The Math and the Poetry

The other day I listened to the podcast “We Can Do Hard Things” where Glennon Doyle and Abby Wombach interview Priya Parker, the author of the Art of Gathering. If you have read my blogs and newsletters, you know that I am huge Priya fan. She is an expert on how to create more meaningful gatherings. In this podcast episode she talks about how we must focus on the math and the poetry when planning a meaningful gathering. We should ask ourselves, why am I bringing these people together? And then we need to break down the structure to support that objective. “What is the infrastructure? What’s the coordinating mechanism? What’s the math and the poetry to coordinate this community to have something that they haven’t had before.”

She posits that gatherings can be culture shifting if they are put together thoughtfully. One interesting example she gives is how people are starting to rethink the idea of all female baby showers. If we are looking to have more egalitarian partnerships around parenting, why would we exclude the father from this ritual? The poetry is the idea that we can challenge the norm and reach towards a more egalitarian approach to parenting and the math is inviting both parents to feel the support of the community before having a baby.

My best friend Nealy is a Kindergarten teacher. At the beginning of the year she designs her classroom with both math and poetry. She knows how she wants the kids to feel in her classroom and she creates an environment that is conducive to that. For example, she has a block area so kids can build and create, and it is organized so they can find the blocks they want to use. There are clear markers indicating where they can build and rules about how to be respectful of each others’ block creations. Creating boundaries allows her students to expand and create within a safe space. We all need to be kindergarten teachers in our own life, balancing the big ideas with boundaries.

As a coach, I sometimes have to bring either the math or the poetry into my sessions. Some of my clients are creative and think outside the box and are able to make connections and find opportunities. These same people sometimes need help building the scaffolding to support these big ideas. Big ideas are just that–ideas, you need to take organized action to achieve them.

I also have the opposite situation. People who have infrastructure, but their ideas are limited. It can be hard for these people to come up with vision and think outside the box. Some of my clients are very regimented, which can be productive, but to what end? Having all your blocks organized without a desire to build and create is futile.

Bringing math and poetry to our gatherings and our goals is a worthwhile and challenging endeavor. What aspects of your life could benefit from more math or more poetry?

Things to think about….

• Are you hosting any holiday events over the next few weeks? Think about how you can be intentional about the purpose of your gathering. How can you question norms and use boundaries to create a welcoming and safe space for your guests.

• Are you starting to plan for 2024? Do you have both math and poetry in your list of things you want to accomplish? What are your priorities? How can you create an environment and a schedule to support these goals?

• Are there events you will be attending or planning in 2024? Do the goals of the events still make sense? How can you rethink things you have taken for granted to make time together more meaningful and magical?

Do you have any creative ways you celebrate Thanksgiving? What are the ways you organize to support your ideas? Please comment below:

Scroll down to read more about:

• Hosting Thanksgiving Dinner: My 6 Prioritites

• The Burnt Toast Guide to Eating with Other People

• 33 Best Job Search Websites to Use in 2023

• Think Again: The Signs that You are Ready to Retire

And then scroll all the way to the bottom to see What I Am Reading Now.

Hosting Thanksgiving Dinner: My 6 Priorities

I wrote this blog for Thanksgiving last year when I was hosting a large group. These are my values and priorities when inviting people into my home. What are your priorities when hosting Thanksgiving?

The Burnt Toast Guide to Eating With Other People

Virginia Sole-Smith

A great read in time for Thanksgiving. "We are a culture that demonizes appetite and fatness, and yet centers every major celebration on food. We are wired to show love through food, but also taught to apologize for loving food. We tie our understanding of children’s behavior to how they behave around food, even though we model such strange behavior ourselves. " Virginia has a brilliant way of exposing about how diet culture and fat phobia infiltrate our lives and how we can divest from these problematic cultural norms.

33 Best Job Search Websites To Use In 2023

I love this list because it allows you to use your time wisely. If there is a job search tool that is better suited for your career, you can be more focused and get more bang for your buck. Scroll down to the bottom of the article to see a list very specific job search websites that could be very helpful if you fall into that particular category.

Think Again: The Signs that You Are Ready to Retire (podcast episode)

“When longtime LA Times columnist Steve Lopez reached his mid-60s, he started to think about retiring. But he wasn’t sure how to go about it — or if he should do it all. He gave himself one year to decide and spoke with many different people — Norman Lear and Mel Brooks, among others — about their thoughts on retirement. He wrote a book about his journey, called Independence Day: What I Learned About Retirement From Some Who’ve Done It and Some Who Never Will. Lopez’s conversation from earlier this year with Apple News In Conversation host Shumita Basu [is part of the] Think Again series.”

I loved this conversation. Particularly what Steve had to say about allowing for enough quiet into your life so you can better notice what you are drawn to. And how he encourages us to ask ourselves “how do you matter”. It is a thoughtful, balanced conversation that we can relate to at any age or stage in our life.

Amazing Grace Adams by Fran Littlewood

Grace Adams gave birth, blinked, and now suddenly she is forty-five, perimenopausal and stalled--the unhappiest age you can be, according to the Guardian. And today she's really losing it. Stuck in traffic, she finally has had enough. To the astonishment of everyone, Grace gets out of her car and simply walks away.

Grace sets off across London, armed with a 200 cake, to win back her estranged teenage daughter on her sixteenth birthday. Because today is the day she'll remind her daughter that no matter how far we fall, we can always get back up again. Because Grace Adams used to be amazing. Her husband thought so. Her daughter thought so. Even Grace thought so. But everyone seems to have forgotten. Grace is about to remind them . . . and, most important, remind herself.