03: Kelly Connolly Palmer, former Waco Texas City Councilperson, on Leaving Well
Kelly Connolly is a Licensed Master Social Worker, passionate about pursuing equity and the common good, by addressing issues of systemic injustice. Her work has led her from the frontlines of humanitarian aid crises to the council chambers of local government. Her steadfast belief is, as Fyodor Dostoyevsky says, “Beauty will save the world”, and that together we can co-create communities where all our neighbors can thrive. She currently lives in Chicago, IL with two rambunctious kittens and spends her days reveling in the gifts of this incredible city and centering rhythms of rest, pleasure, and play.
Kelly is a former Waco Texas City Councilmember, who resigned from her elected office after two years, left her marriage of 6 years, and moved from her hometown of 10 years all in the span of five months. In this episode, we talk about the dichotomy of knowing you’re meant to be in a place, even when serving is not easy. We also discuss societal norms that do not give permission for leaving, and leaving when there’s no other option.
Note: this episode contains occasional use of the word f***.
“I imagine people listening to this podcast are looking for signs. They’re either looking for signs to stay, or they’re looking for permission to leave.
I would just say: trust the wisdom of your body. Often our bodies know things before our brains have the language to process and put things neatly in boxes.
We cannot be led astray when we listen to that still voice in our gut that is saying stay, go, or wait.”
Additional Quotes:
“I do not think it should be the cost of admission, leadership shouldn’t come at the cost of threats to your life or loved ones, bullying, harassment. That narrative kept me going, as proof that maybe I was doing “this” right. Because I'm getting so much pushback, I’m fighting the good fight. It was good until it wasn’t.”
“What marks the best of who I was in office? I was willing to be true to my integrity and values, to make decisions to the best of my abilities, in the best interest of my most marginalized neighbors. Often that just meant acknowledging that these neighbors fucking existed in our community and were worthy of dignity and worth. That fucking matters. It was worth me using that platform that was responsible, kind, and good. That’s what I’m most proud of.”
“Some endings are hard, and some endings are mostly just good. That’s allowed. You are allowed to have a mostly just good ending. All of my endings -because they were really interlocked - were an exit from things that were out of alignment and a return home to myself. Nothing is worth the cost of not belonging to myself, not feeling comfortable in my skin, in places where me talking or staying silent is a threat.”
~
Kelly’s book recommendation:
My book recommendations for this episode:
To learn more about Leaving Well, click here.
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This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.
Transcription:
I don't think that should be the cost of admission. Like, I don't think leadership should come at the cost of threats to your life, or to your loved ones, or harassment, or bullying. But I think that narrative is what kept me going of like, maybe this is proof that I'm doing this right because I'm getting so much pushback. It means that I'm like fighting the good fight. A lot of that was good until it wasn't.
This is Leaving Well, where we unearth and explore the realities of leaving a job, role, project, or title with intention and purpose, and when possible, joy. I'm Naomi Hattaway, your host. I will bring you experiences and lessons learned about necessary endings in the workplace, with nuanced takes from guests on topics such as grief.
Leadership and career development braided throughout will be solo episodes sharing my best practices and leaving well framework. Expect to be inspired, challenged and reminded that you too can embed and embody the art and practice of leaving well as you seek to leave your imprint. In this world, Kelly Connolly is a licensed master social worker passionate about pursuing equity and the common good by addressing issues of systemic injustice.
Her work has led her from the front lines of humanitarian aid crises to the council chambers of local government. Her steadfast belief is, as Fyodor Dostoevsky says, beauty will save the world and that together we can co create communities where all our neighbors can thrive. She currently lives in Chicago, Illinois with two rambunctious kittens and spends her days reveling in the gifts of the incredible city of Chicago centering rhythms of rest Pleasure and play.
Kelly and I actually know each other. We are friends and we met during some mutual council chamber local government stuff. And I'm so excited for her to share more about that. Kelly, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. You are one of the women that I most admire in the world and the ways that you show up with softness and courage and grace and it's so exciting to see and be a part of this new endeavor.
Thank you. And I'm, you know, it's so interesting that you said that about courage and grace because I think that has a lot to do with what we're about to talk about. In the concept of leaving. Well, and your transition story. And I want to just say also for the people that are listening, Kelly has a lot of transition and change that has happened in her life in the past.
And so this episode may end up being multiple episodes, or you may hear, um, kind of nuance-y threads of all of the transitions, uh, in addition to workplace. And that is actually part of the joy of leaving. Well, is that it does encompass all of life. So let's get started. Kelly, what. Three words would you use to describe change and transition, either generally or recently in your life?
I think recently in my life, to paint a little bit of a picture, I decided last August that I was going to leave my marriage, the city that I had lived in for a decade and serving in local elected office as, um, city councilwoman and mayor pro tem, and those changes and transitions, I would say were rooted in a sense of liberation and grief and discovery.
Those are really good words, and I'm interested to talk more about them because having it be rooted in grief means either that you knew it was coming or that you were maybe surprised by it. So I'm curious to dive into that a little more later. Can you tell us more, whatever feels comfortable for you about all of that transition?
Yeah. So I was elected to local office in November of 2020. I got to vote for Joe and
Kamala, which was really fucking cool and had the time of my life running for office with this incredible group of humans that believed in this idea of a more beautiful Waco. Was rooted in equity and neighbor love and justice and, um, this commitment to imagination and felt so alive and so fully myself, and then I got elected and almost immediately got my ass banked and, um, spent two.
grueling years trying to bring life to this vision that both brought a lot of hope to neighbors that I don't think had experienced a lot of hope through the vehicle of local government before and also came at an incredibly high cost to me physically and psychologically and relationally and emotionally.
That shifted and highlighted things in my relationship to work and my relationship to my then husband and my relationship to myself and my body. And after two years of this, I was starting to not recognize myself. I. Uh, I think our bodies are incredibly telling of who we are and how we're doing. And, uh, I think shifting our relationships with our bodies is normal and helpful, but I think my body was sounding so many alarms.
I gained 20 pounds in a year. I upped my antidepressants twice and I wanted to up my antidepressants again. And my therapist said, Hey, I'll, I'll up this for you if you want to do this, um, but I think this will allow you to nem out further to harm yourself further. And so if that is the choice you want to make, I will, like, empower you to make that decision.
But I, I think what you actually need to do is you need to shift. Decisions. So all of this was going on in the background of Roe falling and Texas continuing to threaten to build a wall along our border with Mexico. And I represented a really high population of immigrants with a variety of documentation statuses and the assault of white supremacy on black and brown.
Bodies and I represented 85% of my constituents were low income people of color and all of these things were going on and I felt in one way a lot of privilege and power that protected me from some of this and also my own experiences of oppression and marginalization being a young woman in office and last summer I went out of town for a week for a conference with other progressive local electeds and had somewhere between Like a revelation and almost like a psychotic break and that like what I was doing could no longer be done and I came home from that trip realizing that the life I was living was killing me and it looked really beautiful from the outside and I had a lot of accolades about what my relationship looked like and the work that I was doing and the role that I played in my community.
And yet I felt like I was wearing someone else's clothes and none of them fit and they felt uncomfortable and they felt constricting and felt this like overwhelming sense of like power and agency that I was 31 at the time. And I was like, I can either continue on a trajectory like this, that will probably lead me eventually to be institutionalized.
Like, I think the route that I'm taking is so harmful to my wellbeing, or I can make some really hard decisions. Immediately that will put me back on a trajectory of well being and alignment. I felt really out of alignment and out of control and like I had ceded my control to my community and my community got to decide who Kelly was and how my time was spent and what my values were and not the other way around.
And so last summer, I. evaluated my relationship, the city that I was living in, and my job and realized that I wanted and needed to exit all three of them and then started immediately, um, processes to unwind myself from each of those roles and relationships. Okay. So
first of all, thank you for sharing all of that. And I think, you know, as I was writing down some notes, the thing that came so powerfully out of what you said, I mean, all of it is powerful. But the thing that that rose up to the top for me was all of that was in the pursuit of something. Um, so I'm curious what that is for you.
What was, you know, you, you, you mentioned that you ceded control to the community, and that is something that I think a lot of us do, um, in service of, in service to. What do you think that is. Biggest pieces. What's the biggest theme or what were you seeking that you were in pursuit of in all of the tingling away of, of who Kelly, who you are.
I think there's a couple of things. I think some of this is rooted in. My like social location of growing up in a white evangelical upper middle class family that had really strong faith narratives around pouring yourself out for the oppressed and denying your own needs on behalf of your neighbor. And that seeking justice would come at a cost and maybe the cost was your life metaphorically or physically and.
While I think that has often been the cost of doing this kind of work, I don't think that should be the cost of admission. Like, I don't think leadership should come at the cost of threats to your life or to your loved ones or harassment or bullying or marginalization. And I think particularly for women and for people of color, for any marginalized community and in the ways those are all compounded, that has often been the case.
Um, but I think that narrative is what Kept me going. I'm like, maybe this is proof that I'm doing this right because I'm getting so much pushback It means that I'm like fighting the good fight and I'm I'm pouring myself out And so this is like a righteous thing and a good thing and I think Moderation is not a language.
I'm particularly fluent in So a lot of that was good until it wasn't I think I was also elected in 2020 and so I was a white woman Reckoning with the ways that I benefit from white supremacy and the ways that I participate in the patriarchy and the ways that I participate in violent systems of oppression.
And so I think that was also a piece of I'm a white woman representing a predominantly working class, black and brown community, um, me being in pain, me experiencing public humiliation, me experiencing threats. I probably deserve some of this, to some extent, and like, if this is hard for me, how much harder is it for everyone else, which I think is twisted, and I think In trying to not center myself, I still managed to center myself a lot in that, but it felt like this weird mix of guilt and this is what it means to be holy or right or good, and the sense of I'm as a social worker in Waco for the last decade, like I'm bearing witness to so much trauma and so much inequity and so much injustice that I wanted to give myself like I saw the ugliness of the ways that oppression took on form and shape in my community and I wanted to actively use all the power and all the tools that I had at my disposal and I knew I wasn't doing politics for the long run.
So in some ways it was like, well, I'd rather kill him. I'm going to leave it all on the fucking field. And I did, but leaving it all on the field, like left me maimed. Like I'm thinking about like football players in high school that have like a traumatic brain injury. It's like, yeah, they, they won that national championship in 2007, but like, they still have that CDE.
15 years later, and I think in kind of similar ways, it's like, yeah, that we got paid parental leave across the line. We got a third of our American rescue plan dollars into affordable housing for the first time ever. We, we got a bilingual communications plan for the first time. So some of that work really paid off in really substantial ways, but it did so to my like very high personal detriment, relationally, physically, psychologically, and all of the above.
So I'm glad that you went there with the good things that you got accomplished because I was going to ask you is if there's some advice or thoughts that you have looking back on it now from the lens of. Knowing that you weren't going to do politics forever, is there kind of a measured way to put yourself all in, you know, put me in coach one more play.
If you know it's not forever. Is there a magic recipe that someone could follow so it's not so detrimental to themselves or is this just. Our reality right now around being engaged in the work in service of our community or in service of whatever the mission is. Yeah. Is, is there a, is there an easier, better way do you think?
I think for me, had there been one, I would have found it. One of my best friends introduced me to design thinking on my campaign trail. And so much of that is experimentation and pivots and little, yeah, little experiments in this way or that way. And so I experimented with. How and when I took meetings and who I took meetings with and how I spent my free time versus my work time and how I was getting paid or not getting paid, kept trying to figure out if I manipulate myself in this way or that way, or my schedule or my boundaries, will I be able to do this?
And I think for the way that I am wired. I don't know how I could have done this differently. And I think in social work, we talk a lot about person and environment. And I think the environment in which you're doing this looks really different. I have good friends that are in elected office and still Texas cities, but progressive cities.
And there is an infrastructure of care and solidarity and support that I think helps keep progressive leaders afloat in ways that like a. Purple or potentially red city don't have. And so while I had support, it was often behind closed doors because it wasn't safe for those people to be out in front in public.
So I think the environment itself was so hostile to the work and to the values that I was holding that I don't think I could have been as effective as I was had I not been so balls to the walls. And I think I knew that subconsciously. And so I was like, okay, this is a high cost, but like my neighbors are worth it.
If I'm only doing it for X number of weeks or months left, What would you say you're the most proud of from your time in office? I think a memory that comes to mind is in Texas. Under homophobic state law, municipal governments get to decide at the local level, what protections LGBTQ Texans have, whether that's for housing or public accommodations or jobs.
And some of that has changed recently under the Biden administration, but the city of Waco didn't have an ordinance on the books that like explicitly protects LGBTQ residents, of which there are many. And, um, that was something that I really tried to address and there wasn't momentum on, but. The symbolic things that I did, I know mattered.
And, um, one small example is our, I was, so I was mayor pro tem. I was vice mayor, which is mostly symbolic for a year, unless something happened to the mayor and then I would be full on real mayor and, uh, our full unreal mayor missed one council meeting and it was in June amidst pride. And I could not for the life of me convinced.
Any of my other colleagues or city staff to do anything in recognition. There would be no proclamation. There would be no dollars. There would be no flag. There would be nothing that hinted at the fact that queer Wacoans existed and deserve to be protected and honored. And. I love A Little Good Trouble, and it, this meeting got to fall, uh, during June, and I got to lead the meeting, and so I wore this shirt that I borrowed from, um, a family in my district, and they have two trans kids, and the shirt looks like the Don't Mess With Texas shirt, and it says Don't Mess With Trans Kids, and I wore it under my blue blazer.
And I got a lot of crazy eyes from my colleagues and my city staff and from the dais, I got to say, you know, on behalf of all of us here on council, we want to just say a very happy pride to all of our LGBTQIA youth and families and elders, and we recognize you and we honor you and we're working to build a city where you're safe and where you get to.
Raise your family and kids and you get to pursue jobs and you get to eat at your favorite restaurants and you're safe and you have equal protection under the law that everybody else did. And. I had invited some families to come and a number of families came to that meeting, also wearing these shirts.
And I like remember this mom giving me this big hug. Um, and she had tears in her eyes and I had tears in my eyes. And I think even that tiny moment of representation of like someone sees families like ours and they give a damn is something that I'm proud of. And I think that marked the best of who I was in office is that I was willing to Be true to my integrity and be true to my values and make decisions in the best of my abilities and the best interest of my most marginalized neighbors.
And often that just meant acknowledging those neighbors fucking existed in our community and are worthy of being treated with dignity and worth. And the amount of families that had mixed status, you know, an undocumented. Grandma, or Tia, or moms of young black boys, or queer folks, or include any marginalized community here, and for people to say like, we've never seen anyone talk about us in rooms like this.
Felt like that, that fucking matters. This, this is me. Using this platform and stand in a way that is responsible and kind and good and that is what I miss. I also would say that there was moments where I would watch your time on the dais and you would say really, really, and I'm going to say it, that it was just controversial stuff.
Didn't seem to give a shit, but your voice was still shaking and so I would love for you to talk a little bit about that dichotomy around knowing you were meant to be there and your obligation to the work, because I think part of leaving well and part of our relationship to the work is that we have a sense of duty, obligation, responsibility.
So I'd love for you to just talk a little bit about how that was all in the moment, speaking up, Where your responsibility lied. You've talked about it a little bit, but just riff on it a little more. I've done a lot of trauma based therapy in the last several years that has really gotten me in tune with my body.
And so I recognize, like, my breath is sped up or my chest is getting red or my voice is glitchy. Um, and I, on one hand, am, like, very cognizant of that, and on the other hand, can, like, continue doing what I'm doing. And counsel was such a... Interesting series of opportunities to practice both of those things.
And I think often I was scared and shaky and I felt this like deep sense of resolve of like, this is right. And this is good. And this is true. And this is just, and this is what leadership looks like. Leadership looks like saying the thing and naming the thing, even, and especially when. It's going to be unpopular, and it's going to disrupt the status quo, and it's breaking these unspoken social norms.
So one example that I knew that this was going to be big is in grad school and in undergrad, I had really focused on the role of child trafficking and forced labor of children in the cocoa industry, and Waco is home to Mars chocolate, and Mars has been in several court cases and has been cited in all of these like international research papers and exposés on the role that they, like other major chocolatiers, are playing in child exploitation for this artificially cheaply priced luxury good that nobody needs.
Nobody needs chocolate. And we were getting ready to do this big Tax incentive with Mars and, uh, I told our, but behind closed doors, I told our mayor and our city manager that if we move forward with this, I in good conscience would like have to speak to these things. I had spent years researching this and they tried to, I think, listen to me and also tried to minimize the threat of that.
And I ended up being in meetings with the Like head of PR and head legal counsel for Mars of North America. And we had these conversations and, and no uncertain terms, they acknowledged that there's child labor in their pipeline and then said things of like, but these are all the ways we're mitigating it, which is what they've been saying for the last 20 years on record.
So I spent time talking to our local anti trafficking organizations because I'd worked in the anti trafficking and anti labor space. And talk to my colleagues and nobody would budge on this and instead in ways that this often happens, my colleagues turn this on me and said that I was bullying them and I was saying that they were human traffickers and that there are these bad and evil people and my intent was just to say, Hey, we're responsible for our impact and we're responsible for our dollars and when we know something is you.
Causing direct harm to children. Maybe we should take a pause. So during that meeting, I had all of these, I had pages and pages of notes. I had everything from my being in wake of Texas. Baylor is the largest Baptist university in the world. I had scripture about who is our neighbor and our call to our neighbor.
I had quotes from the international labor organization. I had quotes from. International litigation. I had quotes from now adults that were children in West African cocoa farms and talking about the exploitation they had, and I had all of that. So that way I could speak to some of these, depending on how the conversation went and.
I said these things clearly and with as much grace as I could muster and trying to not assign judgment and yet still said, I believe that we're responsible for our taxpayer dollars. And I don't believe this is reflective of city of Waco values. And so for these reasons, I will be voting against this and.
The amount of relational fallout I experienced with my counsel could not be underestimated for the next several months. I had council members that would not talk to me outside of meetings that snuffed me. Um, I received dozens of harassing emails about how I was. Holier than thou and there's no way that I had this kind of integrity and how I spend my own money personally Which is hilarious because I am so fucking anal about who I spend my money with and how I spend my money that i'm like I would love for you to ask me where I purchased my clothes secondhand and where I purchased my goods and how i'm supporting Social enterprises, but sure make all of these assumptions about me and assume that I have no integrity So that feels like a really clear example of I was scared and I knew there was going to be fallout because there was fallout before I was even publicly on the stage and yet I could not in good conscience have all of this information and then acquiesce to the status quo just to prevent my peers from being upset with me.
Yeah, all yes to all of that. And, and I think it's an interesting kind of pivot to take that comment. The last comment about status quo and ask you about the status quo of staying. A lot of times when I work with clients and leaving well, especially organizationally, they will get fearful. Because if they embed the concept of leaving well in their organization, their first thought is it will encourage more people to leave.
If we talk openly about ending a marriage, or if we talk openly about resigning from your big job. Won't it make others want to do it or won't it build up more muscle to be able to do it? So I'd love for you to talk to me a little bit about the status quo of staying. What that meant for you when you, maybe you were thinking and weighing out a little bit around staying, you, I mean, you left a lot of things.
Did you think about maybe just leaving one and not the others? Did it come in a package? God, my like initial thought to all of this is like, God, I hope, I hope so. I hope it's contagious. I hope leaving well is contagious. And I think that it is. I think when people, when women, particularly in heteronormative relationships, see other women leave relationships that are abusive or that are toxic or that at the end of the day, just don't serve them anymore.
I think we all of a sudden have permission to also take. That kind of a scary step and claim our agency and joy and power as good and holy and righteous things. So I think that is a real threat. I think if we talk about the toll that staying in work environments that are killing us and, or just making us crazy, I think more people will leave, but I think that's also a call and an impetus to leaders to take radical accountability for their workplace.
How they do leadership, how they do supervision, how they talk about benefits and salary and time. I think all of those things are really valuable, but I think it's also like sex ed. We can pretend that no, that like teenagers aren't having sex, but not having sex ed doesn't mean teenagers aren't going to have sex.
Like it's going to happen either way. So wouldn't we rather have people leaving in a way that's thoughtful and that is. Rooted in respect and like the positive outcomes for all parties involved so that I think that would be my response to the first half of that question. I. Almost resigned from office a year, 14 months prior to resigning.
I was, it was actually right after the Mars deal. I was just experiencing a lot of harassment. I had someone show up at my house. It was really. And I was taking tolls on my relationship and I couldn't work full time because of the, uh, how large of a responsibility council was time wise. So I almost resigned last September and then the week before I resigned, one of my other council colleagues resigned out of nowhere.
And it felt like, well, as a social worker, I'm trained in systems perspective and any shift in a system will automatically rearrange the system. And so I was like, well, maybe this is, I've been like kind of praying, asking the universe, the divine for some sort of sign. I'm like, maybe this, you know, this opening, someone new will come on.
Maybe this will kind of rearrange things in a way that will allow me to stay. And, um, it really had the opposite effect because the person that came on brought so much chaos into our system. I didn't feel like I could resign. I felt like it would be too harmful to my community for, for a third of council to resign within a month of each other.
Uh, so I decided to stay for a year and I think the gift of that year was I knew that I wasn't going to run for reelection. Okay. I know that I have somewhere between. 12 to 15 months left in office. I am going to use every single meeting that I'm in. Every time I'm talking to a reporter, every time I'm being recorded on TV to talk about the things that are going on in our community, because I know my time is limited.
And I think that made me feel really powerful. I'm like, I don't care if people are mad at me. I don't care if it's the business community. I don't care if it's my colleagues. I don't care. There are scary internet trolls that become obsessed with me as a result of this. So that felt like a really powerful piece, but I, I also have council colleagues that I'm friends with that stayed and their ability to stay.
Has continued to bring like stability to the council and they're continuing to have influence and impact in a way that I don't have, and they're, they're on a slow burn trajectory, but there is no part of how I make decisions as a human that is a slow burn. I am like a burn the whole house down kind of gal, and there are pros and cons in that model, but I think that is like, that is how I'm wired and how I will likely continue to make decisions for years.
What I love, though, about when you said you spent the next year being very intentional about literally what you would say when you had a media interview, or how you approached your time with your other council members. I feel like that is something that is so tantamount to the Leading Well community.
Concept is like the idea that we also can borrow that same feeling of a necessary ending and just live and work that way today and tomorrow. Yeah. Like we are all literally on the way. To dying. Yeah. Contrary to like people wanting to not talk about that. And, you know, so I'm 47, I'm very squarely in the second half of my life, assuming I live to, you know, 90, we should all be taking the time to be very intentional about the words that come out of our mouth to serve whatever it is we're here for.
So I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah. I mean, I think there's so much truth there. It's like, well, yeah, we can, we can do this. Time. But I think there's something about the, it's like the having a big paper due in college with finals. There's something about that sense of urgency, false or otherwise. That is such a motivator that I think maybe in our healthiest, yeah.
How do we shift this level of like rad, radical accountability for our life and our words and our actions when we don't have this external clicker, you know? Yeah. Ticking on behind us. Is there anything that. Either you did on purpose or that happened, um, just by nature of the things that you were inviting into your life with change that worked really well to help you in the departure.
And that could be practical. It could be esoterical. It could be I don't know what it might be, but is there something that comes to mind that that you'd want to share? That was a powerful process. I think you and I are very similar in this and that we are wild journalers and I filled two journals between August to December of 2022.
And I just wrote like a fiend. And, uh, when I moved out of my house that I shared with my former spouse, I lived in a dear friend had like a little mother in law suite. And it was this tiny little, maybe 250, 300 square foot studio. And there was this great overstuffed chair in the corner. And I would play.
Taylor Swift piano instrumental albums and light my P. F. Candle Co. candle and just cry and write and write and write and write. And I love a reflective question like at New Year's or the start of a semester or a new job or a birthday. And I would I just asked myself all the questions. I wanted someone to ask me.
I asked like. Well, what will you miss? What are you the most proud of? What are you afraid people are going to say about you? When you look back at this season in five years, what do you want to be the most proud of? And I just kind of mind my experience. And sometimes that was lots of swear words and lots of F U and F U and F U.
And lots of times it was pages and pages of conversations. I thought it was going to be this, and then it was this. I hoped for this, and then it was this. It started off in this one way, and then it dissolved into this other thing. And that stillness, that like practice of listening to myself, that even just like regulation for my nervous system of like quiet music, dark room, flickering candle, no electronics, like all of those things helped.
Me heal and help me break and I think for so many of us, particularly women in leadership spaces, we have to be so strong. We either, we feel like, or we have to, or both have this armor in order to survive in these spaces. And I think this, the like dozens of hours I spent crying in this chair allowed me to like, Pick away at the armor and be soft again and also be grateful that my softness was still there despite it all and honor that softness as a gift and as a strength and Yeah, I think I think that was like the kindest thing that I did for myself.
That's really beautiful around the gratitude that it was still there Especially with the constantness and the consistency of the beat down of what you had gone through, um, to be able to find that still there, not find it again, but to have it still be there is really beautiful. Yeah. Is there a resource or something that you wished you'd had that would have made the hard parts of the last year or so, or the act of leaving easier or better?
I think the resource, one of the things that changed for me year two of being in office versus year one is year two, I discovered local progress, which I will sing praises for till the end of my life, but it is this organization of predominantly BIPOC and LGBTQIA and like working class elected officials, lots of whom that came up with like the organizing movement or community power building work that ran for office on a like racial and economic justice policy.
Set of priorities and finding those people in Waco and El Paso and Houston and San Antonio and Seattle and Nashville and Philadelphia Helped me stay another year in office to know in some ways Yes Every environment is different and there are blue cities in which there's a little more social protection and cohesion that keeps people afloat and in other ways like The work of naming systems of oppression in communities is really fucking hard work, but I got to learn from how people built power with their neighbors and with other organizations and then did this like across a statewide level, like seeing some of the work that they've done in Colorado across the state.
Or even Texas, like in Texas, 10 years ago, very little, very few cities had paid parental leave. And now almost every major city and several midsize cities did it. And part of this is because of this like incredible black woman in DeSoto, Texas, that was an HR professional. And when she ran for council, she saw that like her city, hardworking city employees didn't have this.
So she leveraged her expertise and her previous work experience to enact this. And then Dallas passed it. Once Dallas passed it, then Austin did. And then San Antonio. And it's like, this is one person thinking through their lens that then shifted for, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of employees across the state.
So I wish, I wish I would have known that local progress had existed the second I got elected, because I think it would have made the first year so much better. I was already so tired and so burnt out by the time I met those people. But that... Helped me and it was also helpful in leaving well and that they I feel like more than most of my friends I mean you were like one of the only friends that understood this world to have other friends that were in office That knew the cost.
Um, some of them came to my did like a farewell party After my last council council meeting and one of my best friends is on dallas city council And he and his wife came down and he like publicly thanked me for the work that I did and talked about how My decisions are impacting the rest of the state and how me loving on some of our new members made people feel welcome and included.
And I think that level of, like, feeling seen and known was incredibly powerful. I would agree. I also I'm curious about, and this is not a prepared question, so forgive me, but so many times we feel that there's a ripple that we're supposed to have with leadership. So something big, like running for city council, winning the election, serving in that government entity that does have so much impact possibilities.
And we imagine there's supposed to be this ripple that can go on forever and ever. But I'm I wonder about the, the kind of converse idea of an imprint and, and the, I don't know, there's something about that. So I'm curious how that feels with you. Like what, what are your, what did you leave behind? With all of the things that you did, the amazing courage and the voice that you lent to your community, that you, that you worked with your community.
Is it more ripple? Is it imprint? Is it impact? Legacy? How would you define it? Oh, I love that question. Uh, imprint I like. I think one of the imprints that feels Again, unique to like my social location of being a millennial in office is very few local electives in Waco, whether that was city council or school board or county government had leveraged social media as part of their political process, either in campaigning or in public education and coming from having their impact on people's.
You know, having run a calligraphy business for a few years previously, I've really learned how to do giveaways on social media and build the following and use hashtags creatively and leverage user generated content. And I think that was one of my strengths in office is I've really figured out how to use social media in a way that was engaging and informative, that was like both really synthesized and also had me in it.
And watching there have been a few election cycles since I've been since I first ran and that's now a part of the The framework of how you run for office in Waco is you have to have, you have to have a strong social media presence. You, you can't just be on Facebook and just have my campaign really shifted from, you know, these are, these are the country club people and these are the chamber of commerce people, the white chamber of commerce, let's be very clear.
And these are the. Junior League ladies, and these are small business owners, and this is the mom, and this is the sister, and this is the contractor, and I, I, I want people to know that they're voting for me, and why? Because they're normal people, and I think people are doing that in campaigns, and in their, um, The sense of like needing to articulate to the public why they're voting as opposed to like, I'm, I'm the elected official and I'm all wise and all knowing she used to just trust that, like, I'm doing what I'm doing.
And I'll talk to you again in two years or four years when I run again. So I, I think part of my imprint is like a higher, people are expecting a higher level of access to Waco electeds, which is fun and cool, and I feel proud of that. And I hope my other imprint is, I think a lot of. Like Gen Z, millennial and Gen Xers in Waco.
That hadn't seen how city government is connected to their life and their sense of well being and their family's sense of well being like caught a vision for it and caught a vision for voting in local elections. And like, again, social media, I now, every time there's an election, people are like, this is where you vote and this is how you vote and these are the things you need.
And I'm like, I had, I had never, maybe that existed and I just wasn't looking in the right spaces, which is totally possible to like, I hadn't seen that. And now that's, that's base and people are joining neighborhood associations and our neighborhood associations were formed in the 90s. And for the most part, most for neighborhood associations were folks in their 50s, 60s and 70s, which like, God bless our.
Like semi retired and retired residents that are have been engaged for the fight. Like we've got to have a multi generational approach to equipping our neighborhoods. So I think some of the imprint was like, Hey, local government's for me. Like it's for me and I have something to give. I don't just have something to take.
I can shape this that I have three minutes. I can come to any city council meeting and talk about whatever I want. And my voice has power. So I, in my wildest dreams, I hope that is, and I think that is part of the imprint that I left on the city. I know that it is. And I would add to that just watching your campaigning, your election and your time in office was your transparency and pulling back the curtain, not only on your own campaign and how much you were raising and what you were doing and how many different connections with the community you had during your campaign, but also pulling the curtain back on how City Council actually runs and them.
I think that gave people what I saw was people in the comments making things saying things like I didn't know that I could go. I didn't know that I could speak. I didn't. It wasn't scary. Thanks for making it not scary. Um, so that access, whether it was language access in different languages, not English or access literally to city council access to you.
I know that is part of your imprint. It like gives me chills, it's really good. Your social media game during your campaign was like off the chain, which I mean right back at you. Oh my gosh. The number of people that I'm like, do you know my friend Naomi, do you, do you know all the ways that she's making this accessible, especially from a disability lens?
Do you know how important this is? Do you know all the women, all the graphic designers, all the community partners? That goes back to that imprint of like, if I'm going to be doing this. It needs to be to some set of service, you know, some, some community benefit. Okay. I have a couple more questions for you.
What are you walking towards? So we've talked a little bit about your life with city council. You've referenced a little bit, the decision about leaving your marriage and then leaving your community. So looking forward, what are you walking towards and hoping for as you continue to process this transition and what it means for you?
I, for most of my adult life, have had really clear visions of this is who I want to be and this is how I want to show up and these are the external guideposts that will prove to me and prove to other people that like I'm worthy to take up space on the planet and I
think for the first time in my life, I'm like, I don't, I don't know one of my commitments to myself and being in Chicago as I am centering my pleasure and pleasure, and I consistently buy myself flowers from the Whole Foods. That's a quarter of a mile from my house. I'm like, looking at this, like, gorgeous.
Turn of the century, like, antique y apartment that I'm obsessed with, and I have this exposed brick wall in my kitchen that I'm looking back on, and I have three sets of, like, dried, like, baby pink roses, like, on the wall on the way out the door. And even something as, like, silly as, like, God, I love... The color pink and what a year to have pink with Barbie with Taylor Swift.
Like we're, we're in an incredible pink era, but I'm like, I'm centering my pleasure, my pleasure in choosing my favorite flowers. My I'm sitting on this pink embroidered floral vintage couch that I found at a resale shop. I'm centering my pleasure in rediscovering the kinds of food I want versus the kinds of food that me and my previous partner ate together.
And that is my orientation. For right now, as opposed to my orientation being how how do I just give and give and give and I think in the giving I'm like looking to to be told that I'm I'm good and that like who I am is enough. And I think I probably was looking for that in city council in a lot of ways.
And in some ways, I got a lot of affirmation of like, you're amazing. You're this and that. And sometimes it really landed. And sometimes it was just like, even with all of these messages, city I still feel this like gap and this like ache in myself. Yeah, I think I'm trying to not run from that and put on my own oxygen mask.
I have had a job that's been underwhelming for the last eight months. And I have can think of one other job in my career that's been underwhelming. And I think that has been important for me to have a job that starts at nine and it ends at five. And I don't think about it outside of that, but I'm really starting to.
Think through like, okay, I think I needed this. Most of a year to heal. And I'm ready to be a little bit more in a space that's more community focused or a little bit more policy focused. How do I kind of dip maybe my toes and my ankles and not submerge my whole body into that world. So that way I am leveraging the best of who I am and the things that light me up.
Cause I think it's important that we're doing the things that light us up, but I want to still be lit up and I don't want it to like steal my light. And I think sometimes the work. That I feel the most drawn to feels like the work that is the most threatening to the light inside of me. So I'm walking towards exploring what maybe my next vocational pivot will be and kind of embracing the fact that I had a pretty clear trajectory and the trajectory isn't there anymore and maybe there's a little bit of magic in like not knowing what happens next.
Yeah, I like that about the magic in not knowing. Is there anything that you would say about change or transition that people might be shocked to hear? Or something that we don't yet have the language around? Okay, I think I have two answers. I think my first... The answer is, change is a bitch. Wow. So hard.
So, so much. So hard. So much. So hard. And I think the other piece that I would say is I was married to an incredible man that I adore and respect and I'm so thankful for. And I knew that I needed to leave that relationship. And I feel like a lot of the narratives around divorce, especially women leaving men where there hasn't been abuse, where there hasn't been like big trauma, where there hasn't been infidelity a, the narrative is there's If there haven't been those things, why on earth would you ever possibly leave?
Like, there's no validity there. And then B, the other part of that narrative, if you did leave for any reason, divorce is like, this capital T, big time, trauma, death, grief, and divorce for me. Was it coming home? Divorce for me was a return to pleasure. Divorce for me was a return to embodiment, to liberation, to joy, and I wish I had seen other women Talk about that narrative.
And I think there's a lot of risk in talking about this because we don't want to like, even in saying all this, I'm like, if my past partner were to hear this, I never like, I already caused so much pain and I would never want to cause more pain. And also like. This, this is the truth of my experience, like this has been a good gift for me.
This was not, this was hard, but this was not traumatic. This was freeing. This was liberating. And I, I needed that. And so I, I want us to have narratives around divorce being life after death and not just death, but endings, some endings are hard and some endings are mostly just good. And that's allowed.
You are allowed to have a mostly just good ending. It's interesting, Kelly, earlier you were talking about the cost of admission, and I think it was around, um, just the hard Chunks of being unelected and serving your community. And I wrote down at the time, so then what's the price to exit. But I think you just kind of talked about that.
Like it's different for every leaving and there doesn't always have to be a price to exit. Like the cost of admission might be great, but it also can just be easy or easeful if that's what you need for yourself. I would say that was probably like kind of true of all three of those exits. I did all three exits at the same time.
Like all of those exits took place between August to December, which is a very short timeline to leave a community you've been in in a decade, a marriage of six years and being in office for two years, and while there have been nights of tears and crying and processing, I would say all of those endings, I think because they were all really interlocked, was a.
Exit for things that were out of alignment and a return home to myself and wow like Nothing is worth the cost of not belonging to myself. Nothing is worth the cost of not feeling comfortable in my skin. Nothing is worth the cost of feeling like either me talking is a threat or me staying silent is a threat.
That's so powerful. I'm like sitting here just... That's the quote. That's, that's the, what does leaving well mean to you? It's, it's what you just said. That's so powerful. Is there anything else that we haven't covered? I mean, I'm sure we could talk for another four hours. But is there something that I didn't ask you or something that's come up for you that you want to share as we close out?
I think the only other thing that I would say is I love. Dr. Hilary McBride, she's this Canadian psychologist and most of her work is on embodiment. And she wrote this gorgeous book a couple years ago called The Wisdom of Your Body. And one of the things I've learned so much from her is a personifying our body using our pronouns.
Like my body is she her because my pronouns are she her and she. Is my best advocate and my best teacher and my best friend and my warmest home and my softest place to land. And no, I imagine that people listening to this podcast are looking for validation in one way or the other. They're either looking for signs to say, or they're looking for permission to leave.
And I would just say like, trust the wisdom of your body because he, she, they know what you need. And. Often we don't, often our bodies know things before our brains like have the language to process and to like neatly put everything in boxes. We cannot be led astray and listening to that really still grounded voice in our gut.
That is saying stay or go or wait. Kelly. Thank you so much. I feel like such a kindred spirit relationship with you inside of our friendship and also from the bigger lens and pulling back because you've done the necessary endings so beautifully. I'm so, so thankful for you to, to be willing to share them openly, even in the midst of.
Mess and even in the midst of the tanglement and the unraveling and I'm so thankful that you share your joy So William all of us as well takes all of it together They're inextricable if we want if we want the joy We have to bear witness to the pain if we bear witness to the pain we get to bear witness to the joy Thank you, Kelly.
To learn more about leaving well and how you can implement and embed the framework and culture in your own life and workplace, visit naomihattaway.com. It's time for each of us to look ourselves in the mirror and finally admit we are playing a powerful role in the system. We can either exist outside of our power or choose to decide to shift culture and to create transformation.
Until next time, I'm your host. Naomi Hattaway and you've been listening to Leaving Well, a navigation guide for workplace transitions.
