The Re-sparkling

By Anushri Alva (Sabbatical from 1st April 2024 to 30th June 2024)

Introduction
Tali Sharot is a neuroscientist who studies what happens to our brains when we get habituated to our lives and work, something that is inevitable given our evolutionary history. We were meant to normalise things, both pleasant and unpleasant, in order to continue to look for new threats and opportunities. As a result, both pain and pleasure dim with time. The only way to notice new things and find joy in what you have and are doing in such a case, is to step away and come back. She calls this re-sparkling.

With The Cocoon Initiative, what Vishal conceived of, supported by Donald, IDR and the Dasra team, is unprecedented! You are making re-sparkling a reality in a sector that needs its purpose and people reignited desperately.

My Sabbatical: The re-sparkling

The Cocoon has helped me re-sparkle in many ways. Memoir writing helped me un-curate and un-edit my personhood. A personhood that had become workshopped because of the nature of my role. I began my sabbatical with the question of who I truly was if work was removed from my sense of personhood. I attended a 5-week course on memoir writing run by Natasha Badhwar. Writing revealed stories and emotions that have shaped me, but that I had lost, and that are now free. I will carry this rediscovered narrative into my work.

Dance, helped me slow down and endure. I have been learning contemporary dance for the last 2 years. Over my sabbatical I was dancing 16 hours every week. With every stretch, spin, drop and roll, I learnt how to be light yet grounded. When I’m overcome with exhaustion, I know I can return to my breath and I will find a pathway to calm and resilience. I will carry my breath into my work.

But swimming has been the most revelatory of all the things I did. I would retreat every time friends would talk about their vacations involving water sports. I would find ways to skip family gatherings that involved a pool. I felt embarrassed and ashamed. The world of the water had eluded me. I had decided I would forego it in this lifetime.

I had stepped away from work at a point when I felt depleted, needing to re-convince myself that I was capable of facing adversity without consuming myself. Swimming gave me the opportunity to do just that. In a city that was fast running out of water, I took the plunge. As the slowest member in my cohort of adult swimmers I would cease up in panic. As they paddled and began to use their arms with ease, I could barely float.

One day I just stood. Another day I cried. What takes the average person 3 weeks, took me 12. But, 4 cohorts later, I can navigate water with a sense of calm.

Swimming taught me to trust my body, to trust my coach and to trust the water. If I allowed it, it would hold me. I want to carry that sense of trust and allowance in myself and others, back to work. It taught me to fail spectacularly and learn from it. Something my work has already taught me but that I need to keep close, always. It taught me to let go of control. I want to carry that with me. It taught me to be kind to myself and have gratitude for the opportunity to try; all of which I want to shape my work self.

A tilted torso in the pool led to a question. A question led to a diagnosis. And a diagnosis led to help. Being able to get back to physiotherapy has helped me work on a chronic back issue, which I could never take the time for given my travel schedule. Equilibrium begins and ends in my lower back and a stable spine.

After 8 years of having lost my childhood piano to a terrible moving accident, I found it calling me again. Playing the piano has re-introduced me to the joy of allowing your fingers to lead. When there is music inside me, I am happy. I want to carry the music within me. Even during the toughest of interactions at work.

My sabbatical also gave me the space to spend a lot of time with my family and friends – making pancakes with my niece after her music recital, spending my mornings with my partner, doing arts and crafts with my nieces and nephews, visiting our ancestral home with my mum and her sister, commemorating my aunt’s life after her passing, having lazy lunches with everyone, cuddling with puppies, spending time in the forest, bringing in my dad’s 70th. I want to ensure that my work does not consume me in a way that I can’t spend time with the ones who support me.

The Return
I expected to feel a wave of anxiety and grief over not having the same autonomy over my time, but when I returned, I was surprised to feel less needed, keenly interested and rejuvenated. Vishal was kind enough to check in with me when I was on my sabbatical and shared some insights on reintegration that I applied.

I spent my first two weeks on the side-lines trying to reorient myself to where the organisation was. This meant I spoke less and listened more and had the chance to check in on how their lives were going. Noticing spaces where leadership had emerged and where I wasn’t as needed anymore was also a fascinating exercise. Recognising that energy is my currency, I have been mindful of where I put it.
Through all this I’m continuing with dance, piano, swimming and physiotherapy.

As a result, I find myself feeling excited towards my work and having the energy to take it on.

The questions I have brought back with me are:

• How do I reframe the idea of equating constant “doing” with worth and allowing for spaces of pause without guilt? In fact, seeing spaces of pause as an important part of being able to work well
• How do I ensure that rest and pause are available to everybody and each team member feels like their life is holistic and not tied to work alone?
• How do I decide where my energy is truly needed and where it might stifle the growth of others? What gives me energy and what depletes it?
• How do we enable everyone to make more decisions at their level so that those who are currently shouldering a lot of the weight of running the organisation feel supported?

Feedback for The Cocoon Initiative
What this fund has done is unprecedented. There is no fully paid support for leaders in the social sector to take a break and recalibrate. Often the feeling of financial instability might prevent some leaders the time and space they desperately need to step away. In a sector that is seeing sharp attrition of talent in their mid -30s, after spending 15 years or so towards impact focused work, this is a silent crisis. Touted as being resilient problem solvers, social entrepreneurs rarely have the space to express that they are in fact feeling tired and disconnected and are acutely in need of support.

Cocoon has initiated an important dialogue on the need for resourcing that is focused on people and their well-being. As a sector that hinges on the importance of humane interventions, setting up a sabbatical fund is in alignment with that ideal. It is also a truly disruptive move in a sector that operates within a capitalistic funding paradigm that relegate people to productivity machines.

I would be keen to support The Cocoon Initiative to do two things:

1. Advocate for more such support among donors in India, so that it can be built into programme budgets.
2. Create peer communities among those who have taken the sabbatical to share learnings and to support those who are not able to but are currently struggling with their well-being as leaders.

Advice for Others
Vishal gave me many insights which worked in my experience. I’m sharing what I found useful.

• Plan well so that there is no reason for the organisation to reach out to you. Hear what everyone’s apprehensions are for when you will be away and plan with them to address the same. Define situations that would make them want to reach out to you when you’re away and think through pre-emptive mitigation together.
• Inform external stakeholders in a matter-of-fact manner and help them meet those who will serve as POCs while you’re away. Its good to have them get accustomed to such team members before you make your announcement. The less hype there is around your absence, the better. Things need to seem like business as usual.
• Reframing that this is not something your organisation is “allowing” you to do, but something that you “deserve” and “need”.
• When you’re away disengage completely. I made sure to handover all my online credentials and remove Discord, work groups on whatsapp and email from my phone. My email was taken over by another colleague.
• Savour every day and journal if you can. There were days that were packed and there were days where I didn’t do much. But I tried to savour each and every day and truly feel the joy of just being.
• I did feel anxious as my sabbatical was coming to a close. I gave myself space to sit with it and space to move away from it and enjoy my last few days.
• Allow it to unfold and you will be surprised. As social entrepreneurs there is a lot there isn’t within our control, but there is a lot that there is also. During the sabbatical let go and truly see who you are beyond your work persona.