The Only Way to Talk About This is to Talk About This

Or March 7, 2023 - Part II, "Seriously, but Lightly"

In the past few years, as I’ve unintentionally stumbled into the spotlight, I noticed I became sorta serious and…soapbox-y, I guess, is the best way to describe it? People invited me on stage to deliver a message. I became the type of woman who sounded certain enough about what I was saying and was asked to say it all over the world (so much so that now I’m represented by a speakers agency).

When I take the stage next week at SXSW, I will endeavor to be more truthful about the creative, emergent process of this work. Everywhere I look, in every sector and organization, what I see is by and large is people doing the best they can while also existing in an uncontrolled free fall of uncertainty. Like this:

We should probably talk more about how we can have a better time hanging out in this experience of absurdist liminal :shrug emoji: experimentation. And how we can arrive on stages with the humility to say, in the words of my friend and mentor Barb Groth, “I have a hunch…” for example, “I have a hunch that the free fall will not be mitigated by any of my good intentions to address the fall directly. Rather I’m hoping that the fall might concurrently involve a campfire, hammocks, and children dancing to School House Rock.”

After studying Carl Jung’s Red Book (which I highly recommend, with my teacher Satya Doyle-Byock at the Salome Institute for Jungian Studies, starting next week!) I began this informal practice of having a conversation with my unconscious, represented by “A” in the above sticky notes. What I started to notice was this recurring fear: I’m afraid of telling people how wrong I’ve been about the certainty I may have transmitted not because I’m afraid of admitting I’m wrong, but rather I’m afraid that people are going to take this revelation as grave or serious, or cause to console me. Really, it’s been one of the most delightful, absurd and comedic experiences of my life.

[Like, let me illustrate just a little example: I was looking through photos from International Women’s Day of previous years. In 2017, the founders and then ED of Xcelerate, the loan fund we started for women, donned costumes as angel investor, banker, and

Dr. Astrid J. Scholz

played a unicorn with a hockey stick she happened to have in her garage, to depict in sketch comedy women’s lack of access to capital. And you know what? I look back on these photos and now wonder if we would have had better luck taking the concept of this show to Broadway rather than trying to convince Oregon foundations to take a chance on us for, oh, four years? Imagine the alternate reality of us going on tour to share the story of struggle rather than trying to solve the struggle itself? It would have been slow, scrappy and may have preserved the best of the spirit at that time. This is what I mean by me experiencing “a great reconsidering.” In other words: in another reality, we could have chosen the light thing with levity, rather than the serious systems change that is by and large designed to kill you.]

The truth that I came here to share yesterday (before getting derailed by Substack’s perfectly nice onboarding suggestions) and that I’d like to be able to speak candidly about with my readers here in future posts, can be boiled down to this:

• I’ve come to question nearly everything that I once believed to be true. Not that what I once believed is false or wrong, per se, but that we are never operating with a full picture. In the words of Octavia Butler, “The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth."

• Much of my practices now involve taking pleasure in discovering just how wrong I have been and am on a daily basis. I say this with some trepidation as I haven’t seen this behavior modeled much out there. “You know, I was totally off base about that thing I sounded so certain about” isn’t something you hear people say very often, let alone a posture that is rewarded. And yet this posture of curiosity and humor has been both an antidote to self-seriousness and a balm for the soul.

• How might I embark on the journey of publicly declaring that there are many times in my journey that I have, to speak directly, sinned. And by sinned I mean from the Hebrew "chata": to miss the mark?

• And this brings me to the final topic that feels missing in the space of tech and startups: which is the matter of the soul, and the messages some of us may receive from God that have led us to this work and subsequent search for meaning.

And so there you have it: I will aim to speak from the heart here here about things I’m not seeing discussed in hopes of finding others who can relate. That feels like the most truthful, fun work I can do in the free fall. Comment below if you’d like to join hands.