This blog is a relaunch of one that I started in 2009 in support of an enthusiastic mid-life relocation to Ireland while embarking on the path of a reluctant entrepreneur.

Reluctant because in 2008/09 there were few other choices – and because the gods have a sense of humour. I began training for the work I do now during the great recession of the early eighties when career development work was ‘teaching entrepreneurship’. I’d never expected to be taking my own advice – thirty years later.

You can learn more about my ongoing work, find out about our courses and workshops, and join the conversation at Empowering-Change.com.

Why have a separate blog?

The change I encourage there is an invitation to repair and restore your own sense of self and to bring those lessons and habits into an effort to repair and restore your world.

Globally we’ve seen a post-pandemic shift. There’s less of a call to return to normal than there is a demand for a new normal. One that is focused on the environment, wealth inequality, the millions displaced by climate and conflict – in short the needs of the many over the tyranny of a power elite.

What you’ll read about here are reflections by and about empowered citizens and servant leaders.

My story, other people’s stories, observations about Ireland and Northern Ireland from the lens of this blow-in perpetually frustrated that so many of my neighbours can’t see the possibility and potential of a prosperous future on this island.

More importantly through the lenses of native changemakers who believe that were we to embrace diversity, demand transparency and accountability, and excellence from both taxing authorities things would improve economically, politically and socially.

When we’re less angry about the failures of systems and leadership we can begin to concern ourselves -with a shared future to benefit every citizen rather than fear monger over a need to share an identity or nationhood.

A Culture of Recovery

In a 2012 TEDx talk I related the experience of being shamed by a butcher because my order was not to his liking. Oh, I pushed back, got what I wanted and I do business with his shop this day.

At the time I could often be heard suggesting that what the island needed was its own 12-step program – rooms in which I had learned to unapologetically assert my position and invite further conversation.

The lessons of recovery are developmental and universal.

Well-reared children in all cultures come of age with the skill to live at peace with themselves.

They move from dependent infants to terrible toddlers, to determined and rebellious teens. Through the course of adulthood, they evolve into confident, consensus-seeking adults who negotiate calmly, personally and professionally, to establish their place in the world.

Sadly, most of us don’t experience this ideal and uninterrupted progression. We reach adulthood struggling with dis-ease or discontent.

At best, we wish we were happier at work or at home, at worst we self medicate our dis-ease with substances or behaviours to numb it.

Thankfully if motivated by our discontent, we can all choose change.

Catalysing Conversations & Connections

If you can see it, you can be it.

The first time I heard that it was powerfully uttered by Irish Senator Lynne Ruane.

The occasion was an event convened to honour the memory of a young Irish mother who succumbed to the despair of homelessness – the legacy of an economic recovery that focused on preserving the wealth of a few over the needs of women, children and families.

Notably in direct contravention of the one of the founding principles of the Republic.

Her own story – and book – People Like Me gave voice to the experience of being marginalised – and it gave me hope that a generation of truth tellers was emerging here.

“Few voices ring out as clearly as those who have long been oppressed or silenced. In her heartfelt memoir People Like Me, author Lynn Ruane tells the gripping story of her working-class Dublin life, the kind of life that rarely gets a hearing elsewhere and so she does it with the kind of detail those who have been waiting years to speak up bring to a written work.”–Irish Voice

Her story powerfully illustrates that witnessing our personal stories of change is where societal change begins.

I have been privileged to know changemakers on both sides of the Irish border – and there is power in connecting them with constituencies that can amplify their messages.

We don’t know what we don’t know

It’s an invitation to become curious.

However, a post-conflict society requires more than an invitation.

What’s needed is the kind of relationship building that introduces the safe space that gives over to brave space where trust and compassion can overcome the wilful blindness wrought by generations of the wilfully blind leading the wilfully blind.

Empowering Changemakers

I’m convinced that you can’t teach or evangelise about excellent leadership – but you can witness and celebrate it.

If you recognize the dysfunction of our social, economic and political systems rooted in the dis-ease of our leadership, then we must share the stories to inspire and empower each other to challenge that leadership.

That is the call to “servant leadership”.

And please – email eve@eveearley.com to share your stories.

Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.  Kahil Gibran

Who chooses pain?

“Not me!”  I want to shout.

Yet on reflection, it’s clearly me.

Significantly, when I’m troubled, when focus is difficult and the morning pages have not been enough to quiet me, I pick up a book of daily meditations from one of the 12-step programs.

This quote about “the bitter potion “… begins a July meditation in the OA (Overeater’s Anonymous) book, For Today (1982).

If it were not for the pain, I wouldn’t be here (in recovery). Only when the pain of  (food addiction) became worse than the pain it was intended to kill did I become willing to abandon the pretense of controlling my life.

Getting in touch with my pain is a new experience. Until the day it brought me to my knees, food was my first line of defense against any and all pain, even that caused by the food itself.

In OA, I have come to understand that I must let myself feel the pain before I can recover.

For today: I no longer choose to avoid my growing pains. My Higher Power, my program, my meetings, my friends – all stand with me as I face, head-on, whatever must be faced.

Facing what must be faced…

Julia Cameron refers to the morning pages taught in The Artist’s Way as meditation suited to Westerners.  They work because one doesn’t actually have to be still; we write to access the wisdom of our interior self.

In my box of “recovery tools,” this one is the most reliable.  There are many others.

What works best?

“It works if you work it” is the chorus spoken in unison routinely to close most 12-step meetings.  Still, I find there are days I resist picking up any tool and “working it”.

Take Morning Pages, “I am cranky, so I didn’t write them” or is it “I’m cranky because I didn’t write them”?  Am I troubled and unfocused because I haven’t been vigilant, choosing self-care, good food, less drink, more rest? Have I been doing too much and not allowing myself to just be?

This month I can answer yes to most of those queries, and humbly admit that sometimes I still choose pain.

Have you chosen pain?

My guess is that if you are still reading and food, alcohol, drugs, or gambling is not your numbing drug of choice, perhaps workaholism, depression, perfectionism, or love addiction apply.

Whatever substance or behavior we use, we choose it to numb the feelings we think would otherwise overwhelm us.¹ 

What feelings are we numbing?

To know we have to honor the physician within us.

And choose to assemble the tools that will help us to get support for our inward journey.

We are our own physicians. Our sick or injured self is part of what keeps us from being the best we can be: the most content, the most available to joy, and the most fully present in each day.

Simple but not easy…

And let me offer an apology if this seems trite or canned or easy.

When my own struggle began I didn’t even know there was a sick self to heal.  I was fine. I was in control. I had it all.

The fact that I was irritable, cycling through moods from depressed and paralyzed to wildly energetic and creative was not a problem, that was simply “how I am”.

It took hitting bottom – multiple times to name the ways in which I avoid my pain.

You may call them patterns or ‘bad habits’, I know them as addictions.

Among them, are behavioral addictions to perfectionism, and cynicism. In relationships, codependence, control, and avoidance. And in substance, food.

Serendipity and synchronicity

Both played a major role.

And if you are still reading – I hope this provides that for you.

My way to 12-Step rooms came via an assignment for a master’s program in counseling.

The journey started with AlAnon meetings over thirty years ago, OA meetings and a treatment program shortly after, and therapy all along.

Sadly, as I re-read that – instead of the gentle voice I have cultivated in my efforts at self-care – I am hearing a bit of a judging tone, “Really, you needed thirty+ years to get this?”

So let me gently assure myself – and you –  that this is not a linear process.

Recovery is the journey of a lifetime

Choosing to live a conscious life is simple. It is not easy.

There have been, and still are, struggles along the way. Some are daily in doing the work itself, but the struggle hasn’t left me bloodied and scarred,  just honestly open and vulnerable.

This process is not about donning a layer of armor to deflect blows.

It’s choosing to strip down and shear off the thick coat of matted, coarse, and wiry fur that insulates us from real feelings.

Once exposed, we can begin to experience feelings of anger, grief, and sadness cleanly in the present moment. Furthermore, resentment all but disappears.

Present as a gift

Reacting and responding in real-time has been a learned behavior.

Ask yourself – Is the raw emotion we’re experiencing entirely related to the present situation – or is the pain historic.

I can get annoyed when a driver cuts me off. But enraged signals a link to an earlier wound.²

Un-armored, we open ourselves to the touches of kindness and support available when we seek it from the right people in safe places.

And if learning to trust the abundance of good people and safe places takes you less than my thirty + years, I’ve achieved my goal of supporting shorter learning curves than mine.

So, if throwing off self-chosen pain seems daunting, I can confidently assure you that every moment of pain in that process is redeemed with many more moments of exquisite joy.

July 2010

¹Escaping the Self: Alcoholism, Spirituality, Masochism, and Other Flights from the Burden of Selfhood by Roy F. Baumeister | Goodreads

² In a recent revision I have noted this 2020 description: “If it’s hysterical, it’s historical.” 

One third of the way through the Artist’s Way with a new group I am once again reminded of the power of the process.

Daily writing, weekly quiet time and assignments are all designed to have you resurrect the creative children once shamed and quieted into the dutiful, responsible adults we have become.

And if you are a happy dutiful, responsible adult, stop reading.

If you ache for something to be better, new or different in your life, read on.

I encourage anyone who wants to rethink where they are now and where they are headed to pick up a copy of Julia Cameron’s work. It’s not for artist’s only. Most of the language and methods outlined here are hers. I facilitate groups based on her work – I owe my own creative recovery to the disciplines learned from her.

Let me share some of the insights from the group now having completed chapters on recovering a sense of safety, a sense of identity and a sense of power. Have we recovered them. No. Are we recovering? Yes.

Creative recovery is ongoing. It’s like living with a chronic disease. Diabetics watch their diets, take insulin if necessary; alcoholics abstain and go to meetings. We are recovering, though never cured, we are vigilant about self care. We learn to exercise disciplines that have worked again and again.

This group has arrived at such a place. We can no longer go back to bad habits and not know we are responsible for being stuck. It is no longer a secret that we keep ourselves from moving forward by being self critical, judging our efforts harshly or believing we can’t have or do what we wish. We know we can create a safe place to nurture our fledgling efforts at a new career, a better way of parenting, or behaving better in our relationships. This is the safe place to grow into the selves we might have been or are choosing to be.

We can, as Cameron points out, choose to “go sane”. It feels like going crazy, because getting unstuck is hard. We can nurture our new identity by banning the “poisonous playmates” and “crazymakers” from our lives. These are the outsiders who reinforce the negative beliefs we have. We can choose to think better of ourselves and support this when we surround ourselves with people who are positive. We have learned to remember that it is our job to do the work of changing – not to judge it.

And in our effort to take back our power – take control over the direction of our lives we learn that anger is our friend. “Not a nice friend, not a gentle friend, but a loyal friend”. We are learning to listen to our anger. We are learning to listen for the good things that come our way – the “answered prayers” the synchronicity that catches us off guard. We are learning that “luck” truly is the intersection of preparation and opportunity. We are preparing ourselves by listening for it with a different ear, believing that if we “show up”, do the work of taking small steps every day, we will move forward.

We are gently coaxing our creativity back from childhood when we knew anything was possible.

This is the work of the first three chapters and I encourage you to read along. Should you feel the discipline of a facilitated group would help your process, let me know. But try it first, take up the morning pages and see how the process works. In the language of the 12 step rooms: It works if you work it!

To join an Artist’s Way Group on-line, or here in Ireland, get in touch via the form to the right.

To learn more about the tools and the process which I call Personal Change Management – follow the link.