Staying human in a full season

This has been one of the fullest seasons we’ve had at Tilia.

And I want to start there, with gratitude.

We are so grateful for the organizations, communities, boards, and teams that continue to trust us with their conversations that matter so much. Conversations about strategy, belonging, governance, change, conflict, capacity, and the future people are trying to build together.

It is work that keeps inviting us into complexity, care, and possibility. And honestly, that feels like a gift.

It has also been full in every sense of the word.

Ashliegh, our office manager, looked at my calendar recently and said something back that I’m paraphrasing here, but it amounted to: wow, there is a lot moving right now. She wasn’t wrong.

There have been board retreats and strategic planning sessions. Community conversations and proposal deadlines. Travel between municipalities. Follow-up notes, design calls, documents to review, rooms to prepare for, and all the invisible thinking that happens before anyone walks into a facilitated space.

And increasingly, this work is not something I am holding alone.

Tilia has grown into a practice that depends on many hands, minds, and kinds of care. This season has been made possible by a team of people helping shape proposals, coordinate details, support design, hold logistics, make sense of notes, and bring their own wisdom into the work.

I am deeply grateful for that.

I love this work. I chose it on purpose.

And I am learning a lot right now about what it takes to stay human in the middle of the fullness.

So much of what we do at Tilia is help groups sit in discomfort long enough to understand what is actually happening. We help people navigate complexity, make meaning together, and move forward with more care and clarity, often while they are already moving quickly.

And we are learning, again and again, that we have to practice those things for our own work too.

It’s imperfect. It takes practice. We are trying things, adjusting as we go, learning from what works, and editing on the fly.

We’re thinking about how to create enough space inside our own work to be intentional instead of only reactive. How we tend to our relationships as a team. How we plan for what is coming without losing sight of what is right in front of us. How we build a practice that can hold good work, good care, and actual human capacity.

It is not easy.

But we are learning a lot about what makes it more possible.

Conversations in Progress

This connects to a piece I wrote in April for Conversations in Progress, called “This feels like too much” where I was trying to name a particular kind of overwhelm.

Not just the volume of things happening, but the feeling that we are somehow supposed to be tracking all of it, all the time. The news. The emails. The decisions. The context. The needs. The things we haven’t read yet, responded to yet, understood yet, or made sense of yet.

At the time, I wrote that the more I paid attention to that feeling, the more convinced I became that it wasn’t a personal shortcoming.

So many of us are trying to process, lead, care, work, parent, plan, respond, and stay present at a pace that doesn’t always feel particularly human.

Now, in June, as I look back at that April reflection, our season looks different on paper. Different projects. Different rooms. Different conversations.

I suspect yours might look different too.

But the question underneath still feels relevant: how do we stay connected to ourselves and one another when our cups are full to overflowing?

Conversations in Progress is where I explore some of these lingering questions in a more personal way. It’s a space for my thoughts that sit somewhere between facilitation, leadership, community, and being a human trying to make sense of things in real time.

If you’re curious to explore the full reflection, you can find it here:

Conversation starters

In seasons like this, I’m finding that connection, creativity, rest, and small moments of joy are not extras. They are what helps me stay connected to myself, to the people I love, and to the future I’m working toward.

So here are a few questions to carry into your own conversations, journal, walk, kitchen table, or quiet moment:

• What helps you feel like yourself when life is full?

• Where are you craving more space, and what is one small way you could create it?

• What kind of rest actually restores you right now?

• Who or what is helping you stay connected to the future you want to be part of building?

• Where have you noticed a small glimmer of joy lately, and how might you make a little more room for it?

• What would it look like to move through this season with more care, instead of just more effort?

A final thought

Summer always feels like it arrives with a bit of urgency in Alberta.

The days are long, the evenings are golden, and somehow it feels like we are all trying to fit a whole year’s worth of porch visits, lake days, garden wandering, bike rides, patio conversations, family time, and staring-at-the-sky moments into a few short months.

So this is my gentle invitation, to you and to myself:

Wherever there is room for connection, take it.
Wherever there is room for creativity, follow it.
Wherever there is room for rest, let yourself receive it.

And wherever those small glimmers of joy show up — in art, in friendship, in bare feet on grass, in a good book, in a quiet morning, in laughing harder than you expected — try not to rush past them.

These things are NOT distractions from the work. They are what helps us keep going.

Stay curious,

Lindsay