Friday I present a textile strategy I developed in collaboration with a wonderful team at Coalfield Development, a West Virginia -based workforce development organization. The aim of this strategy is to help regrow the textile industry in West Virginia and create jobs tailored to the unique strengths and challenges our communities bring to this work. I went deep into this work for 5 months, conducting desk research and interviews expanding on the ten years of experience I had working in textiles in the region. I have worked so hard to find an avenue to create jobs and opportunity in textiles and have developed a strategy near and dear to my heart.
And I find myself struggling deeply with the uncertainly that comes from coming to the end of a project – putting your best into it, and then having no control over what happens once you’ve handed it off. I find myself seeking out every possible way to control the outcome, in spite of the fact that I know full well that I can’t control it. There is one part of me that knows that fully and another part that thinks if I have the perfect lunches, and read up a little more and control the heck out of my schedule leading up to the presentation, that I can control the outcome.
And so I find myself here – seeking guidance alongside you in case you experience this inability to accept the lack of control we have, particularly with work that we’ve filled with so much love and care.
The message I am getting through all of this is – Trust yourself. You know what to do and how to show up in our most important moments, be it work or otherwise.
I am going to leave it here for today so I can share something with anyone struggling to make sense of their lives and the world around them alongside the intense amount of pain being generated in the Middle East right now.
A talk by Tara Brach with Israeli Buddhist teacher and peace activist, Stepher Fulder, What is our Refuge in the Midst of Crisis? brought me an immense amount of comfort and so much wisdom to help me digest what is going on right now – when it seemed impossible to find comforting words moments before.
I am sending you love and peace. Go plant your seeds wherever you are. I am cheering you on.
Go, fight, win.
Reid