Shawna Wakefield on Practicing Freedom

What does it actually take to stay in the work of changing systems — not for a season, but for a life?

Shawna Wakefield has spent twenty-five years building frameworks for transformative feminist leadership at Oxfam, Gender at Work, and the UN. She is also a practitioner of somatics, meditation, and embodied leadership — a woman who learned, long before she had language for it, that the body holds knowledge the thinking mind cannot reach on its own. She is a mother who lost a child in Cambodia. A Black and mixed-race kid who moved from New York City to rural Vermont in fourth grade and met "othering" before she had a word for it. A daughter of Alan and Pat Wakefield who now meditates with her ancestors every morning.

In this conversation, Renay and Shawna sit with what it actually takes to stay in justice work over the long haul — not as career, but as life. They talk about Afghanistan after September 11, Cambodia after profound loss, and the turning point when Shawna realized that being well in her own body was the prerequisite to staying in the work. They talk about the difference between guilt and responsibility, and why guilt is not a good motivation. They talk about what changes when a leader stops trying to lead from the neck up.