“To get stuck on a single hierarchy is to miss the bigger picture.”
“All these minuscule interactions—a friendly wave, a pencil sketch, some plastic beads strung up a nylon cord—they might not look like much from the outside, but for the people caught inside that web? They might be everything, the very tethers that keep one bound to this planet. ”
-Lulu Miller from Why Fish Don’t Exist
Dear Community,
The title of Executive Director is a funny fit for me, since I don’t really believe in hierarchy. The title is for outside this organization, so other nonprofits or businesses can see Women Writing on equal footing. As a women’s organization it matters to be on equal footing, because equality works.
Here within the network of this place, I see myself more like the Lead Facilitator. I picture a Director as pointing, possibly saying, go this way or do as I say. Like a policeman directing traffic. Not me.
A facilitator is more like a gardener. Facilitators work to prepare the conditions and then trust– trust that something beautiful will happen. It’s a belief that the intuition and interconnectedness of people will cultivate something unique and wondrous.
Facilitating is also like curating art. (Agendas made by facilitators here are indeed beautifully curated.) Currently, the Cincinnati Art Museum has placed among Renaissance paintings of nobility, a few gorgeous paintings by contemporary black artists that portray people of color in this same noble way. The time period doesn’t match, but the goal is clear– to question how art has impacted who we see as better through a hierarchical lens. To question how far back that hierarchical thinking goes. I’m thankful to have that questioned. I’m bored with white nobility.
It’s a curator’s choice to provoke our thinking a little. When a facilitator puts a poem and a quote on the same page it creates an all new connection, too. And I love that curate and cure have the same root. There is indeed a curative quality to circles here.
This undoing of hierarchy in my mind has been a process. The journey started when I took the Leadership Academy here in 2017. I began to ask, how has hierarchy served me and how has it not. As the Lead Facilitator (or Executive Director), I have the responsibility to continue to bring provocative thinking that undoes our biases and creates equality. To inspire. To bring joy and hospitality. To spend my time making sure the conditions are right for you to grow here, whoever you are. I especially want to do that, because it was done for me, right here in this lovely place.
To learn more about how to create non-hierarchical spaces in the world and hold them with trust that something amazing will happen when women and people connect, check out the For a Change Leadership Academy. Or read Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller.
Warmly,
Christine Wilson