In daily life, when I choose myself – my personal health, goals, and priorities over the demands and expectations of others – my partner, kids, friends, colleagues, clients, and extended family, they adjust accordingly. 

Why?

I consider them in how and when I act. I communicate my thinking. I usher them through the process. I create communities, environments, and systems for collaboration in how I live. I consider this a matriarchal lens. The matriarchy is a collaborative approach to life systems. 

Could I be a better communicator? Absolutely. I’m growing into my best self every day. 

Do I still have a lot to learn? Of course. I’m here for it. 

Is a life in community building and collaboration worth the effort? 

Collaborative leadership is sexy as fuck. 

Sexy is powerful. 

Why?

Strong boundaries (1). If I don’t need to explain myself, I don’t. 

Curiosity is my foundation state. Supported by observation and discernment.

Active listening. If I’m giving you my time and attention, it’s yours. You can feel it.

Present. When I am present, I am fully present.

I cultivate distance between reaction and response. 

If we don’t place and enforce personal boundaries, they are disrespected or ignored. The same is true for laws and customs protecting our agency.

Make no mistake, our agency is under constant threat. It always has been. Voting rights. Queer rights. Marriage rights. The right to an abortion (2). In a head-smacking-desk-on-repeat reality, the Equal Rights Amendment, twice ratified by congress, still not added to the constitution (3). 

And, still we rise (4). 

In short, if it’s not white, male, and cis-het, it’s a threat. Fearful, disempowered men seek to dominate women. Threatened, fearful, and disempowered men, elevated by society’s patriarchal norms to positions of power, create false power – fragile power – but extremely dangerous power. 

Desperation is dangerous for the oppressed.

So, we must collect ourselves and our partners, friends, allies, and accomplices. We must step into the streets, the boardrooms, the private clubs, the golf meetings, the business travel, and all the predominantly white, male spaces. We must destroy the ugly tables they built in service to patriarchal design and instead craft new furniture rooted in matriarchal systems. Together. We must remind the oppressors that we will not give up our agency. And, because love is served at our tables, they will also benefit from our actions. 

But our power? It’s irrefutable. Why else would they bother to try and control us?

They never can.

Because, one way or another, we take ourselves where we can thrive. Underground. Another level. Geographical shift. Silence.

I won’t share my bounty without agency.

Give me agency, I’ll show you a lush, thriving garden (5).

Take it from me? Enjoy your dusty, harsh desert. 

The organic consequences of collaborative leadership are abundance, ease, growth, opportunity, and right relationships to self, others, and the land – all in cycles of give and receive. 

Sexy. As. Fuck.