Welcome to Issue 66 of A Good Reputation, a newsletter about how to tell a better story to build better brands. (Did someone send you? Subscribe here.) (Miss past issues? Read those here.)

Hello Reader,

There I am, eyes closed, arms by my side with my palms facing out toward this group I’ve been leading and learning from all week, waiting for my body to “tell me” how it wants me to move.

I’ve been instructed to stop thinking and just listen. Listen and wait for the body to move without my brain getting in the way.

“Okay,” I think to myself, annoyed because I'm already failing the exercise, “I’m open to this. I want to be open to this. I believe I’m capable of getting out of my head and into my body."

So, I take a deep breath and try to chill. And for a second, I actually stop thinking and feel my palms start to twitch.

But then I become aware of the ten other people around me. I can hear and sense them starting to move in the circle. They’re clearly able to participate in this exercise without any issues.

So I start to wonder if this is going to be just like that time all my friends went to a comedy club to get hypnotized and—even though they all fell into a deep sleep—the hypnotist couldn’t crack me.

Or like that ayahuasca experience I had with my ex-husband and a group of strangers in Peru in my 20s, when—despite having an extremely potent hallucinogen in my system—I couldn't get out of my own awareness.

So I take a deep breath and bring myself back to the room and back to my body.

Suddenly, I notice my left big toe popping up. “That’s funny,” I think. And I remember how in every single photo since childhood where my full body is in the frame, that left big toe is sticking right up.

“What’s that about?” I wonder.

Then, without any warning, tears start streaming down my face.

I will myself not to cry. I don’t want to cry in this group—not right now. And then a lump starts forming in my throat. I know this feeling in my body well. It happens when I want to cry but also want to contain myself. I usually can swallow it down. But this time it feels stuck there.

I need to sit down. So I sit.

I take another deep breath and try to straighten my back, wipe away my tears and pull it together, for chrissake. But my body doesn't want to comply. I slump my shoulders forward and realize that I'm simply exhausted from trying to keep it together. So I lay down.

While laying down, the tears keep coming and I start stroking my hair. My dad, who died shortly after the death of my older brother when I was six, appears in my mind.

And with that, I begin to understand what this might be about. My body—and perhaps that toe—is reminding me of the grief I still carry from losing my dad and brother so young. A little girl who needed care, trying to hold it together.

I wonder if my dad used to stroke my hair that way to comfort me. Or maybe, I wonder, it’s how I comfort myself and wish I had been or could be comforted after he left. How I wish I had been cared for. How I wish Luis and Daniel were still around to love and protect me.

In that moment, I don’t yet know what, exactly, my body is trying to tell me. But for the first time I’m made aware that I need to pay attention.

Yet for now, that’s all the time I get.

Charlie, our facilitator and witness, says it’s time to sit up and, if we’d like, share our experience with the group. Also, as the witness, Charlie can share her experience of us. Because the whole point of this exercise is to listen to the wisdom of the body and see how our presence is felt in the world.

After a couple of others speak up, I share my experience with the group, now crying again. And Charlie, my witness, shares her experience of me. Observing me, she says, she has the urge to wrap me in her arms. To care for me.

Care—there’s that word again.

I feel extremely vulnerable and exposed in this group of people I’ve been leading for the past few days on this retreat that I organized. I’m the one who’s supposed to care for these people—not the one who should be cared for.

But, at the same time, I feel so relieved. Because whatever that was, I know I don’t have to pretend that it didn’t just happen. And even though I created this experience for them, they showed up in a way that created this space for me.

We gave each other so many reasons to care and, at least for me, to more clearly see what it is I truly need.

A Good Meaning

Since that moment last Sunday at the New Narratives retreat I feel a much deeper sense of connection to more than just my body. I feel a connection to purpose.

Now, purpose is a word I’ve had a strained relationship with over the years. And attaching it to what I do for work has led to frustration and confusion. But purpose, as I see it now, is simply clarity on your path.

And that clarity comes from grounding in who you are, where you belong, and how you want to create meaning during your limited and unknowable time here.

This connection to purpose feels like grounding. It feels like clarity. It feels like freedom from the need to control the outcome. It feels like peace and lightness and inspiration. And I hope to hang on to this feeling for as long as I can.

In order to connect with that purpose, I had to connect with every part of my being. I had to dig into the story of my past, the story of my present and the story I want to create with the vision of my future. Then, I had to stop trying to control the outcome long enough to listen to what was missing.

And what I think I needed to hear is that if I’m going to lead people on this journey of being seen, understood and trusted, I need to do the same. I need to let myself be seen—ugly tears and all—so that I, too, can be held.

It's not just about earning trust—it's about creating more opportunities to care.

I fundamentally believe that in order to make progress, we need to be able to give a damn about each other. When we actually give a damn, we can get over our differences, remove friction, navigate miscommunication, and learn to trust each other again.

And the more we tell our personal stories—and understand how they inform everything we do—the more we can create that connection to ourselves and the people we're trying to reach. The more we can give and receive care.

That's how we get people believe in the future we’re building and earn the trust that we need to lead them there.

A Good Connection

All week people have been asking me how the retreat went, and I tell them that it went better than I could’ve ever imagined. “Congrats,” they say. “You did that!” To which I’ve been responding, no—we did that. They did that. It was a collective effort.

If this theme of caring and needing to be cared for was the first realization I came away with, the idea of co-creation and collaboration as the only way to make meaningful change was the second.

If we want to create the change we want to see in the world, we have to stop thinking we can do it alone.

You can build the business you always wanted to work in. You can coach the leaders you always wanted to exist. You can support the brands that you know will change the harmful ways in which it’s all been done.

But in all of those situations—in whatever you’re building—you’re establishing the container, sparking the movement or inspiring the change. You need the collective to help you actually co-create it. It all happens in relationship.

For me, that shift now looks like talking more openly about the vision I’m building and being more honest about my own limitations and where I need help to build it.

A Good Google Search

At some point this week, I Googled the spiritual meaning of big toes.

Apparently, across various traditions, the big toes represent destiny and spiritual connection—with the left holding sorrow and the right holding joy. So I suppose that checks out.

A straight toe, they say, means you’re on the right path. A crooked toe means you’ve deviated from your destiny.

I don’t fully know how I feel about the concept of destiny, but I do feel in alignment with what I’m doing and where I’m going. I also feel the sorrow from my loss, but can see how it has served me as a source of strength and motivation that has put me on this particular path.

That’s what alignment feels like. It's not a perfect plan, but a sense that your past, present, and future are all speaking to each other.

Everyone at the retreat experienced some version of this. While it took four days of deep work surrounded by some truly special humans helping us unpack the stories we tell ourselves—and workshops that led to dozens of insights around business strategy, systems, productivity and pricing—we all came out a little more sure about who we are, who we’re becoming, and how our work is aligned with those identities.

Now, we can take the next best step on purpose as we continue to make meaning of it all.

For me, it looked like opening up myself to care and connection. For others, it looked like naming what they actually want for the first time or admitting where they’ve been holding themselves back.

Whether you connect with your story or listen to your body, what could that connection look like for you? What are you not seeing about yourself that’s trapped inside?

If you’re feeling out of alignment or unsure of that next best step, maybe that’s the thing you’re missing.

A Good Takeaway

My mom later told me that I do, in fact, have my dad’s toes. And his left big toe would pop up like mine.

So maybe it’s not destiny—maybe it’s just a genetic thing. Or maybe it is my connection to him, still alive in my body, trying to remind me to pay attention to what I really need.

But ultimately, it doesn’t matter what the toe is all about or is trying to tell me. What matters is the meaning I give it.

What I'm sure of now is that meaning doesn’t just come from looking inward. It comes from allowing ourselves to be seen outward, too. From letting people witness us, care for us and shape us.

I can’t ask people to open up, to be seen, to trust me—to care—without doing the same.

The work any of us are trying to do—whether it’s building a business, leading others, or creating meaningful impact—was never meant to be done alone.

We can create the container, but it takes a collective to bring it to life.

And that collective starts the moment you stop trying to hold it all together and let yourself be seen inside of it.

A Few Good Resources

1. Point Reyes proved to be a perfect place for this experience, so we're running it again next year, same spot same time(ish). If you're interested in joining us, you can get your name on the waitlist here.
2. The story you need to tell is there. Sometimes you just need someone to help you see it and connect the dots.
3. Digging in deeper here, I've started reading Seth Godin’s Tribes, which makes the argument for how real change happens when people come together around a shared belief.
4. I'm getting organized with my referral partnerships! If you want to be one of my referral partners, please fill out this form.

Hope you have a good one,
Renee