry — I loved his performance, and he had this little speech when they were getting ready to do the conclave where all the cardinals gather from all around the world to elect a new pope after the current pope had just died, and I feel like this speech is timely, and even though it has, like, a faith connotation to it, I believe the message is beyond just for those who are of the faithful. And so, here’s a little segment of the talk.

He said: “Let me speak first from the heart for a moment. Saint Paul said to be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. To work together and to grow together, we must be tolerant of no one person or faction seeking to dominate another and speak into the Ephesians who were, of course, a mixture of Jews and Gentiles. Paul reminds us that God’s gift to the church is its variety. It is this variety, the diversity of people, and the views which gives our church its strength, and over the course of many years, the service of our mother church, let me tell you that there is one sin, which I’ve come to fear above all: certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end. He cried out in his agony at the ninth hour on the cross, ‘Our faith is a living thing, precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there were only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery and therefore, no need for faith!’ And so, let us pray that God will grant us a pope who doubts. Let him grant us a pope who sins and asks for forgiveness.”

30:29

I mean, I don’t know. That just stuck with me. I paused it and watched it a few times, to my husband’s chagrin. [Laughs] But certainty is a death trap for leaders. We need our certainty anchors for sure, but when we focus on certainty and being right (right?) it just takes the humanity out of us.

But I will say one thing I am certain about is I love live music, and this year I had some really fun concerts in 2024. It was the year of retro music. I saw the mash-up concert of Billy Joel and Sting. Never would have put those two together, and Sting was, whoa, wow. But Billy Joel is such a legend. I saw Sarah McLachlan, Jewel, Melissa Etheridge. I saw The Foo Fighters. Oh, my gosh. It was amazing. I screamed for hours on end. And probably my favorite musical of all time is Rent, and they had this really cool mash-up at this outdoor concert venue called The Shell. It’s this beautiful place right on the water. And the cast of Rent sang all the songs from the play and The San Diego Symphony played the music, and shortly before then I saw a play version of Tick, Tick, Boom, which is about the playwright who wrote Rent. It was in this small theatre in the round. It was just so fun.

[Uplifting Music]

32:06

This summer, my husband and I also launched what we called Social Saturdays at our house, and we invited old and new friends and acquaintances over to our house just to honor our commitment to connecting, building and deepening relationships, being in community, and my husband cooked pizzas in our pizza oven. We broke bread with folks, and we’re excited to do it again next summer. I learned a lot from hosting people in this way, and I’m excited to do more of that!

This summer, I also did my first round of The Artist’s Way, and I resisted it for so many years I think in part because I heard other people talk about it in ways that didn’t land, but I was drawn to it after hearing someone speak who I respect, saying how it really changed them, and I felt like something moved in me to do that. So I’m gonna do it again too, and I can’t say enough about it. You can do it just with the workbook or just have your Morning Page practice. Everything I know about journaling first thing, the journal prompts, this whole process is powerful, and I felt some really cool results. And I look back and see how doing The Artist’s Way for a few months before things really shifted for me with my daughter going to school, the news of a family loss, yeah, it was just priming me.

This fall, one of the highlights, though, for me was speaking at the Internal Family Systems International Conference. I gave a talk on trauma-informed leadership, which was awesome, and I’m gonna be adapting that into a workshop this year, so stay tuned! It was really fun to put all these ideas that I’d been talking about and teaching and coaching on for years into a 90-minute talk, and in preparation for some much-needed house renovations that we’re doing this year, we had to tent our house. It’s a thing we do where termites hang out. And so, we traveled. We had to leave our house, so we traveled for Thanksgiving week to the mountains and found this funky little mountain town a couple hours away that we’d never been to. We hiked in the mountains and shopped at all kinds of vintage places. It was so magical and fun.

34:25

In December, my husband and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary, which was so very special. I want to note, too, every year I send out a gift to all my clients I work with, and I had bought this print a while ago and wanted to send it to my clients. It’s from an artist under the company name Real Fun, Wow! And it says, “Joy is now” and it’s this really cool paper and ink and print, and it’s been so cool sending that out to people and hearing how they experience it. I had planned this before the election, and after the election happened I was like, “I can’t send this out! This might seem too Pollyanna or bypassing.” But then I sat on it for a beat, and I was like, “Absolutely not. I’m not gonna delegate my joy or shy away from it. In fact, we have to do the things that bring us joy so we can show up for the hard work ahead of us.”

You know, and many seasoned, experienced activists talk about joy is resistance and joy is medicine, and Brené Brown’s research talks about how joy is the most difficult emotion to feel because it’s the most tender and vulnerable emotion to feel. So I want to keep helping my system not be locked down and have more moments of joy, whether it’s at live music or sharing a meal with neighbors or laughing with my family or just seeing something beautiful in nature and pausing to really witness and treasure it. So that was definitely a highlight, and sending gifts out always works.

36:01

I watched a lot of TV shows, and I think the conclusion for me is that I would be a horrible spy, a horrible medical doctor, a horrible police officer, and an exceptionally horrible special ops military person. I was drawn to these shows, but then I had to stop because it was too much reality. I think I moved more into the light and breezy. It’s like when I watched Virgin River — I know I’m saying this out loud — I was like, “This is so saccharine and just what I need.” You know, beautiful people, beautiful nature, doing beautiful things, a little soap opera, and everyone can get around town with ease, quickly. I don’t know. I think I have a little bit more of an appreciation for the Hallmark movies now. I mean, parts of me are not stoked I’m admitting this to you all, but bring on a break from dystopia as long as I stay grounded in reality.

One of my TV highlights this year was rewatching The Office and Parks and Rec with my 14-year-old son, and the family joined in at different times too, and it was so much fun to have these shows on, and we laughed a lot. And then we watched Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which was the first time I saw that show, and whoa! I never felt drawn to it and didn’t understand why people loved it so much, and I get it now. And we’re now wrapping up going through Community.

So there’s this theme, and it struck me with these different shows and these groups of people. They gather together. They played a lot. It wasn’t all about work or studying or whatever. They connected, and it was just powerful watching these shows from a different season in life and reconnecting particularly with The Office (oh, my gosh, I cried) and Parks and Rec in a very different way.

I do have to give a shout out to The Diplomat season two and Lioness season two. I ended up watching them at the same time. I think they dropped around the same time, which, oh, given the time of year it was a little intense, but brilliant acting. Zoe Saldana is just fierce.

38:17

I’m digging into more Substacks as I’ve noted. I’ll be sharing more of that on my new Substack. But I started reading Tim Saunders’ stuff. He’s a historian, and I really enjoy the work that he puts out there. He’s a Yale History Professor, and he said this in his interview. He said:

“Freedom means you decide who you are, and then when things change around you, you continue to be that person. And in doing so, you do constructive work. You set an example for other people. You meet new people who are also trying to remain themselves.”

It’s such a powerful reminder, right? I had some wonderful coaching from Kelly Diels who’s also a friend of the podcast. I’m in a training with her, and she used a baseball metaphor, and I played softball growing up, so I felt like she was speaking my language. But after sharing that I was struggling with feeling flooded and wanting to get all my ideas right the first go round and I was afraid of wasting time, I mean, it makes sense, and in hindsight with some of the burden on my system, it was like, “We don’t want to bog down this newfound space,” she was like, “Just get on base and do the next thing, and then you go to second base. Then you go to third, and kind of just do the thing, collect some data, go to second,” you know? It was like, “Don’t look at all of it!” Perfectionism was sneaking in. It all kind of clicked. So I really appreciate that, and I thought I’d share that.

[Uplifting Music]

And so, here are some things that stood out too, especially as I’m looking forward to 2025. I was listening to a podcast, Pulling The Thread with Elise Loehnen, and she interviewed Father Gregory Boyle. He’s just so wise. If you hadn’t read any of his books or listened to him, he’s incredible.

40:16

And he said: “Love is the only thing that makes progress.” And we talk about progress so much in leadership and business spaces. “Love anchors us in the moment,” he said, and Elise added, “Listening does not equal complacent,” and that we need to be hard on ideas and light on people. That really landed, especially right now because I’ve seen for a long time when we are building bridges and listening to people that we disagree with, there’s this sense sometimes from people who have very kind of maybe linear, extreme views that if you’re engaging with someone who has a different view, you’re condoning that difference or engaging with the enemy. But I will die on this sword, but sustained, meaningful change happens in the context of relationships with connection and trust and respect, and we have to watch where we can default from righteous anger and move into toxic anger.

With that said, I’ve been thinking a lot about the spectrum of anger to rage and outrage, and Soraya Chemaly who’s been on the podcast twice in 2024 talking about her book Rage Becomes Her and then her new book The Resilience Myth, both legend-status brilliant. But I’ve just been thinking about that spectrum. Anger, rage, which is — anger often is protective. Rage is primal, very much connected to what scientists kind of talk about as the mama bear, papa bear feeling. But then outrage, and outrage is I’m not grounded. I am all in my emotions.

And so, one of my mantras that started after the election is “protect my outrage,” because I don’t want to be a part of a business plan or political strategy to get me all fired up and out of my clarity and focus.

42:08

We all have to stay the course and focus on our values, what’s meaningful, and get curious. And real curiosity is such a powerful antidote to anxiety and shame. I keep talking about my interview with Scott Shigeoka. He has this beautiful model of curiosity, and if you’re in a place of true curiosity, not predatory curiosity, where we’re just trying to learn for our benefit and it’s voyeuristic, man, genuine, open-hearted, non-agenda, tell-me-more curiosity, whether you’re asking yourself or others, that’s where things are shifting. And if we’re in a place of outrage all the dang time, we’re burning out our bodies and we’re not effective. But that’s the plan. They want us out for the count. They want us to fight with each other instead of organizing and pushing back on dangerous policies and unethical practices. I’ve also been thinking a lot about what it means to be a healing leader. Not, “I’m gonna heal all of your wounds,” but, like, what does it mean that how we lead someone in that place of feeling seen and heard and connected and valued experience is healing. What are those policies? What’s that way of communicating? What are the practices?

And on that note, there are all these nominations, right, for all these new posts with the new administration. So by the time this airs, things may have changed, but as of now, the nominee for Secretary of Defense is getting a lot of push back for very, very good reasons. And Senator Joni Ernst from Iowa caught my eye because she was pushing back on his nomination, and I was curious and hopeful seeing that there might be some interparty pushback and discourse instead of blind following.

44:00

And I was hopeful for that moment, and there’s not much I agree with Senator Ernst on, but I’m very appreciative of the work that she’s done along with other senators around sexual violence against women in the military. So I was curious about this given the secretary’s track record of working against violence against women and amongst other poor leadership history from this nominee.

And there was this interesting moment where, you know, she pushed back, and then the groundswell of MAGA supporters started to pile on her, and I read that she eventually reached out to a Trump aid saying, “How do I make it stop?” And then she hedged back, and what struck me is I was thinking about other leaders who have had similar pushback on lightning-rod topics. She’s an elected official so that I know has its own unique stuff. But still. I think of Shannon Watts. She’s another friend of the podcast, the founder of Moms Demand Action, the largest non-profit grassroots organization in our country, and from the start she had death threats against her and her family, horrible things said to her, written about her (violent, vile stuff), and she stayed the course.

So I was just thinking about kind of these different exchanges and wondering, okay, the trauma-informed leadership and therapist in me got curious wondering what’s in their family of origin, their trauma histories, their experiences with bullying, neglect, betrayal, relational trauma, and how they work that through. And zooming out, not just on them but who stays the course and who backs off. And there are so many reasons to stay the course and back off. If you’re getting death threats, I can understand why you maybe want to shift the course of what you’re doing. But it was just a curiosity.

So I did some digging and tried to find some research in what’s been written and studied around what’s often called public bullying or social bullying or, in some places, political bullying.

46:08

But all the research I’ve found was built on K through 12 data focusing on school bullying which, you know, for good reason. So I am trying to get a study together to understand some things in this area and maybe develop an assessment for leaders because I’m recognizing there’s also this trifecta of folks: there’s the bully archetype, there’s the person who’s bullied, and then there’s the bystander. But I want to see stuff that’s more for adults. And in reflecting on my work with my clients, I recognize people often cycle through all three at different times in their life, or at least more than one. Particularly being the bystander weighs heavily on people when they feel shut down in the face of harm or wrong being done or injustice, and then they just beat themselves up for not speaking up. But I know and I remind them that their bodies are just protecting them.

So I’m gonna be digging into what is loving and healing leadership and the impact of relational trauma, particularly in the face of folks who have been bullied and this bully/bullied/bystander trifecta, and I’ll be sharing more with you as I learn about it because, again, I think an assessment to see where our vulnerabilities are based on our stories so we can get the support we need to stand the ground and lead in ways that are aligned with our values and navigate when social and public bullying tactics are deployed in very toxic ways.

I recently saw an article in Ink talking about the kinds of leadership that are gonna be needed in 2025, and it references a type of transactional leadership saying that’s out and that it’s controlling, it tracks people, what they’re working on, where they’re working, and there’s not space for innovation and flexibility. And they want to call for more of a founder’s mode of leadership and agile leadership. That’s what’s needed more in the new year.

48:06

Now, I see a lot of companies drilling down on what they defined as transactional leadership but talk about agile and founder leadership in name only. So the jury’s still out for me on this, but I thought it was interesting, and especially for smaller businesses to think about.

So I’ll link the article in the show notes, but I also believe to be agile, decisive, and adaptable, as they wrote about, we need unburdened leadership, where we have a deep understanding of how to build trauma-informed leadership principles in the spaces that we lead, have the capacity for setting and maintaining boundaries, strong self-leadership practices, the ability to befriend grief and loss and have a deep shame-resilience practice. So more to come this year on all of this from me too!

I think I just want to note, too, how we sit with the vulnerability when we’re with people who have differences in a world that gets very, very judgy if you’re with the “enemy” is also crucial. I think we’ve developed a very purity culture vibe around issues, and I’ve worked with people recovering from purity culture, especially from the Evangelical spaces and also it shows up as those on the disordered eating spectrum, particularly with this subclinical type of disordered eating called orthorexia, which is the unhealthy obsession with being healthy, and it’s connected to a very restrictive way of eating that’s about being pure and clean and your value and worth is very much connected to how you eat. And I think there’s this kind of moral purity culture expanded to our politics, our ideologies, our relationships, that there’s no room for complexity or nuance or curiosity. And I’ve been watching the whole MAHA movement, the Make America Healthy Again movement and seeing how this orthorexic purity culture movement has expanded.

50:07

And I’m looking at it with a lot of compassion as a parent but also a deep frustration with the grifters exploiting fears and concerns loved ones have for their kids and each other. It’s a very vulnerable place, yet there’s just something else going on here, and I’m gonna be bringing on some guests to talk about these issues regarding health and science and more.

One of my upcoming guests, Jonathan Stea, is doing some beautiful work around addressing the grifts in the mental health space, and he does it in his own humorous way but also very factual, and he talks about how we need to be better grift detectors, so I think that’s a really good word as we go into the year, and I think a part of unburdened leadership is doing the work to make sure we’re good grift detectors and not colluding with dangerous narratives around our mental health and well-being. It’s tricky. It’s tricky for the best of us.

You know, and I’ve mentioned this before, I’m launching my Substack in Q1! I’ve been talking about that for a while. We’ve had a few glitches, so hopefully we can get those sorted so we can do a proper launch. And I’ll be digging into all of these things that I’ve talked about and the things I talk about in the show, and I’m excited to be able to connect more with listeners because I feel like sometimes I’m speaking into a void, and I want a place where people can comment on the show, share feedback so I can learn from all of you!

[Uplifting Music]

Ah, that was a little windy debrief for you all, but I look forward to walking this year with you. Let’s do the work so we’re not in a constant state of foreboding but stay in a state of presence, stay strong, clear-headed, and continue to heal and grow every day. I hope that you’ve taken the time to put down whatever your words of the year are, your commitments, what you want to focus on and ways to move you towards deeper connection, deeper alignment, and a more profound sense of connection with your personal power.

52:11

I hope you find ways to shore up your boundaries so you can filter out the noise so you can protect your peace and outrage as we show up and we’re with those that we love and lead and care for ourselves.

So cheers for caring for ourselves, for grace, compassion, and curiosity. Thank you so much for listening to this show, and I’m so excited for you to listen in on all that’s in store for 2025!

You can find this episode, show notes, and free Unburdened Leader resources, along with ways to work with me and sign up for my new Substack, at www.rebeccaching.com. And this episode was produced by the incredible team at Yellow House Media!

[Inspirational Music]