On this 8 March, lay down your burdens

If we don’t let go, we carry everything we ever held. Is it any wonder that we are tired?

March 07, 2023

Women carry so much. We carry babies and all for whom we care. We carry others’ secrets so that they don’t walk alone. We carry grudges and olive branches and dishes that bring people together. As change-makers, we carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. We carry, with their sharp edges, countless awkward moments that could have splintered had we not stepped in. We carry dreams. Extra pounds. Traditions. Regret. We hold unresolved emotion. Tension. Space.

“What do women hold? The home and the family. And the children and the food. The friendships. The work. The work of the world. And the work of being human. The memories. And the troubles. And the sorrows and the triumphs. And the love.” – Maira Kalman

If we don’t let go, we carry everything we ever held. Is it any wonder that we are tired?

I am astounded by the impact women are creating while carrying burdens that would justify complete inaction. The vision, hope, tenacity, courage, and resilience of female change-makers in my life inspire me daily. Today, I want to address your top 5 burdens in the hope that you can walk on lighter, even if just a little. 

1. Caretaking. One of my friends has resigned elected office because she was expected to solely carry the burden of overnight childcare during parliamentary sessions. Before she left, she tabled legislation that would make such expenses as legitimate as covered parking or drinks with constituents. Another friend, same issue, half a world away: in a jurisdiction where childcare is a reimbursable expense. She is drafting legislation that would shift the expenditure code for childcare from a personally attributable one to an overhead expense. That is because female public officials are much more likely to claim childcare, making them appear to deliver less value for money than their male counterparts. Universal childcare is what female change-makers are demanding around the world. And flexibility. 

   “Many women don’t want to compromise their families in ways associated with the old ways of being in executive roles.” – Sonia, State Government (Australia).

   With The Wife Drought, Annabel Crabb opened my eyes to the biggest gender disadvantage: a wife. This book is as funny as it is confronting through its meticoulsy research. I highly recommend it. As I do following Annabel’s ongoing work.

2. Pain. Too many women live in pain. Knees. Hips. Back. Neck. Arthritis. “Seems we should be cool with being in pain or we’re exaggerating it.” - Rachael (Australia).

   Rachel Zoffness’ work in chronic pain is game-changing and may forever alter your relationship to pain; her conversation with Ezra Klein of The New York Times is as relatable as it is insightful.

3. Doubt. Last week, a dear friend said, “Imposter syndrome seems to be a requirement of being a human woman,” and all the women in the room nodded. The very fact that you doubt your fit for the task means that you should not. Please, keep on. But let’s break this cycle in childhood.

   “Teach girls and women to take risks, giving them space to learn from failures. At least in the cultural mindset in the US, we tend to teach this to boys, while expecting perfection from our girls.” Dr. Liz Minné, Director, Global Sustainability, Interface.

4. Shame. Sadly, being misunderstood or trespassed leaves the victim blaming herself. Shame has no right to you. It only blocks the tap of goodness aimed at your life. Whatever your shame – if you have been assaulted, bullied, if you are queer, trans, undocumented, scared, surviving or even thriving while others did not get to – today, please consider sharing your load with somebody. A friend. A stranger. A helpline. A support community. Me. Shame shared is shame defanged. As it should be. I have found Brené Brown’s work on shame, doubt, vulnerability, and courage to be powerful. If you wonder how other extraordinary women have grappled with these, the memoirs of Viola Davis (Finding Me), Roxane Gay (Hunger: a Memoir of (My) Body), and Gabourey Sidibe (This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare) are in my top three.

5. Burnout. According to Drs. Nagoski’s Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, burnout is “defined by three components: emotional exhaustion (the fatigue that comes from carrying too much, for too long); depersonalization (the depletion of empathy, carrying, and compassion); and decreased sense of accomplishment (an unconquerable sense of futility: feeling that nothing you do makes any difference.” Having ridden the burnout rollercoaster my whole life, I could not recommend this book, written by and for women, highly enough. 

Even if women have conquered the above — no small feat! — in time to enter what should be their most productive, rewarding years, here comes menopause! And, yet again, too many find themselves disoriented and battling the symptoms, misconceptions, and medical mismanagement. In fact, I know of too many women whose symptoms are minimized and cancer is, thus, misdiagnosed. Let’s learn together so that every woman retains the choice to fully show up for the life she’s earned! Here’s a great read/listen from The New York Times.

Carla Harris eloquently explains why one grows her power by giving it away. I dare add that you will grow your power by giving away what you no longer need to carry.

This International Women’s Day, I invite you to let go of at least one burden weighing you down. If you’d like, give it to me via email or book a call. 

Here is to all the women carrying so much, to each who refuses to carry excess, and to all of us making their remaining loads lighter. 

P.S. — I explore this in detail in my upcoming book, The Change-Maker’s Handbook.

Blockchain: a Superpower Short on Purpose

An open letter to the blockchain tech community

November 30, 2022

Blockchain tech has a brand problem, and its advances can’t seem to keep up with its setbacks. Blockchain is so much bigger than crypto trading. Even crypto is so much bigger than crypto trading. And yet the latter is souring the world on blockchain as a whole. As a change-maker who has dedicated my career to solving some of the world’s most stubborn problems, I am heartbroken and angry about this.

Imagine Zoom-pitching an amazing solution to somebody with horrific reception. That’s me and countless other blockchain advocates trying to get through to a world that the blockchain community itself has given every reason not to listen.

So that we can get to the point: while speculation has existed forever and made many people rich, it does not create value. Dealing with crypto’s collapse, people are mourning their cash, the hope of being able to make more, and the fall of another admired personality. Some are acknowledging the negative impact from the loss of philanthropic donations by those who make money on crypto trading. What people are not mourning is problems that now may not get solved or possibilities that may never get unlocked. Not even to the degree they mourned Theranos! They are not mourning this because they don’t know to. After all, you have not shown them what you have shown me.

• If evidence of expertise were logged on the blockchain, involuntarily displaced world-class surgeons would be saving lives within our understaffed healthcare system, not driving car-share.

• Climate change will continue to multiply the millions displaced by conflict. Having failed to deploy blockchain tech to ledger personal and real estate property, we have left those people no better chance of reclaiming their property than Holocaust survivors had. And that was 80 years ago.

• Addressing climate change requires active local energy markets and a seamless integration of distributed energy resources onto the grid. Those require blockchain tech to trace, track, and trade energy. Platforms like Powerledger.io are up to the task and have been punching above their weight. Setbacks they incur due to blockchain’s brand problem will have direct negative climate consequences.

• As of 5 years ago, there were an estimated 1.7 billion “unbanked” adults. That means that globally, 1 in 5 of us does not have access to credit, let alone Zelle. If even 10% of them prove no less eager or qualified than you and I, that is 170 million people that blockchain tech could unleash into the global economy, and with an impact far greater than any economic instrument on the table today.

• Sticking with the logic: if even 10% of today’s 4.8 million trafficked women and girls could escape the hell of being raped at 30-minute intervals should they not depend on the piece of paper called “passport”, that would be 480,000 people reclaiming a chance at hope for a life we take for granted.

In my book, every inch of ground that blockchain tech loses because of the crypto collapse means unnecessary and avoidable suffering.

I beg the leaders passionate about the promise of blockchain technology to intervene and commence what will, no doubt, be a taxing journey to public trust and a shared vision.

Remember the movie Hancock? Will Smith’s character started off using his superpower to facilitate his drunkard life, and we cringed. Like other superheroes, he did not choose his superpower, and yet his story was defined by how he chose to use it. 

I have come to view blockchain technology as a superpower like no other. Fueled by some of the world’s brightest minds, it has evolved for the internet the way that smartphones have merged our physical and virtual experience. Through a superior way of transacting and recording value, blockchain offers efficiency and transparency unimaginable of even the best centralized systems. And yet there are multiple full-service platforms ready to render a pic of my left toe into an NFT while the promised solutions to the real-world problems remain largely at the concept stage.

The world’s knees are wobbling under some bone-breaking loads. The world is pleading for the help that blockchain tech is often uniquely able to offer. Still, while getting ready to speak (on the role of blockchain in sustainability and the green economy) at my last blockchain conference, I walked among too many of the world’s brightest minds seemingly content with building tech for tech’s sake; with trading their superpower in for beer, grub, and a pat on the ego.

Just weeks later, we find ourselves here.

The blockchain tech community has a choice to make.

1. Continue as is and allow most of your superpower to be used frivolously and wait for the court of public opinion to write blockchain tech off completely.

2. Get it together. Get behind those like the Global Blockchain Business Council promoting the genuine value that this tech can bring to the world. Put money behind disowning what has been bad for the brand and – even more importantly – behind those amongst you claiming blockchain for good. You are brilliant, so trust yourselves to find ways to make money and have fun while focusing on what truly matters. And find the humility to shed the jargon: while its walls make you feel like you belong, they act like an echo chamber. What’s more, they look like a creepy castle to everybody you need to bring in if blockchain is to catalyze the wholesale systems change enjoyed by electricity, elevators/lifts, the internet, and smartphones.

The power at your fingertips is beyond my grasp. If you aren’t going to own it, please put people like me out of our misery to fetch hope elsewhere. Otherwise, recognize your power, claim all of us as your movement, and get audacious: just as it can be squandered, superpower often grows with the heros’ resolve.