It’s been too long …. good heavens, I haven’t written in a while and, what that means is that 2022 was a weird, busy, fun, chaotic and “interesting” year.
Working at two jobs makes it difficult sometimes to wrap my brain into a new focus area. One job is as an Organizational Development Consultant in a nonprofit capacity building organization in Ann Arbor, Michigan. A great job, with great and VERY intelligent co-workers, we work to uplift the nonprofit community through services that span strategic planning, board and staff development, fund development planning, financial resilience support, and so much more. We have an incredible IT team who assist clients with their computers and networks, our Finance team supports fiscal sponsorships, accounting and bookkeeping, and guidance to help the nonprofit’s team to build the knowledge to manage their own financial records. Our Learning Communities provide opportunities for cohort experiences across the sector, with leadership development, anti-racism and social justice as a focus. Our strength, across the organization, is the incredible hearts and intelligence of our team who strive to find ways to make equity, social justice and anti-racism a focus of our work, supporting diversity, equity, inclusion, justice and belonging through workshops, toolkits, 1:1 support and dialogue to foster actions in the furtherance of the unity of all people. It’s awesome work and we strive to positively impact everyone with whom we work. And I will be retiring from that work, from working in that broader nonprofit sector, at the end of this year.
Which leads to the area that was a part of my focus last year and into this year – the transition. I’m using this picture of the fall trees to illlustrate a principle that is fascinating to me …. the joyful “dance” of falling leaves, showing that transition can be joy-filled, beautiful and easy. My experience of transition or change has not been necessarily joy-filled, beautiful or easy, so I’m invoking that with this picture! I WANT that feeling, that joy and ease to happen in this transition for me.
I’m working to be very conscious about decisions that I’m making (more so than perhaps I usually am), because I’m moving into fulltime genealogy research, presentations and my own family studies. As genealogy societies are nonprofits, I’m finding ways to offer my skillsets to our societies from the lessons learned in my other job. That has taken a great deal of time and effort, and I’m growing in those aspects of my future work. More on that in the future. And I’m working to increase my connections to societies that may want to hire me to help them and their members with concepts, research strategies and resources, that can inspire them to dig into their research on their families to tell their stories.
SO if you would hold me in your thoughts and prayers (if you are so inclined) as I work to make this transition full of joy and promise into the future. Please send me messages, comments, ideas and more. I’d appreciate your support and help!
Lineage Journeys 