The Messy Middle

Photo by Mikayla Mallek on Unsplash

It’s 10:03 AM and I’m just shifting into “morning musing” time. That’s unusual for me because I usually muse before I do anything else. Coffee, sunlight, flailing, musing. That’s my morning routine.

So why I am doing it differently today?

Because the issue I mentioned on Wednesday is still disturbing my inner peace.

Instead of waking up eager to tippity tap my heart out, I woke up thinking about the thing that’s bothering me.

And, I found that an email was writing itself in my head. So, instead of opening up a blank document to muse, I opened up a “reply all” and started typing.

761 words later, I hit send. It basically said, “This is unsustainable and I’m unwilling to continue in this way.”

But with a lot more words. Obviously. My name is Keely, after all.

I try to be a good team player, so I included ideas for solutions and all the other things that responsible leaders are supposed to do, but really the email was about setting a line: this isn’t working for me. 

My sense is that it’s not working for anyone else either.

And do you know what I’ve learned over the last two years? Sometimes that IS leadership. Sometimes teams need someone to speak up. They need someone willing to open their mouth and say, “We need to address the elephant in the room.”

I used to label myself as non-confrontational. And I was. I came into adulthood with an avoidant attachment style, so when things got messy, I’d usually just move to a different country. My relationship with Sam has completely shifted my attachment style (hooray, secure attachment style) and I’m grateful.

Simultaneously (and linked), life has been kind to me over the years. I’m now a person who is able to open her mouth with very few consequences. If I say something that rubs someone the wrong way, I’m not going to starve. I’m not going to be homeless. I’m not going to lose a paycheck I depend on or my husband or really anything.

I might, worst-case scenario, make a few people like me a little less.

But best-case scenario? The sky’s the limit.

Truth-telling can set us all free. And when we create opportunities for entire teams and communities to tell the truth, change happens.

So this is me living in the messy middle, dissatisfied with something in my life, and attempting to make changes in real-time.

It’s also me putting the idea out there that maybe, just MAYBE, being “pro-confrontational” can be a good thing. I first heard this idea from Deborah Hanekamp, known online as “Mama Medicine,” and I think it’s brilliant. Confrontation doesn’t have to look like screaming in someone’s face or preparing for battle. It can look gentle. Calm. Loving. And it can even come in email form, for those of us who are better with written communication than verbal.

Thanks to the brilliant industrial psychologist I reached out to for helping me to see all this.

Sending love and my hopes that this gentle, calm, loving confrontation thing works,

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