128. What is Our Responsibility as Space-holders to Comment on Global Tragedies?

In the landscape of social media, I often find myself at the crossroads of silence and declaration when it comes to global conflicts. It's a place where every post and comment is scrutinized, and things that are happening thousands of miles away from you can press upon your conscience. But what happens when you choose the path of quiet reflection over public proclamation? And why would someone choose to say silent in the face of so much heartache and corruption in the world?  This episode is a heartfelt exploration into the ethical maze of speaking out on complex geopolitical issues, where I open up about the pressures to voice an opinion and the profound realization that sometimes, the most responsible action is to pause and learn.

As we navigate the digital world's expectation for instant reactions to societal events, the art of setting personal boundaries emerges as a vital skill. Here, I share the allure of crafting intimate connections through deep, thoughtful conversations, highlighting the power of subtler forms of support and influence. We don't always need to shout to be heard; often, it's the quiet presence and the space we hold for one-on-one dialogue that can leave an indelible mark on the hearts and minds of others. Join me as we explore the value of the unsung impact of those quieter contributions and discover how they can resonate just as profoundly within the collective narrative.

Kat HoSoo Lee is a trauma-informed Spiritual Business Mentor and host of The Rooted Business Podcast. She uses the tools of somatic and emotional alchemy to guide soulful entrepreneurs to approach their business as a spiritual practice. This allows them to cultivate businesses that are rooted in conscious values, ethical marketing and purposeful service.

Connect with Kat:

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This podcast is made possible with sound production by Andre Lagace.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 2:37

Hey, so today's chat's gonna be a little bit on the heavy side. This is a question that I've been I wouldn't say I've been grappling with it, but I've definitely been pondering it for a little while and the question is around what is our responsibility when it comes to some of these big things that are happening in our world as people who have online platforms, as coaches, as mentors, as guides and I personally made a very conscious decision to not say anything when it came to the most recent clash over Gaza and Palestine, and pretty soon after that, I had people coming into my DMs demanding that I say something, demanding that I share, like other people's work, demanding that I take a stance. Some of it was actually quite respectful, some of it came from a genuine sense of curiosity, and I was able to engage with some really interesting conversations in that space, but a lot of it was accusatory. It was saying that my silence is violence. I was being told that, as somebody who works with trauma, that I needed to say something about this, and I wrote an entire post about it, and I think it's worth reading that post, and I hope that you listen all the way to the end of this, because I really do think that it is not everyone's responsibility to say something, to be on the front lines, and I have a personal story that I'm sharing, with consent, from one of my clients about what my role has been in this particular conflict. So I wrote my silence is not an act of aggression. I am doing what I always do to find balance. I return to a yin state when I am unsure what the appropriate action is.

Speaker 1: 4:54

The fact that there is a massive global catastrophe does not mean that I need to veer from my truth of how I access my own inner wisdom. My silence is not a freeze or a collapse. It is receptivity and digestion. I am not a geopolitical expert on the Middle East, so it would be unethical for me to share anything that my personal opinion based on my limited understanding of the situation. My responsibility is to learn through independent journalism and discussions with my inner circle. It's a lot to get caught up on.

Speaker 1: 5:24

In my silence I am learning, not teaching. I am feeling so I can stay rooted in my body with the actions I choose to take and the words I choose to share. Let me be clear here my ignorance is not something that I feel guilty or ashamed about my ignorance is also not indifference, nor is it neutral. Of course I care. I can't numb my heart to violence and death, or will I ever find a justification for genocide and colonization. I struggle to wrap my head around the lies coming from my political leaders and news. It's frustrating to see how blatant motivations are when you start tracking the money. It's terrifying to feel the knife's edge. The entire world is standing on. Of course I care.

Speaker 1: 6:01

I educate folks on things I am experienced in. I am a teacher of emotional alchemy, nervous system regulation, somatic healing and ethical and spiritual entrepreneurship. To hold the integrity of the role I hold here, I have a boundary for what I do or do not share. I only share what I feel regulated, experienced and or integrated about. Again, this is an ethical and intentional choice I have made about how I interact with social media, and one I will stick to, even when especially when things feel tumultuous, I recognize there is privilege in being able to stay silent until I'm ready to share publicly. But I also hold a responsibility to tend to my own nervous system so that I am able to hold space for folks who are more directly involved or affected by this.

Speaker 1: 6:43

And then I went on to list several sources that I was learning from. Oh, actually, it continues on, sorry. My clients and community know that I am here to hold and express the appropriate and necessary rage, grief, confusion, etc. About what is going on. In fact, it's been the topic of many sessions I've been having with clients this week. However, if you are looking to me for any ideas on what should or should not happen about the conflict, I am not that person. For me to pretend that I know enough about Israel, palestine, gaza, hamas, jewish people would be performative and unethical. As a teacher, I am not a leader on this topic. My responsibility in this discussion is to point you to the actual leaders in this space who I've been listening to.

Speaker 1: 7:29

So I shared that, and what was happening in the background is that I have a client who is of Jewish heritage and has been raised with a Zionist mindset, belief and in all of this, in seeing everything that was happening in the world, in really sort of examining her own relationship to colonization and in being a deeply thinking and caring person, she was starting to question a lot of these stories that she had been told since childhood, and this was a big departure for her because it was, very understandably, going to create a rift in her family. She had a lot of questions around even what her responsibility is, as she's questioning if she held a responsibility to say something to her family, to explore this with her family, and she brought it instead to me. And I didn't approach this from the context of a political landscape. I approached it from the context of emotions and, in particular, we explored a lot around anger and grief and, as you can imagine, there was a lot of confusion just coming up in her body and a lot of work that needed to be done around her own self-trust and trust in others, trust in the community that she had been raised in and the family that she had been raised in and the stories that have been told to her. And I know that had I been posting things like this, or rather, had I been posting really politicized things on social media, she wouldn't have felt safe to explore these spaces with me.

Speaker 1: 10:03

And she's not the only person that I was supporting around this who are actually directly affected by this conflict. She's she just happens to be the one that she encouraged me actually to go on social media and share our story, and I think that it's so easy to get caught up in the wave of shuds when it comes to voicing our opinions about so many things that feel really scary and really disempowering in the world right now, and yet we still need places that people feel like is a neutral landscape so that they can explore and come to conclusions about their own stories and experiences on their own, without judgment, without feeling pressure to lean one way or another. And I think that we as spaceholders, as folks who are also deeply thinking and compassionate humans, we have differentiations of roles here. So, just the way that my personality is, I am not somebody who's going to be on the front lines of protests and marches. That feels like an incredibly disregulating experience for me.

Speaker 1: 11:41

I don't like crowds. I don't like being in spaces where there's a lot of humans around. I love humaning, I love other humans, but put me in a crowd and it's not a great time for me. And yet I do really well one-on-one when it comes to connecting to people and asking hard questions and asking them to explore what's going on in their own inner landscape, and I much prefer to do my work in these spaces. And so if you are somebody who is out there and feels like you have enough of that, like extroverted energy like I am. So here for you, I am so supportive of you doing your work in that way, and there are some of us who are going to do quiet work.

Speaker 1: 12:42

I know, I know in my bones that the work that this woman and I did is going to have like lineage shifting ripples in her life, in the lives of her children, and so, like I take comfort in knowing that that was my hard boundary and my instinct to not jump on the frenetic bandwagon of needing to say something immediately and instead, like I still feel, like I am learning and will continue to learn about this topic, and I don't know that I will ever feel qualified enough to teach about it.

Speaker 1: 13:30

What I am qualified to do is hold space. I'm qualified to help people really work through some of the hard questions that they are dealing with, particularly if they are more directly affected by this than I am. It's my role to be in regulation and it's my role to hold that curious and encouraging and neutral space so that people can actually do that and that regulation work that is required of them. So I want to share this because I think that there are a lot of ways in which we, as folks who are showing up online, it feels like we can never be doing enough, and I want you to know that. However you are showing up for the bigger collective, however, you are recognizing your own gifts and your own limitations and your own capacity, for all of this is perfect and it's nuanced and it is important work. So that's all I got to say about that.