and exhale and let it slip through your fingers. Let's try a different somatic location. You might raise your shoulders up to your ears and hold them tight, that physical embodiment of anxiety or stress or insecurity, and as you exhale, let them drop, imagining that as you activate this tension and release, you're allowing that unpleasant experience to pass through your nervous system. Give yourself permission to let it go, forgive yourself, forgive that teammate, perhaps, and then get more clear on how you want to show up next time. So to loop back and solidify this concept of professional authenticity, just in case, no one ever taught you this. And really, I'm saying that with compassion and non judgment, because increasingly, as we experience people in the workplace, I have to stop and ask myself, are they behaving in this way because they actually think it's acceptable, or were they never taught how to adult and interact with others? And truly, I have no judgment around it, but I have curiosity around it, and I have a real intention to bring forward feasible behavior replacement work that helps people feel more confident and assured in their own performance, and helps people work and collaborate with each other with more ease. So in case nobody told you, authenticity does not mean we bring all our ish to work. It means we can bring our full identity to work, not the baggage. Be like bag lady, okay, a little Erica Badu in this moment. It means we care for each other, so we do want to see each other and hold space when it's possible with consent. But we're also running a business y'all, and providing benefits. Hopefully, okay, leaders, go back to Episode One. Hopefully we are offering benefits that support all staff to embark on healing work. I know for sure at the teaching well we do. So if you are finding yourself in meetings, routinely crying during Sharon's or in breakout rooms or in pair shares, if you routinely are leaving meetings over analyzing, overthinking, concerned or nervous about whether you'll get contacted by your supervisor or HR, or if you have a feedback rich culture and people are literally telling you the way you are is harming me, the way you're sharing is too intense, those are clear indicators that it's time to engage in a therapeutic intervention. We love a therapist, we love some clinical work. I know a lot of our communities have stigma around it, but so much is possible when a professional is there to just tend to you. It's going to be difficult at first, but I assure you, relief is coming when you're able to walk into your meeting spaces and begin anew, hit that reset button and feel more confident in the ways that you are showing up for yourself and others as an identity. Forward organization at the teaching Well, we encourage our employees to express their full identities, balancing a full somatic experience, but also showing up with integrity for our colleagues, clients and the organization we have good, good trouble to get into by any means necessary, if I'm channeling our incredible King Malcolm X, but it also means that we need to treat our healing and invest In our micro dosing of wellness with that same ferocity by any means necessary, it's time to heal. We deserve it. Our colleagues do. And whatever is at the end of your mission, when you've actualized that big vision of a more liberated community that's better resourced, that's more free. It requires us to do the work along the way, as we begin our downward descent here in this podcast episode, I didn't want to leave you with that feeling, because I get it sometimes with podcasts, as if we're centering an expert who's figured it all out. That's not me, and it's also not the teaching well, just because we're a wellness organization doesn't mean we have our own growth to do. So I want to talk to y'all about a current challenge that we're facing, and I want to share transparently and vulnerably that this is one of the things as we scale and grow, that's been hard to find that true harmony between self and collective care, that balance that we're seeking, and we're never looking for a 5050, perfect split, right? The lies they tell around work life, balance being perfect, it's just not coming, and we know it. But one of the challenges that we've been facing as an organization that is now in nearly 50% of the United States is travel. When I first became the Executive Director, I turned around to my boss, our board chair, Lisa, and I was like, Lisa, I feel kind of guilty that I'm getting to go to all these incredible conferences and and travel to do program work in other states. Like, how do I create more opportunities for my teammates to get this exposure? And she was like, That's a beautiful thought. Of course, we want to create opportunities for your employees to be stretched in that way and exposed to new environments, cultures, locations, clients. And she said, travel is wholly overrated, and you're going to figure that out real quick. And I was like, No way. Look, I get to go on an airplane again. Let me tell you, y'all, travel is wholly overrated. Now don't get me wrong, I love to come visit y'all. So if you are a client outside of California, we love and honor you, so don't take it wrong, and there is a mental, emotional and physical wear and tear that occurs when you have to pack a suitcase, get up early, the physical acts of lifting your suitcase and the hustle and bustle of the airport, the germ exposure, hello, be leaving our families and so while I've been able to figure out small ways to alleviate my mom guilt while I'm gone, like the sacred face time that my entire team knows is going to happen Every night when my kids are at dinner with my husband, I will join them. It's never compromised. I always connect with them. It also means sometimes you might be able to help your kid through their homework via FaceTime or Skype or pack a children's book in your suitcase and read aloud to them. Those things are nourishing, but they don't deal with the accumulation of tension, stress, overwhelm and potential burnout that occurs when you're getting on airplanes and leaving your home week over week and month over month. So we looked up and we're so grateful for the ways that opportunity has come to the teaching well, and I leaned on my leadership team, and we did our best across the three of us last year. Shout out to Aaliyah, who's joined the team to try and distribute more travel across us, and yet we were deep in fatigue. Yeah, so there's been a couple of things that we've needed to do, and again, we have not figured this out, but here's what we've tried so far. First, we had to lift the veil with our team. We had to let them know. I just told y'all as a leader, be careful that we're not venting or dumping on our staff. There's a fine line with change management, of inviting them towards the solution, and so we had a very clear conversation around our national expansion work. We looked at our values and our community agreements around feeling sustained and nourished and rested and healthy, and we shared with our team we're in this challenge of, how do we fold more of y'all into the work when the vast majority of teammates at the teaching well, have children under 15? How do we do this sustainably? How do we do it equitably, and how do we do it in ways that balance, that self and collective need because we're running a business and we're whole humans,