In her prophetic wisdom, Octavia Butler wrote the famous line: “God is Change.”
Right now, the pace of change is accelerating in ways that feel relentless. And in times of rapid, destabilizing change, there’s a pattern I’m attending to as it plays out — interpersonally, organizationally, institutionally.
When systems are threatened, they clench down. Gaslighting and disorientation happen at scale. Those in charge consolidate power through tactics designed to make us question our own perception of reality.
Many of us know these dynamics intimately. Often, they’re coded into our bodies because we’ve seen them before — maybe from our families of origin, or in the bureaucracy of organizations we’ve worked for. The pattern recognition is often somatic, embodied, and perhaps nameless. Sometimes, the body knows before the mind catches up.
If we can recognize these patterns interpersonally, we already have the literacy to name what’s happening systemically. And if we can name it, we can choose how we move in response.
the two-for-one punch
Most of us don’t live at a binary of privilege or oppression. We live at the intersections — some flavors of privilege, some flavors of oppression — all teaching us different lessons about power at the same time.
And when someone at a similar intersection of identities behaves in oppressive ways — when faces that look like ours carry out abusive systems — there’s an added layer of grief and violence that occurs.
There’s the grief of the oppressive act itself. But I’ve noticed that we also see this layer of betrayal on top of it.
We expect people who’ve experienced similar oppressions to know better, to behave better. We expect they won’t mimic the oppressor’s playbook, too.
This is why seeing Black and brown faces enlisted in ICE hits differently. This is why oppression at the hands of someone who shares your marginalized identities feels like a compounded trauma — not just the shockwave of grief, but the ricochet of grief that our kin has chosen a path of harm.
I think of it as a kind of colonial violence when even our brains and relationships have been colonized — that our internal worlds or our ways of being together have been shaped by domination.
the question that haunts me
So here’s the question I keep exploring, across all of my work:
If we live our lives at the intersections of privilege and oppression, and if we learn our deepest lessons about conflict from control and subjugation — what does it look like to build relational skills, steward power well, and design new ways of being together, instead?
We aren’t taught to navigate conflict well. We’re taught how to oppress each other and extract from each other, rather than work and play generatively together.
When we go to navigate conflict with someone else, the embodied ways we know are often just replicating the harm we’ve seen done — instead of transforming that pattern into something new.
This is why I write and teach about relational skills for systems change, why I help organizations build a culture of conflict resilience in pursuit of transition design. Systemic oppression happens because people (and often the people we trust won’t) do it — and then we’re left to handle the fallout.
when change accelerates, we clench down
Our default in times of rapid change is to clench down. We throw away relationships; we go ghost and avoid or run away from the conversations that might feel too hard, too messy, too fraught.
But what if we could practice something else within our own organizations and movements?
Not for protesting — not for going up against the horrors that be — but for building the relational infrastructure within our spaces that can hold us through transformation.
What if we could go from conflict-avoidant to conflict-resilient? What if we could learn to engage generative conflict that actually enables the equity outcomes we’re working toward?
Conflict isn’t just something to resolve and move past. Conflict is a design input.
It tells us what needs to change — but only if we’re willing to work with it.
This is transition design work. This is the work of building relational skills as organizational infrastructure. This is how we move from failed equity initiatives that don’t stick to integrated systems transformation grounded in actual relational capacity.
from pattern recognition to pattern transformation
I believe that equity work is inherently joyful work — that the work of reimagining systems to be anti-oppressive, equitable, even matriarchal — that work demands joy and vulnerability and creativity and care.
But we have to actively work toward transforming domination-based patterns into liberatory relational practice. We have to build the muscle.
Pattern recognition is the first step. Pattern transformation is the work.
And that work happens at the most intimate scale first: at the level of how we’re with each other, right now, when it gets hard.
The individual and interpersonal aren’t separate from the systemic. Our relationships are where we actually practice the new patterns before they become culture, before they become structure.
Relationship is the laboratory. Conflict is the experiment.
Right now, I’m running a research project to understand how conflict actually shows up for senior leaders navigating organizational transformation.
This is not just theory — I want to understand the real patterns emerging inside organizations right now, especially from those guiding complex, messy, necessary change.
If you’re a woman of color in leadership, a nonbinary ED, a strategy or operations lead — and you’ve been at the helm of hard transitions — I’d love to hear from you.
Here’s how it works:
- A 30-minute conversation where I’ll ask questions and share some of the patterns I’m noticing
- You’ll get a follow-up memo with reflections and strategic frameworks tailored to your context
- This is research, not a sales call. You get real support. I get to deepen the study.
I still have 10 conversations spots open through January 31. If this is you — or someone you know — I’d love to talk.
Just hit reply with “I’M IN” and I’ll send next steps.
The work of building new worlds requires us to practice new ways of being together.
I’ll be studying this question for many years to come. I hope you’re here in the study with me.
