What Can I *Do*?

Well, it’s March of 2025. So many of the people around me - myself included - are horrified at what’s going on in the United States federal government.

I’m not going to repeat the many, many reasons why. If you’re already aware, I don’t want to waste your energy on becoming outraged by them again. If you want some context about what I’m seeing, you can start with this video about eggs and science funding, or this piece about the meeting with Zelensky, or this 2023 study about democratic decline (that doesn’t seem to be improving). If you’re not concerned about the state of the United States and the world right now, this post is probably not for you - I encourage you to go spend your time elsewhere.

So many of my conversations, lately, have been about what to do about all of this. About what I can do, and what you can do. About what we can do, together. And so many of those conversations come up feeling like it’s not enough. Or, sometimes, like maybe there’s nothing.

I don’t have the answers. I’m not an expert in activism, or in government, or in organizing movements. I’m not an expert on which things matter, or how to know what matters. I don’t have a laundry list of the top 100 things you can do to protect our democracy.

I don’t have answers, really, for myself. I don’t know what I can do, and am certainly not going to try to tell you what you should do.

But over the weekend, I asked myself what skills I do have, that I can bring to this. How can I, specifically, help - in ways that aren’t available to everyone? How are my professional skills relevant here?

And I realized that coaching is all about finding a path forward, finding something to try. It’s about helping people explore their options, and navigate finding ways to overcome barriers to what they want to accomplish. It’s about leaning into the creativity, resourcefulness, competence, and capability of my clients to uncover their path forward. Which seems like exactly what so many of us need, right now.

Over and over again, I’ve seen people come into coaching sessions with me without a sense of how to move forward, and leave the session having discovered something they want to try. Over and over, I’ve seen people who know what step is right for them to take next, and just haven’t quite been able to see the pattern, or haven’t articulated it until we talk. Over and over, I’ve seen coaching turn seemingly intractable problems into one small step that seems worth taking - for me and for others.

So, I’m offering coaching to people who want to participate in slowing the democratic decline in our country. To people who are horrified, afraid, and outraged about what’s happening, and want a thought partner to figure out what they can do about it. To people who are grasping for ways to take action and ways to hold on to hope.

I hope that my efforts can help at least one person to contribute more effectively, to make participation possible for at least one person who otherwise would just be watching in disbelief.

This coaching is freely available to anyone who’s using it in good faith, as long as I have space available.

Schedule a session here, because we’re stronger together than we are separately.

And please share this post with anyone else who you think would benefit from it, because our democracy matters.

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P. S. - It’s come up that folks are concerned this might be a marketing ploy. And I want to address that.

Yes, as a business owner, I hope that this means more people are aware of coaching, of the benefits of coaching, and aware of me in specific. That would be nice, and it would be nice if, at some point in the future, money comes out of that somehow. I do not have a plan or a strategy to convert this into clients or money.

As a United States citizen and resident, I’m just as horrified as the next person about so much of what’s going on right now. I’m searching, as so many others are, for something to do that feels meaningful in these times. And my immediate goal here, the primary thing that’s driving it, is to have a way to use my time, my energy, and my skill that feels, at the end of the day, like I’ve done something worth doing. Any marketing benefits that may or may not come as a result are a side effect, not the point.