Here’s to following breadcrumbs
I’m Anna-Marie. I used to shorten my name to Anna but I have since reclaimed its fullness. (People often mis-read, mis-pronounce, and mis-spell my name as Anne-Marie but each time that happens a kitten dies; so, up to you.)
I don’t have any daily practices. The closest I get is following breadcrumbs that life kindly and mysteriously lays out before me. When I follow these, my cells get irreversably rearranged for the better.
I hope that this Substack will shape itself into cellularly rearranging breadcrumbs for both of us.
An ongoing discovery of my ecological self
Living in Exeter, Devon (UK), on the cusp of Dartmoor and the Jurassic Coast, my ongoing discovery of myself as an ecological creature saturates my work, interests, and perspectives.
I currently describe my work as being that of an organisational ecologist and embodied facilitator. After authoring the reimagined story of ecological organisations and the accompanying Ecological Organisations Framework in 2023, released under creative commons, a whole new world has opened up that I'm loving exploring: organisations as edge-less, of relationship, deeply relational, and firmly entangled in social systems, ecosystems, and planetary health.
I write about my work and other things in this substack and host and produce the podcast Generative Worlding. I initiated the first season of Facilitation Pods, now continuing as a commons under co-stewardship. In the pods, we are co-crafting an intimate space for self- and shared-enquiry about facilitation and how we change and are changed by the role, a space that's also become a peer supervision investigation of our lived experiences.
My perspectives
My perspectives and experiences are moulded by over twenty-five years of scraggy and inconvenient health issues that often bring my gaze to my inner experiences and responses with laser focus. Over time this has brought me a relationship with life that is private, intimate, queer, intense, and utterly important.
My perspectives are also influenced by the middle space I now situate as a woman that’s no longer a young adult but not yet an elder, my white skin and middle-class upbringing in England, and chocolate; less chocolate than I'd like and more chocolate than I probably deserve.
You can find out more about my current and past focuses, along with potential breadcrumbs that might tug at your sleeve, on my website and on my LinkedIn page.
Warmest wishes,
Anna-Marie
