Episode 98. Is It Wrong to Talk About Anything Else Right Now? Working, Creating, and Carrying On in a Time of Crisis

The Inner Briefing Podcast

Listen on Spotify
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Listen on Pocket Casts

Episode Description:

There are moments when the world feels too heavy to keep living normally.

You open your phone and see violence, injustice, grief, and chaos. Suddenly posting about your work, your breakfast, your promotion, your art, or even your day job feels..wrong.

It feels insensitive, self-centered, or like you’re ignoring what actually matters.

So what are we supposed to do?

Stop creating? Stop sharing? Stop living?

In this episode, I (Marie Groover) share a conversation with a client who questioned whether she should promote her newly published novel while real harm was unfolding close to home. It was a question that quickly became my own.

Together, we explore the tension between awareness and paralysis, grief and participation, responsibility and humanity.

Because maybe the real question isn’t about social media at all.

Maybe, it's about whether we’re allowed to keep showing up in our lives (at work, in our relationships, in our creativity) while the world is hurting (and while we are hurting with it).

Drawing on a powerful idea echoed by Dan Savage and Glennon Doyle — we grieve, we work, and we dance — this episode offers a reframe:

What if continuing to live isn’t a betrayal of the moment? What if it’s part of what we’re protecting?

If you’ve been wondering whether now is the wrong time to share your work, celebrate something small, laugh with friends, or simply focus on your responsibilities, this conversation is for you.

You are not the problem for still being alive inside a painful world. And your light might be helping someone stay in the fight more than you’ll ever know.

Work with Marie: ⁠https://www.thecorppsychic.com/home/about⁠

Strange Breathless Days by Hannah Layne: ⁠https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/strange-breathless-days-hannah-layne/1149272500⁠

We Can Do Hard Things Episode Reference: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/your-nervous-system-needs-this/id1564530722?i=1000742416807⁠

Transcript:

Welcome back to The Inner Briefing — where we make sense of the inner world so we can show up more honestly in the outer one.

Lately it feels like every time we open our phones, the world is heavy. And in moments like this, even normal life starts to feel morally confusing — work, sharing, laughing, promoting something you care about, sharing a recent accomplishment – engaging in anything that isn’t a tribute to or an acknowledgement of what’s going on around us. 

So today I want to talk about a question a client asked me recently that I haven’t been able to shake…

Is it insensitive at best or harmful at worst to market ourselves or our work in the climate of our current headlines?

Which is also a flavor of the question – Is it wrong to keep showing up in your life, work, business when the world is hurting and you are hurting alongside it?

Let’s get into it.

One of my clients launched a new book last week. It’s a romance novel based in a northern Michigan college town, centered around hockey. It’s called Strange Breathless Days if you want to order it (shameless client plug - Go Hannah Go!!).

And as she was planning this book launch, social media has played a key role in her marketing and launch plan. And yet – there is kind of a lot going on right now in the US. ICE being one, the Epstein files being another. Looking around, or going online, there is basically no shortage of chaos, disappointment, violence, despair. And it’s devastatingly, immobilizingly heavy. 

So heavy, that like my client, it may make you wonder – “should I post online right now, about me, about whatever I’m working on or bringing to the world?” 

Because if you are like my client, posting about a romance novel may feel insensitive at best and harmful at worst. Like, how can we talk about romance when people are being abused, disrespected, held at gunpoint or shot, and treated without the smallest drop of dignity or humanity or basic care? 

In fact, she actually reached out and asked me this last week during her launch. Having strong ties to Minnesota, she has been actively involved and contributing meaningfully to a community where she once lived, where Renee Good was shot maybe a block away from where my client once worked. 

She said, “Marie, it just feels so insensitive to post about my romance novel while this is happening. I don’t think I’m going to post about it on Instagram or Tiktok right now.” 

Now, I am her coach – because this is a client who is a successful environmental scientist, 9-5 holder, creative business owner AND published writer of both novels and screenplays, we could say that I operate as her multifaceted, portfolio career, success coach. I’m here to keep her in her lane, and in her work, and out of her head and out of her bullshit (no offense here, because we all have our bullshit that keeps us from our work and our success). So typically, when I hear a client give me any reason at all to not share or promote their work with the world, I interrogate it big time. 

But in this case, I had to pause too. I had to say, “I understand.” I had to sit with the magnitude of this question and with the violence and harm happening all around us. And what I did, as a coach, was I helped to guide and re-center her to the magnitude of her work in this novel, and to the massive accomplishment of her publication, and to the service, to the gift that she is bringing to the world with this book. 

But what also happened is that I couldn’t let go of this question, wondering – is it insensitive? Is it taking away from what’s playing out on a world stage right now? And, how do we ensure that we are on the right side of history – on the right side of humanity, that I am moving through the world with love and compassion and positive contribution to the freedom and happiness of all? And where does posting about what we are doing, eating, wearing, working on, selling, creating fit into this positive contribution? 

And I have a few things to say. But first I want to share with you something that I heard Glennon Doyle say on her podcast, We Can Do Hard Things, during an interview at Kripalu. She quoted someone else and elaborated on this quote. Now, I’m going to do the same thing, except I’m quoting both Dan Savage and Glennon Doyle and adding my own 2 cents. 

During the 1980s and 90s AIDs crisis, Dan Savage said this: “We buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced at night. And it was the dance that kept us in the fight because it was the dance that we were fighting for.”

Glennon went on to say, we grieve in the morning, we work during the day, and we dance at night. And dancing might not be literally dancing, and the occasion might not actually be nighttime. But in order to get through this, we have to have them all. We grieve, we work, we dance. 

And it is the dance that reminds us that we are alive, that life is worth living, that the fight is worth fighting for, that we are more than the violence, the pain, the shame, the harm, and that we are going to dance both for it and in spite of it. 

Now, the grieving, the working, the dancing – we can’t really have one or two, without the others. We have to have them all, otherwise we forget. We forget why we are here and what we are doing anything for. And the truth is, we are working both for the grief and the pain and the injustice AND for the dance, for the inherent right to be alive, and to be exercising that right while we work.

Glennon says this so much more beautifully than I am saying it, so please do go listen to that episode. But in answering Hannah’s question, which became my own question, which maybe is also your own question? Which is not just about social media and promoting our work, but really it’s, 

How do we show up in this world, online or in person, and talk about anything other than what is going on? How do we show up in this world, online or in person, right now, in anything other than despair? How do we show up in the world, how do we allow ourselves to be perceived in small joys or through unrelated topics, in our workdays, at our 9-5s or in our businesses at all, when there is tragedy around us, so close to home? And how is our showing up, not a distraction from, or an insensitivity to the atrocities that are happening and unfolding simultaneously to our smiles and laughter or if not smiles and laughter, our mere focus on something, anything else? 

I’m talking about being a parent and packing a school lunch. I’m talking about going to work every day and editing that excel spreadsheet or the powerpoint. I’m talking about being a speaker and still showing up on stage to present about your subject matter expertise which might not be human rights. I’m talking about grabbing a coffee with your girlfriends and actually talking about your morning sickness or how many times you stubbed your toe this morning or whatever small or big accomplishment or feat exists in your current magically mundane existence and laughing about life together, even if that is not centered on what’s happening around us. I’m talking about posting a picture of your breakfast or the mug you recently finished, or the painting you painted, or the outfit you’re wearing, or your kid graduating, or the book you just published or the song that you wrote, or the wave you just surfed. 

How do we keep showing up, how do we keep doing these things, how do we keep living? 

And to this, for now, I say “we must.” “you must.” 

You must not let the atrocities of the world kill the movings and desires of your heart and your soul. You must not let these atrocities stop you from taking action on and showing up in and creating momentum around what moves your heart and soul. Because that is your light, that is your dance. And sharing your light with the world is reminding us all that the dance is also what we are fighting for. 

We need to remind ourselves of the kind of world that we want to live in, and we need to actively LIVE in that world, participate in that world, as a contribution to building that world. We don’t think a new way of being into existence, we have to be it. 

Which doesn’t mean that we don’t acknowledge, and grieve, and get fucking angry (because these things also move us and inspire us into action and contribution). It doesn’t mean that we forget or ignore or distract from or move on. It means that we remember and we show up for that remembrance. 

It means that we share our good work, seemingly relevant or not. It means that we dance and we share our dance. And that that is important too. That that has its place too. 

Picture this: An activist coming across Strange Breathless Days, my client’s romance novel, whether on social media or through their local bookstore, taking an evening to read it in full and getting the exact respite they needed, the exact rest and rejuvenation they needed, the vacation they needed, to put their feet back into the game wholeheartedly and 100%. To continue to show up, because they aren’t burnt out, because they have been refueled. 

And that is the power that our light brings, that our dance brings, that our art brings, that our words bring, that our creative practices and gifts to the world brings – these are the services that we bring, for which maybe we never even realize or see the material impact of, directly. 

So when you look around you and you see a world full of pain and suffering, and you are one of beautiful souls who feels the pang to create, to share your heart, in whatever capacity to the world, but you think that maybe it’s not the right time or place, respectfully, let that thought go and create. And share. And show the fuck up in your work, whatever it is. Because it is a contribution. And it might not look the way your brain or even other people are telling you it’s supposed to look – but you never know who you are helping get to the finish line. 

Don’t dim yourself because the world is dark. Shine brighter and remind us why we are still fighting. 

And don’t forget that if you are creating for money, if you are an author or a ceramicist or an artist or a playwright or a speaker or a musician, or even a 9-5er – you can always use your little joys, your big work to either fund contributions to the world that you believe in, to the causes that you believe in, to support and helping and activating on behalf of ideas and people you believe in, or even to raise awareness about whatever it is that you believe in. Because no matter what, it’s not too small or insignificant, and there is always something that we can do. So if you feel your heart pulling you in that way – as one of my coaches has often said to me, get out of your ass and get into service. 

Y’all there is so much more that I can say about all of this, but what I will say instead, for now, is thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. If you are feeling some type of way right now, you aren’t alone. And if you are wanting support in your work, if you want someone to talk to, to keep you out of your bullshit and in the work that matters, I’m always here - whether for one session or a package. Book a discovery call today. And whatever you do – don’t stop being you. I’ll say it again

Don’t dim yourself because the world right now is dark. Shine brighter and remind us why we have to keep fighting.