Monthly Libation: February 2025

Greetings from your comrades at Colemon & Associates! February holds many opportunities to practice our leadership and sit with our capacity to love, learn, and lead. Of course there is Valentine’s Day, the holiday celebrating love, and for some means much more than romance and roses (more about this below). February is also Black History Month and offers us rich opportunities to acknowledge and highlight the contributions of Black Americans to our communities, culture, and daily lives.

What We Are Feeling (Heart)

We feel the fire of rage and conviction. We feel unsteady and yet so resolved to remain connected and present to our community. Like y’all, we are bombarded with news that generates confusion and destabilization, particularly with the flurry of executive orders, particularly those threatening the federal assistance to nonprofits and program supporting marginalized and vulnerable populations, as well as wildlife and environmental protections. Our decades of work in systems work reminds us that a vigilance toward balance and discernment can mean the difference 0between chaos and burnout or maintaining the capacity to sustain our well-being. We are sad. We are outraged. We are in pain. Hope is harder to find. But we will not try to control or resist the truth of what is and isn’t. We won’t aspire to more power than we have. Rather, we will leverage our individual power, taking great care to join it with those whose visions for justice and peace align with ours. We are unafraid to be called dreamers. We are proud to live and practice the imagination of our foremothers and ancestors who conjured futures that did not yet exist.

Our colleague Kellie is creating meditations through her Substack that provide portals to support our healing, and language to nourish our capacity to hope and dream through the very real attacks on our safety and livelihoods as leaders, change makers, and healers. Check out and follow here.

We still feel and believe in love. We might feel and lean harder into it because of the polarization and volatility in our daily news feeds. We invite you check out this list of quotes from writers about love as Valentine’s Day gets closer. We were particularly touched by this one from Rainer Maria Rilke:

“Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other.”

What is love asking of you in these times? Who and where are you seeing love in action? How can you let it inspire and comfort you in the face of fear and uncertainty?

What We Are Thinking/Reading (Head)

Some of the best leadership advice we’ve ever received was to make time to remember; to revisit and re-engage with the wisdom and resources we have collected over the years. Yes, there are advancements and new scholarship all the time, but some lessons and tools are timeless. In addition to that, it is important to resist the default that more is more, and to hold tight to our commitment to NOT define progress as an accumulation of more – more info, more achievements or revenue, more likes or visibility. Rather than metrics rooted in capitalism or vanity, we are remembering to go deeper on a few things: our values, our relationships, our health. To that end, we are revisiting the 2018 article written by adrienne maree brown on principled struggle. In this important reflection on abundance in our pursuit of justice, she says, “Attention is the way humans bring water and sunlight to our seeds of ideas, concerns, relationships, and to our transformation.” Let us take stock of where we are focusing our attention each day. What seeds are we planting and cultivating with our thoughts and actions?

We are also re-visiting the words of Toni Morrison whose earthly birthday was February 18th. Her powerful response to the question of survival is powerful and so relevant to these times.  Can we allow the journey of healing and survival transform us for the better, knowing we can’t go back to who we were before?

Lastly, Solidarity Is offers a Beyond Elections toolkit to support us in staying grounded and preparing ourselves and our communities in the years ahead. The tools are reminders that when we honor the innate gifts in all of us, we are practicing inclusion and belonging, which in turn creates the conditions to build our power and embody community in the face of turmoil.

Where is your attention focused right now? How is that focus serving your growth and purpose? What and who helps you get back on track when you’ve lost your way?

What We Are Practicing (Loving and Intentional Action)

We are tapping into the sources of creativity that feed our playful sides. Wonder. Joy. Imagination. We are making time for visiting our local museums, reading and listening to local writers, and even practicing our own forms of art. We are so inspired by the work of Bri Chesler on display now at the Museum of Glass. Untamed: The Anatomy of Desire provokes us to remember the criticality of desire and emotion in the experience of being human. Remember that Tacoma museums are free on third Thursdays! Let yourself be inspired.

We are so grateful for the free practices offered by The Embodiment Institute. Their theory of change inspires us to remember the importance of our bodies in our work:

Our work uses embodiment as the standard of change, which means it is not enough for us to envision new ways of being, but we need support to practice, to feel, and to stay the course of transformation. To that end, we offer tools and principles through which people can build and practice liberatory culture within their bodies, organizations, and networks.

We bring that inspiration into our own commitment to practice and align with our personal and organizational values. We are also proud to be working with our client partners on identifying and operationalizing their values to not only align with mission, but to optimize their impact in their work and community.

What does it mean to practice hope in your organizations and your personal lives? How are you staying aligned with your values in these challenging times?

We hope you enjoyed this month’s offering. Please share with those in your network who might enjoy it. Please follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn to stay informed of our upcoming work and/or events, and to keep receiving the Monthly Libation. If you are looking for organizational development consultation, support, or coaching, you can find out more about our work on our website or email us at info@colemonassociates.org.

Stay safe. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other.

C&A Team