Hi friend,
Yesterday afternoon — on the first full moon of the new year — a group of us gathered to read Audre Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic” together.
This is the first of this kind of study space I’ve hosted in over a decade, so I didn’t quite know what to expect, and launching something new always makes me nervous. I prepped too much and not enough, stumbled over my introduction spiel, forgot my facilitation questions.
But what grew in that Reading Room yesterday was exactly what I’ve been craving — and the part of me that loved college seminars curled up in a professor’s living room was absolutely delighted.
We were rigorous, emergent, thoughtful, vibrant in the exploration.
We sat with newly-visceral reactions to Lorde’s gendered language alongside deep gratitude and honor for a shared political and spiritual lineage. We talked about the erotic as a music’s measure between our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. We asked: what does it look like to build organizations, lead movements, navigate conflict from that place of aliveness?
Here’s what I’m still thinking about:
“When we’re resourced, we’re not afraid of change.”
All change requires loss. All loss requires grief. All grief is a kind of death — and so, when we fear change, we fear our own mortality. And the erotic, in Lorde’s framing, is what resources us for that transformation — building the capacity to stay present to intensity instead of looking away.
I told the group about my past lives in birth, sex, and death work. In all three: resistance to the intensity causes so much more pain than surrendering to the transformation. The erotic is the aliveness that lets us be with what we’re feeling.
“Use without consent of the used is abuse.”
As a former sex educator, teaching endlessly about enthusiastic consent, this line from Lorde landed hard.
We’d been talking about the relational quality of the erotic — how the erotic operates on a few different planes and scales — at the level of the individual, yes, but also about what becomes possible when we’re actually with each other.
And then Lorde writes: “To share the power of each other’s feelings is different from using another’s feelings as we would use a kleenex… use without consent of the used is abuse.”
We can’t use each other’s feelings to meet our own needs and call it connection. We can’t extract what we want from the encounter and call it relationship.
The erotic (and not merely the sexual) requires consent, enthusiastic consent. Lorde writes further about holding complexity together — staying present to difference without trying to flatten or control it.
The erotic demands something different: presence, honesty (with self, first), and curiosity. Lorde offers us a blueprint of how be with each other in ways that don’t replicate domination.
Transition, conflict, transformation — all of these sites of radical change — require actually attending to what the other person is offering, what we’re each feeling and experiencing, and what we’re building together.
“My theory of change is that we change through relationship.”
In our discussion, we kept coming back to this question: okay, but so what? How does this actually translate to our organizing spaces, our workplaces, our communities?
One participant said: “My theory of change is that we change through relationship” — and I shivered with delight and recognition.
Mine, too.
Transition design — the brilliant work of systems change — is built on the tiniest interactions, the smallest interpersonal experiences.
We don’t change through perfect frameworks or polished strategies — not our workplaces, not our neighborhoods, not our broader social fabric.
We change through the messy, iterative work of being with each other in difference — staying connected through disagreement, using our differences as the creative force that generates something new.
This is why I do conflict work as a core focus of transition design. It’s why I focus on relational infrastructure as a strategic component of organizational culture change.
It’s why most conversations I have with changemakers returns to: how are you actually being with each other when it gets hard?
The erotic is what keeps us in it. The erotic is what brings us back to generative conflict — instead of the avoidant false harmony we run to, or the burn-it-all-down ruckus we demand — both out of a deep fear of Lorde’s erotic.
If you want to listen to the full conversation (all 90 minutes of us reading, wrestling, and thinking out loud together), the recording is up on Intimate Practice — my Patreon for ongoing study, weekly reflections, and monthly Reading Rooms.
Pour yourself a cup of tea and join us here →
And speaking of change through relationship:
This month, I’m running a research project on how senior leaders navigate organizational transformation — and I’m looking for 15 changemakers to talk with.
I want to understand: What does it actually look like when Chiefs of Staff, COOs, Executive Directors, and other senior leaders guide their organizations through conflict and transition? What’s blocking progress? What makes change stick?
If you’re a woman of color in organizational leadership, a nonbinary ED, or someone who’s navigated (or is currently navigating) significant organizational change — I’d love to talk with you.
Here’s how it works:
- 60-minute conversation
- I ask questions to understand what’s actually happening and offer strategic frameworks based on patterns I’m seeing across organizations
- You get a follow-up memo with insights and pathways forward
This is a research conversation, not a sales call. You get real strategic support; I get to understand the patterns across changemakers doing this work.
If you’re interested, just reply “I’M IN” and I’ll reach out with next steps.
If someone else comes to mind who’d be great for this conversation, forward this their way or reply with their name — I’d love an introduction.
I have space for 15 conversations through January 31st.
Wishing you an abundant and transformational 2026, friend. Thank you for being here with me.
