TGC Newsletter: The New Year

Tamar Gaffin-Cahn
13 minutes ago
2 min read

What I'm Reading

F*ckup Nights is in the business section of The Boston Globe!! How does it start? By highlighting one of my own fuckups. If you’re going to encourage folks to be vulnerable, it’s best to lead by example. The flip side of this excitement grows louder as it feels very odd to be experiencing professional success, recognition, and joy while such horrors continue to poison this country. I find these Fuckup nights to be a cathartic opportunity to regain hope.

I don’t have much of a good transition here, other than if you’re feeling the pain, disappointment, and shame of this country, you’re not alone. We are failing our neighbors. Maybe, in a lighthearted moment to ease the tension, sharing our mistakes reminds us of the opposite: we’ve succeeded, people are fighting to stop the harm, and community is being built.

Read 'A not-so-safe-for-work networking event lands in Boston' here.

What I'm Listening To

Nothing. No podcasts, less music. Sitting, listening to the chatter around me. Driving in silence. Listening to my cat breathe. Listening to the branches move in the wind. A different kind of listening. Have you done this for yourself recently? How did it go?

What I'm Doing

This month, I had to take my own advice. One of the hardest things to do. In one area of my life, I play a leadership role I don’t want. I need more initiatives from the group. I had to check my emotions (anger and frustration) over and over and over again. That was HARD. I asked myself these questions:

What culture have I helped create to make room for the behaviors?
Where have I gotten frustrated or mad, and what would be their response to that? Is my heated emotion logically unfair to the situation?
What do I need from them? What do they need to succeed?
Where are my boundaries?
What are the boundaries they’ve shared?
If this were at my job and I were the boss, how would I approach this?
What’s the balance between sharing my emotions and showing them?

I asked for change, shared the emotion, and got a positive response. Cue deep breath.

What's Moved Me

I started reading one of Andrea Gibson’s poetry books. For those who don’t know, they are a poet and activist known for their powerful words about gender expression and queerness. Highly recommend. I’ll share more another month.