Leaving The Outside: What This is Not

I’m leaving The Outside. After nearly a decade of amazing work and friendship, June 30 will be my last day at the organization I have loved hard and that has loved me back in kind. 

It’s time.  

I've been doing two kinds of work for a long time: the more visible strategic work and a quieter, deeper practice that's been growing underneath it. Now, I want to let what's been growing come forward.

It’s time.

My decision didn't come with a perfectly mapped road ahead. What it came with was the clarity that something in me has been growing that can no longer be secondary. It deserves a front and center role in what I’m offering to the world.

It’s time. 
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And because I am who I am, I’m thinking about all of the “lessons” I am learning from this leave taking. So that I can truly learn them, and also so that I can share them with you. But a funny thing has happened - probably because I’m still in the middle of this life changing shift! - all I can really capture is what NOT to learn from my leaving. So I’ll share that instead.  ​

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Lessons Not to Take

Follow Your Heart.  
This decision doesn’t actually come from inspiration or desire. It  arrived through consistent practice. The particular practice was the almost daily journaling habit I’ve honed over the past 10 years. It wasn’t a mystical longing that dropped into my heart, but a concrete practice with my hands:  I was at my desk, writing to clear my mind when I asked, “What does integrity look like for me now?” Without thought or hesitation, my hand wrote these words:  Leave The Outside. December 2026. Then a 40 day retreat.  Then you will know more.  

This, friends, was not a call of the heart. That is romantic. But, this. This was a pull more like gravity. An inevitability. And it is full of risk. I do not have a view from the other side. In some ways, my heart quails and my knees shake. I cannot ask them to take the lead here. 
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This is simply what is being asked of me, and I do not dare to decline.  

Leave The Outside. December 2026. Then a 40 day retreat.  Then you will know more.  ​

The Right Choice Feels Good

There is a “rightness” to this decision, but it's also painful. Leaving people I love doing work that I believe in - work I helped to build - comes with its own kind of grief.  And the grief is real, even if the decision is right. My moving into a new shape has absolutely unlocked all of us at The Outside. But as Tim and I say in the podcast, Right is not the same as welcome. This decision wasn’t particularly welcome to Tim, not to the team, and not to me.  
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In the months since the decision was made, my clarity has never left, but ease has never fully come either. I say this clearly because, we keep expecting these two things - rightness and ease - to naturally go together and fall into place once hard decisions are made. But the truth is deeper and more mysterious: hard decisions can be right decisions and still cost you something you love. They can break your heart on the way through. And a broken heart may be just what you need to do what's next.

But the truth is deeper and more mysterious: hard decisions can be right decisions and still cost you something you love. They can break your heart on the way through. And a broken heart may be just what you need to do what's next.

You’re The Hero of  This Story  
There is no doubt that this kind of break, leaving an organization I started and a partnership that has sustained me for years has me looking at my own patterns. 

And yet.

There is still a part of me that says that this is happening to me.  That I’m simply following where I’m being led.  (See gravitational pull, above.)  And while this is true, I am a full player in bringing this upheaval to my life and the lives of others.  A few weeks ago as I was stewing in angst, my husband, Gibrán asked me, “What if you didn’t have to protect your innocence here?”

It stopped me cold. I could immediately feel the power of dropping the need to be innocent. The power of facing the reality that I was causing pain and I might actually not be doing everything right. I might not be misunderstood. I might be the actual villain in other people’s stories.  Could I not only contend with that fact, but also reckon with the freedom gained from not trying to be good or right or pure in this leave taking? 

And from there I made a quick leap to noticing my own unflattering patterns:  Where have I sourced my worth?  Where have I over-functioned - not because anyone asked me to, but because I insisted that that was what I had to offer?  Where do I need others to need me and in doing so have kept them small in my own search for significance? 

Oof. I do not like this. I like it a lot better when I’m the heroic explorer seeking my own authenticity and purpose.  Beware the transformation narrative that has you shattering others’ beliefs about you but not your own. 

Beware the transformation narrative that has you shattering others’ beliefs about you but not your own. ​

There Has to Be a Story
I imagine some of you who have known my work - or the work Tim and I have done together for a long time, can't help but wonder if there is “drama” underneath this decision. Surely, there was a core conflict that pushed me out of the organizational nest I helped create?
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The reality is that this is simply about divergent paths. The Outside will continue for the foreseeable future, and it is in good hands. Tim Merry is one of the finest practitioners I know and one of my oldest friends. What we built together continues to shape me in ways that I’m still discovering.  And now we get to figure out what our friendship looks like as we no longer walk the same path. The doors between our worlds stay open.

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There are so many lessons (or anti-lessons) that I continue to learn from here.  Leaving The Outside at the end of June gives me space and room to listen. And to practice.  I’ll use the same practices that brought me to this clarity:  getting quiet, getting into nature, getting in front of my altar, and asking to be guided to my next steps.  This is what I’ve been teaching others for years. Now, I get to do it full time without splitting my attention.  

My work doesn’t stop, it just gets to be fully itself.  

What will continue in my listening? 

• My coaching practice
• Reading the Akashic Records for folks
• Gathering cohorts
• The Rooted in Light Podcast
• And systems’ work that starts with a deep connection with the Self and the sacred.  
  
  

I’m here. Not going anywhere. Just going deeper. 

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Want to hear Tim and I talk this through together?  Listen to the full conversation on The Find the Outside: The Podcast - here.