from shame to integrity: embracing conflict as a liberatory practice
All of a sudden, you’re holding power.
*a lot* of power.
Position. Prestige. A shiny new title. The last signature on the budget.
You’re the one people wait on at the start of the zoom meeting. Yours is the voice that decides which policies get implemented, whose job is safe under the current administration, which communities get more advocacy money.
From the outside (and sometimes maybe from the inside) – you’re becoming someone who answers to everyone and no one.
But lately, that power has started to scare you.
When conflict arises – a restructuring decree from the board, a painful and drawn out termination, a defunded grant that ripples through your team’s programs – you feel trapped.
Suddenly, you feel like you’re being forced to choose between being a “good leader” and being a real person.
Somewhere along the way, you’ve started to feel like leadership demanded the abandonment of your humanity.
Is this what they meant by “it’s lonely at the top”?
And yet, something in you resists that binary. There’s a loud inner voice shouting at you on a daily basis, keeping you up at night as you sort through what is and what should be.
And this isn’t it.
You’ve spent years cultivating values-aligned leadership. It wasn’t an accident that you found yourself here, at the top of this hierarchy you always wanted to disrupt. In every position before this one, you’ve been the steady one, the brave one, the one who holds the line. You’ve called out leadership; you built equitable programs; you faithfully paid your union dues.
But now that you're the one being looked to – or looked at – it’s harder to tell where your values end and your fear begins.
Every single one of my clients find themselves navigating this same landscape.
They’re nonprofit executive directors, policy leaders, and movement strategists. Most of them are people with marginalized identities who fought their way to power – only to find themselves implicated in the very systems they once resisted.
They are learning, like you, that the strategies that got them here won’t sustain them – not without burning bridges, burning out, or burning up.
Me? I’ve run from hard calls, too.
I’ve made the decision that felt most aligned with my values – only to learn later that I didn’t have all the context. I’ve done all the burning – bridges, out, and up.
But when I started examining my own practice of rooted integrity and grounded leadership? I lost a few contracts – and found a deeply nourishing community, a world of equitable possibility, and an infinite well of reimagining.
You already have what you need to lead from a place of integrity. And I’m here to help you make it through that messy middle.
Here’s what I see in people as they’re crossing the threshold into liberated leadership:
You’re second-guessing a decision you know is right – but you’re afraid of the fallout. Will your team trust you after this? Will your programs and relationships survive the call?
You’ve been accused – of favoritism, of mismanagement, of gaslighting – of causing some kind of power-driven harm. And while you’re maybe a little defensive, you’re also genuinely asking, “What did I miss? What do I need to learn?”
You were once seen as the paragon of values-aligned leadership, and now you’re quietly grieving the impossibility of pleasing everyone. The dissonance is disorienting, and you don’t have too many people to grieve with.
You’ve tried to convince yourself that you don’t need people – half-scrolling this piece, eye-roll at the ready – and yet… here you are, still reading.
That quiet reckoning, early in the pre-dawn morning, away from everyone else? It’s not weakness. It’s the beginning of the deepening.
If any of that feels familiar – you’re standing at a crossroads, and you have a choice to make.
Will you armor up and retreat into shame and silence, hoping it all blows over? Or will you root down in your integrity and stay present through the discomfort?
If you're still here, I’m guessing you want to stay.
And I’m here to remind you – staying doesn’t mean perfection. It means taking one breath, one beat, before the next hard call. It means letting your body speak before your defensiveness does. It means sorting through the noise to collect the people-driven truths. It means honoring your values not just as ideals, but as an everyday practice – imperfect, alive, and in motion.
You don’t have to wait for more clarity, more credentials, more confidence.
You’re already becoming the leader you hoped to be – by standing still in the tension instead of running.
So – how do we stand still in the tension?
Let’s bring it down to earth with three gentle practices to move from shame to integrity – now, not later:
1. Try a “messy-first-draft” exercise.
Pick a low-stakes conflict space – a conversation with your chosen family, a house meeting with your coop, a trusted colleague at a peer organization. Pause before reacting, and check in with yourself and each other. Explore the conflict together, instead of from opposite sides.
2. Experiment with decision filters.
Most of the time, we have a rough abstract sense of “from our values” instead of a grounded reality of what those values actually are. Let’s move from abstract to reality with questions like: “What are the potential unintended consequences of this choice, and how might we anticipate and mitigate those consequences?” or “What’s the cost of not speaking up – and who would pay it?”
3. Use shame as a gentle flag, not a U-turn.
When shame bubbles up, try taking a breath with it. Ask yourself – what is this trying to protect? Often, shame is an invitation towards something tender, maybe even hurt – and meaningful.
These aren’t one-time actions. They’re an invitation towards a different way of being together.
Okay, so we get a little better at conflict. So what?
This work isn’t just about interpersonal repair (however sacred that work may be).
Learning to engage well with conflict is learning to steward power well.
It’s about refusing to perpetuate the systems that taught us silence is safety. It’s about building a new muscle memory for the moments when the “right” choice feels harder to make.
It’s about unlearning the patterns of oppression we all have ingrained within our bodies and brains.
We live in a world where babies and elders are bombed and starved with our tax dollars, where trans youth are systematically denied care, where silence is state-sanctioned and compliance is rewarded.
If we don’t practice showing up now – in our staff meetings, in our one-on-ones, in our family group chats, in our community listening sessions – we won’t be ready when it really matters.
Liberation doesn’t start with spectacle, with protest, with the first brick thrown. It starts with conflict – and the choice to stay.
If you’re ready to stay with the discomfort – to practice integrity in the face of fear – I want to invite you to the next Conflict Clinic.
It’s a free, confidential space where we unpack real conflicts — from the mundane to the existential — diagnose the power dynamics at play, and practice leading from alignment.
No recordings. No performative bullshit. Just a nourishing space to practice.
🌀 Save your spot here.
🌱 Bring your real-life tension and questions.
🌻 Leave with tools, reflection, and a little more steadiness in your body and work.
You don’t have to be perfect to lead well. You just have to be willing to stay.