I’m writing this on a flight to Washington, DC.
Before I left, my ex-husband said something that stopped me cold: “You should bring your passport.”
Do I need papers to travel to DC?
The question landed in my body before my mind could process it. Suddenly, the horrific scenes I’d been watching on screens, the images from Minneapolis and other cities, weren’t just happening somewhere else to other people. They were here. They were now. They were mine to prepare for.
That single suggestion made me understand something I’d been resisting: I need to be prepared now for what lies ahead of us as individuals and as a country.
The GenX Reflex
I rarely feel a lack of agency. According to Instagram, it’s a very GenX trait. It’s what has propelled my business, and it’s the perspective I bring to working with our clients. Supporting them to make clear choices, especially in complexity.
Lately, though, as I watch what’s happening in Minneapolis and in other cities across the U.S., I feel stuck.
Not helpless, not hopeless but stuck.
From where I sit in the Bay Area, I’m experiencing a grave kind of threat: a threat to my freedom to choose, to move freely, to make decisions (even imperfect ones) without the potential of deadly consequences.
And if I’m honest, what I’ve been searching for in news, podcasts, and newsletters isn’t just information, it’s solace. I want a consistent, simplified, coherent, predictable explanation of what is happening and what I should do next.
But certainty has always been a myth. We reach for it when we’re afraid and when we want to know what to expect and how to react. We want the relief of a clear script.
Still, we can have conviction and confidence and find ourselves lost and uncertain anyway.
That’s where I am.
The Internal Conflict I Can’t Ignore
Watching, reading, and listening have created a persistent tension in me. There’s an ongoing internal dialogue: What would I do if this were my community? And close behind it: What if this happens here?
That tension brings me directly to my values.
I value integrity, courage, care, and equity. I also value safety, financial security, and peace.
And suddenly the question I’m sitting with isn’t What do I value? The question is:
How do I decide which value to prioritize when integrity may invite risk, and that risk could jeopardize the safety and security of my family and the people I employ?
What I know about values is this: they don’t always line up neatly. Sometimes they conflict. And when circumstances are complex and fear-inducing, living your values can feel less clear, not because you don’t have them, but because you have more than one that matters.
Part of why I’m sharing this is that it’s an act of thinking critically about what’s happening in our country, what I feel about it, and how I want to respond while accepting that nothing is static. My values aren’t disappearing. But the order they rise to the surface keeps shifting.
A Practice I Return To: Naming What’s Happening
When I notice confusion or tension rising internally, I begin by naming what’s happening.
Turning to the dictionary is one of the first places I go, not because I’m searching for certainty, but because language helps me discern. Defining the words that shape my thoughts slows me down enough to separate feeling from fact and reaction from meaning.
Right now, the words that keep surfacing for me are tyranny and terror.
Here’s how I’m understanding them.
Tyranny is external.
It tells us what will happen if we disobey. It’s visibly expressed through authority, punishment, and demands for compliance. It is often justified as necessary, reasonable, or “for the greater good.”
Terror is internal.
It tells us what might happen if we speak, act, or choose differently. It is quieter, often invisible even to ourselves. It lives in the body, showing up as self-censorship, vigilance, compliance, and exhaustion.
Tyranny can be seen in policies, hierarchies, actions, and consequences. Terror persists even when the tyrant is absent.
What strikes me most is this: Terror grows when people perceive a loss of access to choice.
This is where values matter, but not in the way I usually talk about them.
Values as Ideas vs. Values as Something You Can Stand On
A value doesn’t counter fear simply because it is written down or intellectually endorsed.
Values become meaningful when they anchor choice alongside fear. Not instead of it. Fear doesn’t disappear, but something steadier becomes available inside us.
Living your values is not about being virtuous. It’s about being in relationship with yourself, especially when the cost of choice feels threatening. Courage, for example, isn’t the absence of fear. It’s the intrapersonal experience of still being able to choose in the presence of fear.
When I talk about the intrapersonal experience of values, I mean values that are not just concepts I admire, but something I can actually return to in my body, something I can feel myself standing on when the ground feels unstable. It is the clarity of my integrity.
Terror narrows. It thrives on disconnection from self. When people lose access to what matters to them, fear can begin to govern their behavior.
Values, when lived, expand. They reconnect us to meaning and authorship. They restore agency, not as defiance, but as alignment. People who live their values aren’t necessarily louder or more aggressive. They are often steadier. Clearer. Less easily coerced by fear.
The Contradiction is Part of the Practice
Here’s the thing: I love the idea of values, but in practice, many of the values we hold can feel contradictory.
You may value integrity, courage, care, equity, or growth, and also value safety, financial security, peace, or collaboration.
The work isn’t to eliminate the contradiction.
The work is to build a strong intrapersonal relationship with yourself and your values such that you can hold that tension without collapsing into numbness, performative certainty, or paralysis.
Values treated as abstract principles can coexist with tyranny. They can even mask it.
But values held with empathy and self-compassion can become a place we return again and again when terror rises.
So the antidote is not values-as-ideas, but values as lived, intrapersonal experiences. And lived experience requires practice and experimentation. You feel the consequences of value-based decisions. You learn where a value supports you and where it asks more of you.
Sometimes safety means stability for your family. And curiosity might help you explore how far safety will take you before courage asks you to risk more.
What This Means for My Leadership Right Now
This moment is bringing me back to the beginning of the leadership journey, Recognition and Awareness, not because I’ve forgotten what I know, but because I’m being asked to live it again from a deeper place.
I notice how easily I look outward for certainty: what’s appropriate, what’s correct, what will create the “right” outcome. And I also know the painful truth many of us learn eventually, showing up in a way that is “appropriate” does not guarantee safety. Following the rules does not guarantee protection. Performing correctness does not guarantee belonging.
So the questions I’m practicing instead are:
- Where is terror narrowing me right now?
- Where am I forfeiting choice without noticing?
- What value do I want to be guided by in the next small decision, not forever, just next?
For me, that looks like a few simple commitments:
Critical thinking. Pausing. Discerning. Questioning inherited norms and internalized stories. Not letting the fastest narrative become the truest one.
Relational connection. Not isolating. Seeking grounded community. Discussing my feelings with the team. Staying in relationship rather than retreating inward.
Values-based action—scaled to reality. Letting emotion point me toward what matters. Taking steps I can sustain. Refusing to let terror be the primary decision-maker.
I’m also reminding myself that fear is not proof that something is wrong with me. Fear is information. It’s an indicator.
And I’m remembering that action isn’t always the first requirement. Sometimes the first requirement is presence, staying connected to my values long enough to let them shape my next move.
What I’m Holding as I Close
Watching what’s happening in Minneapolis has reinforced something for me in a visceral way.
There is a difference between values as concepts and values as lived, intrapersonal experiences.
I don’t pretend to know what the people of Minneapolis are experiencing. But I can name the terror that rises in me when I imagine what comes next. When someone I trust tells me to bring my passport to travel within my own country.
And I can also name this: I don’t have to wait for the next external development to decide what happens inside me.
The real decision is quieter and more immediate:
What will I do next to stay in relationship with my values, so fear doesn’t run my decision-making?
Enough people anchored this way can make tyranny unsustainable, not through resistance alone, but through non-cooperation with fear.
And for me, that begins the same way it always has: Returning to myself.