Introducing the Way of Reclamation

It all started when I bottomed out – hard.

Full burnout kicked in fall of 2019, exactly two years ago. I realize now that every other time I’ve used the term “burnout,” it was hyperbole. This time it was like the plane ran out of fuel mid-flight and crash landed in a fire-ball explosion.

It happened the final night of the investor retreat I was hosting, and right in the middle of the dinner keynote. The world closed in on me, my vision tunneled, and in a matter of minutes toxicity pumped through my arteries like I was on an IV of hydrogen peroxide. I ran out of the room with vomit curdling in my throat, and spent the bulk of the night hyperventilating, curling around the toilet, and weeping. I now know this was the first in a string of migraines that sent me spiraling out of my flight path.

Seven months, two respiratory infections, half a dozen migraines, a bout of Norovirus, and a handful of spine-rattling revelations later, I left my job at the investment management firm. I could not keep up with the life I was pretending to live.

I was crushed beneath the weight of it all. This massive breaking point sent me spinning into existential crisis, then depression. This moment also marked the end of many things, like my career, identity, and world view as I knew them. But that’s not why I’m telling this story. This story is about how I found a new beginning – how I began detangling from the hazardous beliefs and social constructs that were sucking the life out of me. This is how I began the journey to reclaim my Self and found a new, regenerative way of living.

Firstly, I was exasperated in my work trying to save the planet.

My presumably rewarding career track was in impact investing, a field that is “supposed to” solve all the world’s problems. Using market-based solutions as a means to solve global challenges is the product of today’s unwavering faith in free-market capitalism.  As such, impact investing has been celebrated as a win-win for producing both beneficial social or environmental impact alongside a financial return. Our firm funded ventures and funds across all sectors, food, energy, social justice, etc., as long as it moved capital from traditional finance to impact.

My decision to leave was partially due to exasperation and partially because I felt an overwhelming sense of ick that was difficult to articulate. I can see now that my revulsion was a deep sense of sorrow and betrayal that the change I was seeking in the world wasn’t working.

I had built a 15-year career in impact, and for all that time I can’t sincerely say I’ve moved the needle in any material way. While I’ve led and been a part of amazing social and environmental work, the reality is that most major challenges we see out in the world – from environmental degradation, to poverty, and inequality – are a result of complex, messy, and badly designed systems, i.e., they are tough AF to meaningfully change.

Even day-to-day systems that shape our lives, like food sourcing and education structures, have grown so rigid that incrementally shifting them toward positive change takes massive, cross-sector, coordinated interventions by slews of various players from all angles of the problem. Actual systemic change is so intractable because one integral piece is often missing. Leading thinkers have determined that transformative systemic change requires six key conditions to be successful, and the stickiest is shifting mental models. These are “habits of thought, deeply held beliefs and assumptions, and taken for granted ways of operating that influence how we think, what we do, and how we talk.”  That means that leaders must be willing to challenge their personal paradigms in order to unwind systems from the harmful thinking that created them. This difficult internal work is unfortunately often left undone.

Another reason impact investing wasn’t working is because there was unmistakable unconscious bias thriving behind a veil of “impact.” I was working within the original, patriarchal boys-club of the financial industry and had subscribed to the culture, firmly believing in meritocracy. In my gut, though, I didn’t feel included, trusted, respected, or any sense of belonging. Time and time again, my colleagues held me to a different standard than they did each other. I dismissed these feelings as my own imposter syndrome and worked harder, vying for some sort of external validation or recognition.  

One day I took a call with a black, female fund manager to discuss her fund that aimed to accelerate high-impact entrepreneurs of color. The unmistakable tone in her voice conveyed her opinion of me; she thought my interest in her fund was B.S. After that call, I sat back and looked at the numbers. Our firm hadn’t made a single investment into a fund manager who was a female or person of color in the five years since the firm’s inception. The investment team had reviewed dozens upon dozens, but there was always something that wasn’t quite good enough. Finally, I saw the forest through the trees. It was undeniable bias. And it wasn’t just this company – it was the entire industry. Despite all our efforts, 98% of finance is still run by white men, and only 2% of venture capital is invested in women. Unchallenged and unchanged mental modes are keeping the financial industry intact just the way it is.

That’s when the floodgates opened and reality pulled me out to sea in a riptide. Now all the pieces fit together, and I could see things as they actually were. That fund manager was right; I was full of shit. In fact, I was so full of shit that my inauthenticity had become septic and poisoned me into physical illness. There was a viscerally distinct void of consciousness within conscious capitalism.

Secondly, I burned out because I was exhausted running myself ragged in two jobs.

I was completely depleted building a home and raising a family, over-stretched and under-resourced keeping all the balls in the air. Like many women, I was working two full time jobs: the invisible one at home and the paid one at work. I just didn’t have enough capacity for it all.

My husband and I both believe in gender equality, but somehow it didn’t happen. Building a home is a mind-boggling amount of work. I was basically building an entire venture. I built systems, operations, and culture, and I hired dozens of contractors to make it run: babysitter, pediatrician, dog-groomer, dry-cleaner, dentist, physical therapist, pre-school, electrician, yard care, and the list goes on.

Somehow all sorts of other invisible things fell onto my plate too: community building, social events, holiday arrangements, financial planning, parenting philosophy, etc. I resented my co-workers for sending their holiday cards before the holidays; mine went out when I had time off between Christmas and New Year’s. They had wives to do it for them. I was doing it all.

Further, I held myself to a ridiculous standard as a mother. I felt solely responsible for my toddler’s wellbeing. After all, I grew her, birthed her, breastfed her, and woke in the night moments before she called out to me – which can only be attributed to my innate mother-child extra-sensory perception.  I logged and memorized her sleeping, eating, and pooping schedule, literally, every hour of the day and night. I, not my husband, felt like a failure when we got a call from daycare because she didn’t have a warm enough coat.

I had unconsciously subscribed to ways of thinking that were breaking me down and definitions of success that were making me miserable. The patriarchally ascribed archetype of the perfect, sacrificial mother was deeply embedded in my psyche and impossible to meet. Simultaneously, the archetype of the professional, female patriarch was wreaking havoc on my health and equally impossible to meet. 

Thirdly, I was buckling under the dooming dread of the climate crisis.

The state of the planet was killing my soul. I capitulated to reality – the reality that my existence is inextricably linked to the Earth in a visceral way, and that I too was dying slowly. Existential grief festered as the dark truth set in. The fires, floods and freezes are only growing worse. There is no away; there is no escape; life on Earth is catapulting toward annihilation.

The hockey stick trajectory of climate change is fueling many of the global problems we confront. Back in 2000s, the International Panel on Climate Change stunned the world predicting the unrest we are seeing unfold today: mass migrations of people, global pandemic, disintegration of democracy, and more. These are not individual problems; they are inter-connected and growing in intensity due to a climate that is out of control.

I was grossly inauthentic in my relationship to the Earth. I had run up a massive carbon debt while working in impact. I felt disconnected from the planet – from everything. How was it that I was spending so many hours a day trying to save the planet, but felt spiritually depressed, hopeless, and powerless in my efforts? I kept waiting for something to happen to kick me into change – to have more time, more money, more concentration – something. Finally, my kick in the ass arrived when I detonated into an existential fire-ball explosion.

A vantage point to discover a new way

The fallout from my career exit was huge. My world view seemed to shatter all around me; the whole of society’s way of living lost all validly to me. I was lost, and depression took over. I spent a year in recovery, healing my body, mind and soul.

Once I gained a vantage point, I was able to see the patterns more clearly. I could see how important it was to trace the intractable problems humanity faces all the way back to the source thinking that created them. Once I followed the threads all the way back to their roots, I found the commonality.

What I discovered is that the predominant paradigm we live within – our cultural belief system, world view and thought pattern – is an invisible undercurrent that runs between and throughout the major challenges humanity faces. These challenges are not individual and separated, as the predominant paradigm would have us believe. They are all connected. As feminist writer bell hooks brilliantly termed, the “imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy” is an interlocking power structure with a common root in an ideology of oppressive domination. They are all founded on the concept of power-over others, and constructed on canons of scarcity, control, separation, and exploitation. Some suggest that the interlocking nature of these social orders has made their eradication intractable. Rather, they continue to be rearranged into different variations as time progresses, but remain an essentially single oppressive complex.

It dawned on me that the exasperation I felt in my work was because we were pursuing regenerative solutions, but executing with the same thinking that created them – the old paradigm of domination. For example, we were looking for investable ventures that tackle systemic racism, but we turned a blind eye to institutional patriarchy within the financial industry. We’re looking for ventures that solve social justice issues, but executing deals that perpetuate affluent capitalism and concentrating wealth in an already widening economic disparity. These contradictions aren’t restricted to the field of finance, they are ubiquitous. All over policy, civic society, and social justice movements, change agents aim to tackle one oppressive social order while remaining unconsciously bound to others.

I can now see quite clearly that there are near-impossible limitations of dismantling one dominating social order by working through the constructs of another. Meaning, for example, one cannot dismantle institutional sexism while maintaining adherence to the dominating nature of white supremacy.  As civil rights activist Audre Lorde notably illuminated, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Once I discovered the magnitude of this contradiction, impact investing became an increasingly difficult field of work to keep a clear conscience. I determined that while market-base solutions are certainly better than no solutions – they are not going to save us from the climate crisis, nor any major challenge of the 21st century. Tinkering externally with the mechanics of social institutions isn’t sufficient. We must look internally for a sea change.

Once I looked inward, I could see how unknowingly subscribing to the old paradigm of oppressive domination had metastasized into an internal disease. I had mechanized myself, forced my cyclical nature into a linear regimen, and suppressed my feminine, authenticity, and discomforts. I became an industrialized human, detached from my spirit and unrelenting to prove my existence despite the backlash from my emotional and physical ailments. My uncompromising determination to earn my value and become good enough as a mother and professional are all functions of a power-over paradigm.

There are other consequences to my complicity too. By subscribing to the dominating paradigm at all, the rules of the hierarchical game require participants to both be dominated and to dominate others. I could see my role now: I had been an unconscious dominator perpetuating oppression. Through my complicity, I was a part of the investment fund keeping capital only in the hands of white and male investment managers. There is no winning in this game. The only way to reclaim a life worth living or activate a sea change, I determined, is to get out.

So begins the reclamation process

In the year I spent identifying all ways the predominant paradigm had infected me, I determined that I wanted to truly self-actualize and that I needed to strip away a lot of muck in order to do so. I made a commitment to become whole, authentic, and centered in my genuine essence. I am now on a journey making my way between the current paradigm of oppressive domination and the new one of regeneration. I call this way Reclamation.

I found that the predominant paradigm was hard-wired deep into my core. I needed to excavate all the way deep inside of myself in order to become the change agent I wanted to be in the world. I pulled out the tentacles, one by one, starting on the surface and detangling them from deep down in my internal being - my body, my psyche, my essence.

I started with my value. I realized I needed to liberate myself from the concept of earning my value or allowing others to externally evaluate my worth. How can we humanly ask what someone is worth? Or assume that some are worth more than others? We are all inherently and sacredly valuable, as is nature. I had to embody this truth deep into my being.

Then, I wanted to reclaim my power. Power is not a scarce resource as it is often made out to be; it is abundant. While history is manifold of power-grabbing and taking it from others, that conception of power is dated and toxic. Today, those who rise in influence share power, source it internally, and grow it collectively. By stepping in to my own true power, I am able to reject power-over myself, others, and nature.

Next, I wanted to reclaim my spirit. I cherish the Earth and finally allowed my grief for Her to rise to the surface. By allowing myself to feel the full spectrum of emotion for Earth’s destruction, I felt like my spirit could return to nature.  I determined that I could claim my agency to change my own way and begin to live in harmony with Her again.

Last, I wanted to reclaim my whole Self. I am not a linear being in a linear world; I am a cyclical being in a cyclical world. The reductionist way of thinking would have us believe that we are made of bits and pieces put together in an, often, incomplete person. In truth, I am whole and interconnected to all of life and Earth. I learned to listen and trust my emotions, my body, my intuition, my cyclical rhythm, and my knowing. My role as a woman and mother are not less than, they are divine.

These discoveries, among others, and a shift in personal paradigm may seem bold, idealistic, radical, and, even, outlandish. Upon careful, meditative reflection, I determined, they are the truth and should be reflected in the way we live in order to put the oppressive and dominating paradigm to rest.

In conclusion

Reclamation Way is about claiming a new way of living & being. We must reclaim our whole selves in order to move from the era of oppressive domination and into the era of regeneration. I define the Regenerative Era as one of renewal, restoration and release of domination. Contrasted to the self-destructive canons of the old paradigm, the regenerative belief system is comprised of tenets of abundance, balance, integration, holism, and power-with others.

We must choose self-evolution in order to become change agents of the Regenerative Era. To expand on bell hooks’ wisdom, I call the central, inter-connected challenge of our time the imperialist, white-supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal, climate crisis. We can only dismantle one by dismantling the singular root of oppressive domination which spans the whole complex. Further, we must release, in entirety, the unconscious concept of holding any power-over others or power-over nature. Like pulling noxious weeds from the garden, we need to dig all the way down into our beings to uproot the old paradigm of domination if we are going to truly shift into regeneration.

To embark on this Way of Reclamation, I envision three branched paths: realizing a Net Zero Footprint, building a Regenerative Lifestyle, and expanding Feminine Consciousness:

Realizing a Net Zero Footprint is the most practical branch and involves ensuring that all the ecological resources we consume are counterbalanced with the same volume of resources returned back to the Earth. Meaning, I am working to create a circular system of using only the amount of carbon, water, and other resources that I am able to replenish back into Earth’s systems.

Engaging in Ecological Repair, is the process of restoring ecological networks across scale, from the micro living systems in soil to the macro-systems of human society. In shifting our orientation of the world from a mechanism to an ecology, we can see more clearly how relations and connections must be healed for family, community, and socio-ecological systems to evolve toward increasing states of health and vitality over time.      

Expanding Feminine Consciousness is the deepest level of awareness formation, impacting our mindsets, emotions, spirits, and relationship with the world. This is about learning to recognize, value, and balance ecological oneness. This awareness is not only needed for self-actualization but to improve leadership across sector and scope. Feminine consciousness is not about shifting power from men to women, it is about reconceiving balance.

Moving through these three branches, I strive to reclaim my whole Self, my lifestyle, being, and spirit into the new paradigm of regeneration. I believe that leaders, of policies, organizations, & communities, also have a responsibility to reclaim in order to build effective solutions for our time.  Reclamation begins with liberating yourself in order to release others and nature from domination. In reclaiming our agency, we must acknowledge our power to choose our trajectory in the fate in the world. And as such, I invite you to join me in the Way of Reclamation. Undoubtedly there are powerful lessons ahead. The time is now or never.