As we move through our Leadership Emergence process, we are constantly standing at the edge of something new, wondering if we’re ready to release the old structures that have held us until this point and unsure if the new ones will catch us. We have one foot dipping into the new world of becoming a Teal organization with a new way to map our roles and responsibilities in more of a network than a hierarchy, and we’ve achieved a 100% transparent budget. While we also have our other foot planted in a world with lasting hierarchical structures and systems of management as we figure out how to create a new compensation structure, shift employee evaluation to growth and learning, and change our approach to titles. I know so many people in social change work who have expressed this pull between two very different, and conflicting worlds.

I have always been a challenger. I ask questions. I push back. I resist. I am relentless. So when I was asked in my interview for my role at the Civic Canopy over a year ago about my comfort with taking part in a Leadership Disruption, I felt like I had found my place – I was so excited. But as many of our team members have reflected, this journey has called us all into personal and interpersonal transformation that we may not have fully been able to foresee.

A very important teacher of mine told me recently that we must hold two seemingly contradictory sides of our effort at the same time:

Never give up

Always surrender

The first one comes easy to me—I have been faced with the choice to give up, and I have chosen to keep persisting. I have lived a life that has asked me to get knocked down and get back up again and again. As a white, queer, nonbinary, polyamorous, mentally ill, able-bodied, and college-educated US citizen, I cannot separate my social location from how this fight shows up in my work. I stand at the intersection of both privilege and marginalization. I am welcomed into some spaces that may be hard to access for some folks, and I may also be disregarded or dismissed in others. Every day feels like a “yes, and.” Many of us who are committed to creating a more equitable and just world have no choice but to be resilient. We fight for a better life for ourselves and future generations because we must. It’s a matter of life and death, a matter of survival. I am lucky to still be alive as are many of those around me. I do not take this life for granted, and I have dedicated myself to leaving this world better than I found it (which, honestly, as many in my millennial generation see, we found a mess). I am quick to take up a protest sign, to scream, to sob, to push harder, to organize, to disrupt.

But to surrender…that is so much harder. The myth is that surrendering is easy. But if you have ever laid on the floor and felt your muscles continue to clench, or woken up in the middle of the night and stayed up for many more fretful hours, or tried to take a deep breath that keeps snagging on an invisible hook, or broken open like a bursting dam that has blocked a sacred river’s flow, you know that it is actually very difficult to surrender. To trust. To receive. There are lots of very reasonable reasons why we hold on tightly—to keep ourselves or other people safe, to maintain momentary stability, or to try to stay grounded in what we know.

This season, in its dark and cold inward contemplation and rich decay, has shone the light on where I am still gripping. Where are the places that I am trying to stay in control? How can I continue to hold my hopes for a better world with an open hand?

It. Is. Terrifying. Surrender seems almost impossible in such a traumatized world. But I know that release is necessary for new growth. Change is inevitable—it is the only constant. But we can shape and hold space for the kind of change we wish to see.

So, I invite you to get curious, without judgement or a need to change anything right now…where can you loosen your grip and surrender?