We need more lightbearers taking their place in culture as leaders, healers, entrepreneurs, visionaries, cycle breakers, warriors and revolutionaries in the face of collective hopelessness, helplessness, abuse of power, fear-mongering and hate. I am calling you into your potential.

You might be a lightbearer if, at the core of your being …

You see potential and possibility in other people and the world (in spite of all of the reasons why it might seem easier to give in to hopelessness).

You have the courage to question the status quo and to envision different ways of being, doing, living, working.

You shine light on truth, the unspoken, the thing other people are afraid to name.

You turn toward the shadows–in yourself and others–to invite them into connection and integration (or you want to know how to do this).

You practice compassion and empathy. For yourself. For others.

You are actively resisting the othering, cancellation, and dehumanization that is being exhorted in culture.

You have an inkling that the human experience is complex and nuanced even on the days when that feels hard to hold.

You do not deny suffering even as you choose to believe that each of us is capable of wholeness.

You hold light in the darkness. With gentle fortitude. With purposeful resolve. With grace.

You create, nurture, hold, build, challenge, call into accountability, envision and amplify your own light and the light in others.

Hear me when I say that I don’t expect that any of us get this “right” in thought, word and action all of the time. What I am saying is that there is something inalienable and ineffable in you that recognizes this description. Even if you don’t feel that way (or see yourself that way) all of the time.

We need more lightbearers taking their place in culture …

Our systems–which have only served a few for centuries–are crumbling. Frankly, some of them need to crumble. The systems that were built on colonization, violence, extraction, suppression, control, erasure, hoarding of resources, white supremacy and patriarchy.

But it isn’t enough to tear things down or let them fail because they aren’t working. We must imagine and create new futures in greater alignment with our individual and collective wholeness. Because if we don’t, something will fill that void. And it may be worse than what we dare imagine.

Are you a lightbearer?

Love,

Booth