“We are showered every day with gifts, but they are not meant for us to keep. Their life is in their movement, the inhale and the exhale of our shared breath. Our work and our joy is to pass along the gift and to trust that what we put out into the universe will always come back.”

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

November 2021

Dear friends,

We’re one month into our work together as Illuminate Collective and excited to be back in touch!

Chances are good that as you’re reading this, you’re feeling exhausted. If that’s true for you, you’re not alone. We’ve had many conversations with our clients over the past month about the uncertainty and heaviness that we’re all carrying. We’ve started a new season and a new school year while continuing to navigate the challenges of the pandemic at home and at work. When we’re exhausted and uncertain, we can quickly move to a place of scarcity and fear, driven by the pull of “not enough” – not enough time, not enough capacity, not enough resources.

What we’re learning is that an answer to this is abundance – trusting that there is enough within us and within the communities we’ve built to collectively carry us through. We believe that abundance shows up in relationship and connection – the ways that we support each other and trust in our own gifts and the gifts of the collective.

Abundance is core to who we are and how we operate at Illuminate Collective. We recently had the opportunity to share how we intentionally built abundance into our business during our session at the Tide Risers Annual Summit in October.

In this session, we shared our “5 S’s for Creating an Abundant Business”:

• Space: Create space for our relationships and our whole lives

• Share: Build trust through sharing honestly and transparently

• Stand Side by Side: Work side by side as equal partners in the work, as opposed to over/under

• Shine: Live in the “we” of Shine Theory, created by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, authors of Big Friendship. We don’t shine unless both of us and our colleagues shine.

• Slow Down to Speed Up: Take time to brainstorm, plan and reflect together

We’re also excited to hear from you. What does abundance look like in your life and work? What could be true if you leaned into abundance as we close out 2021?

Come chat about this with us in our first Collective Conversation on Tuesday, November 23rd. See below for details and to register, and invite a friend or colleague to join you!

Join us!

Collective Conversation: Abundance

November 23rd 11 AM – Join us for informal conversation in community with others. We’ll share our Abundance Principles and create space to reflect on how we’re each living into abundance as we close out 2021.

Leadership Coaching

We’re planning for 2022 and have capacity to take on new coaching clients this winter. Email us at [email protected] if you’d like to create space for you and your leadership development in the new year.

Partner Spotlight

We’re excited to shout out a featured partner in our Illuminate Collective community in every newsletter. This month we’re highlighting Sharma and Corey Graham, co-founders of M.A.D.E. to Lead and co-hosts of The Courageous Personal Leadership Podcast. Sharma was our teammate at Teach For America and has been a great friend, cheerleader and partner to us since we started our coaching businesses in 2015.

Sharma and Corey are also the creators of themadebox, a quarterly subscription box to support professional learning and growth. If you’d like to start the new year with a set of curated leadership resources, you can place an order for the January themadebox anytime before January 15th. This is a perfect holiday gift for your favorite leader!

What We’re Reading & Listening To

Braiding Sweetgrass

This book by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a renowned botanist and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, reflects on our relationship with the natural world and the lessons it can teach us.

Gratitude

This month we’re grateful for the community we’re building in our Fall 2021 White Leaders Working on Antiracism cohort. We’re humbled and inspired by the openness and vulnerability that our participants bring to this important work.

And, as always, we’re grateful to all of you for being part of this community.

Keep shining,

Marion and Miwa