You Are the Author of What Comes Next

Seasons change. I tell my kids this when one of them is deep inside something hard and convinced it will always feel exactly this way forever. 

Some are longer than others. Some feel like they will never end. But you can always depend on the season changing at some point. Even if the change is so small it's hard to detect - it's there. 

And here in the Pacific Northwest, spring doesn't arrive all at once. It sneaks in when one morning suddenly appears brighter than the one before it. A week where you notice you don't need a coat before 9AM or your driving home and the sun hasn't set yet. It feels like something lighter, something more open, like the world exhaling after holding its breath for a long time.

I've noticed a shift in other places too. The podcasts I've been listening to are starting to sound different. The conversation around AI, which spent most of the last two years living in the territory of dread, is starting to shift. Not everywhere. But enough to notice. People are starting to ask different questions. Less "what is this going to take from me" and more "what might this make possible."

That's a season changing.

If you've been reading my newsletter since the beginning of the year you've lived through a season with me. We named the disruption. We sat with what couldn't be thought through at times. And now, if you look closely, something may have quietly shifted in you too. Not solved. Not finished. Just shifted. The way spring shifts things, gradually and then all at once, until you realize one morning that something is different and you can't remember exactly when it changed.

That's the moment and you were inside it the whole time.

At the end of a season I like to come back to this one question.

Who is holding the pen right now?

Not in the dramatic, crossroads sense but in the ordinary Tuesday-afternoon sense. When you're reacting to stuff instead of responding. When someone else's urgency quietly becomes your priority without a single conscious decision of your own. When you've spent three days solving a problem that wasn't actually yours to solve in the first place.

Integration isn't a destination, it isn't where you arrive after the disruption ends. It's a practice or rather returning to things that matter. The people who sustain authorship of their own stories over time aren't the ones who figured it out once and locked it in. They're the ones who keep coming back to that question, gently, without self-judgment, and redirect time and time again.

Trust me, you will hand the pen over at some point - everyone does. The skill isn't preventing it from happening in the first place but instead it's noticing it sooner. And when you do notice it,  reaching back for it with intention rather than waiting to be handed back a story you didn't mean to let someone else write.

That's what this season has been building on - not certainty. The habit of consciously returning to your own authorship.

Most people live through transitions without consciously naming them. They come out the other side changed, and they credit the circumstances rather than themselves.

Here's what I want you to try this week. Name the season you just came out of. Write it down if journaling is your thing, or even just in your own head, or out loud to someone you trust. Give it a name “this was the season of….” Give it a start date, even an approximate one. Acknowledge what it asked of you and whether it was hard.

Because the moment you identify a season, you stop being the person it just happened to. You become someone who lived it, carried it, and came through it consciously with something you didn't have before.

That's what I mean when I talk about authorship. It’s the quiet, daily kind of thing that accumulates into a life that actually feels like your the author.

🩵 One Thing I'm Loving 

On a recent trip to Germany, I was reminded how helpful a good framework can be.  We spent time with the concept of above and below the line as a team.

The short version: above the line is where you operate from accountability, curiosity, and ownership. Below the line is where defensiveness, blame, and denial live. Nobody lives permanently above the line and the line is different for everyone. The work isn't getting to perfection so you never dip below the line. Instead it's noticing when you've gone below the line, and consciously choosing to come back up.

What struck me wasn't the framework itself, which isn't new to me, but how immediately useful it became in every context we brought it into.  When I arrived home I actually used it with my husband and oldest son in a conversation that could have gone sideways. It became a shared language almost instantly, and shared language is one of the most underrated tools for staying connected when things get hard.

If you want to go deeper, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadship by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Warner Klemp combines the framework with ideas like the Drama Triangle and Empowerment Dynamic and is worth a read. But even just the two questions, am I above or below the line right now, and what would it take to move up, are enough to change how a conversation goes.

That's the kind of thing I'm always looking for. Something small enough to use today, useful enough to keep.

Remember, you are the author of what comes next. Not the circumstances, not the uncertainty.

You.

See you next week.

Heather 

P.S. If you found this week touched on something that someone you know could benefit from,  forward it. The best way this community grows is one person at a time.