July Reflection on Co-Regulation
The Village Was Never A Luxury, It Was Always The Strategy!
THE SOIL CHECK 🌱
Greetings Beloved,
This month I have been sitting with a question that sounds simple and is anything but:
“Who is holding you?”
Not in the abstract sense. In the biological sense. Whose presence in person, by phone, by memory reliably shifts your nervous system toward calm? Whose voice lands in your body as safe? Who is in your village, and when did you last let yourself fully receive what they are offering?
I asked myself that question at the beginning of July, and the honest answer required me to do two things: name the people who genuinely hold me, and acknowledge how rarely I let myself be fully held by them.
The wellness industry has built a considerable economy on the premise that the individual, with sufficient discipline and the right tools, can regulate themselves. The neuroscience says something more honest: we were designed for the village. Not as a supplement to individual practice, but as the mechanism through which genuine healing becomes possible. To paraphrase my TEL sister Aijeron Simmons, there are places within we cannot get to without others.
As we close out July, I invite you to pause and check your own soil. Not to assess your productivity or your strategic progress but to ask: am I trying to do this alone? And if so, what would it look like to let someone in?
🫶🏾 THE RELATIONSHIP SPOTLIGHT (Talk to Me) 🫶🏾
This Month's Conversation: Lea Carla Abrams on Relationships and Wellness
"Wellness is not something you achieve. It is something you practice in the presence of others."
This month's episode of Talk to Me brings us into conversation with Lea Carla Abrams, a somatic and mindfulness coach, grief guide, circle facilitator, writer, and poet. Lea's work sits at the exact intersection of the body and the community where co-regulation actually happens.
We explored what wellness looks like when it stops being something you do to yourself and becomes something you do with each other. We talked about somatics, grief, the nervous system's need for witnessed presence, and what it means to hold space for someone's healing when you are also navigating your own.
💡 The "Gold Nugget":
"The body does not release what it is holding in the absence of connection. Healing is a relational event."
If you are a leader who has been trying to process your own weight in isolation, this conversation will give you language for why that is so hard and a framework for what to do differently.
Episode 6 drops July 31. Subscribe on YouTube or Spotify!
🌍 GROWING THE ME & THE WE 🌍
We explored several dimensions of co-regulation this month. Here are the key practices from our content for your ongoing work:
For Your Self (The ME): In our Love As A Strategy mini-series this month, we shared two concrete practices. The Safe Presence Protocol (Episode 16)offers three steps for becoming a regulated presence for someone else beginning with arriving in your own body before you enter the room. The Village Inventory (Episode 17) offers a framework for auditing the relational ecosystem that is either supporting or depleting your capacity to lead. Both practices begin with the same premise: you cannot offer what you do not have. The inner work is always first. If you missed them, catch the full playlist here: LAS Playlist
For Your Leadership (The WE): On the blog and other shares, we explored what co-regulation looks like at the organizational level including the relational ceiling that forms when leaders refuse genuine human contact with their direct reports, and the biological cost of masking in cultures that demand it. Dr. Amy Edmondson's research on psychological safety (1999) and Dr. Resmaa Menakem's work in "My Grandmother's Hands" (2017) were our anchors this month. Read the full blog here.
🎯 STRATEGY IN ACTION 🎯
The Practice: The Village Inventory and the One Move
How do we move from insight to embodiment as we close out July? Two practices to carry into August:
Micro (Self): Complete your Village Inventory this week. Write the names of the people whose presence regulates your nervous system. Then make one specific move to tend to one of those relationships (a phone call, a text, a walk, a voice message). Your nervous system will notice.
Meso (Team or Organization): At your next leadership meeting, open with a question you do not usually ask: "What do you need from the people in this room right now to feel genuinely supported in your work?" Do not rush to answer it. Let it breathe. Let the room feel the question as an invitation. That is the beginning of co-regulation as an organizational practice.
🌸 THE INVITATION 🌸
Transformation happens in layers and it always happens in relationship.
Ready to root deeper personally?
Two offerings are available to you right now, and both are built on the premise that the most powerful thing we can do for our own growth is stop trying to do it alone.
The LBA Connection Circle is a free monthly 45-minute space for founders, executives, educational leaders, and HR professionals who are carrying the weight of leadership and need somewhere to set it down with someone who understands both mission and the nervous system. Come as you are. No performance required.
The Cultivation Circle membership is for leaders who are ready to build a sustained inner work practice in genuine community. Monthly practices, monthly connection, a home for the ongoing work of regulated, love-led leadership.
Ready to transform your organization?
If you are a leader seeking to improve your team’s effectiveness, let's schedule a Discovery Conversation.
With deep roots and a full village,
Annie 💛
Your Curious Cultural Architect
Growing compassion from the inside out.
Producing results & Caring for People
P.S. — Episode 6 of Talk to Me with Lea Carla Abrams drops July 31. Subscribe on YouTube or Spotify so you do not miss it. And if the Connection Circle is calling you, complete the contact page using the word CIRCLE to be added to the waitlist.
P.S.S. And if you are a Black woman in leadership who is not yet inside the She Leads Here community founded by Jamilia Greer, I want to personally invite you. It is currently free. Join here