June Care & Clarity Update
What My Father Built And What I Am Choosing To Bequeath
🌱THE SOIL CHECK 🌱
Greetings Beloved,
I looked up the word "legacy" this month and found out it comes from the Latin root 'legare', meaning to send as an ambassador, or to bequeath.
That stopped me.
I have always thought of legacy as something you leave behind. A body of work. A name that outlasts you. But legare suggests something more active than that. It says: you are the ambassador. You are sent on behalf of something larger than the moment you are standing in. And what you bequeath, how you love, how you work, how you relate to yourself and others, travels with the people who watch you live.
That is a different kind of responsibility.
This month at Love Before ALL, we spent June redefining the hustle; not by rejecting the work ethic of the people who came before us, but by interrogating what we are unconsciously passing forward.
The Soil Check of the Month
I grew up watching my father hold three roles simultaneously, the Haitian Board of Education, L'École Hôtelière, and his own catering business. His excellence was never extractive. It was an offering. And my mother carried the same rhythm in New York: constant, purposeful, deeply loving.
The inheritance I received was real and beautiful. However, somewhere between that inheritance and my own founding of Love Before ALL, work-as-identity had quietly replaced work-as-offering. I was giving my body and my labor to the mission in ways that perpetuated the very extraction I was working to dismantle.
This month, I named that honestly. And I am choosing what to keep.
A work ethic of excellence, intentional, love-centric, and inclusive is worth honoring. A work ethic of extraction is not a legacy. It is a wound.
🫶🏾 THE RELATIONSHIP SPOTLIGHT 🫶🏾
This month's Talk to Me conversation features Meena Srinivasan, a contemplative leader, author, and co-founder of Transformative Educational Leadership (a fellowship I had the honor of graduating from in 2023). Meena is also a lay Dharma teacher in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh.
We talked about what it means to lead yourself before you lead others and why self-awareness is not a personality trait but a daily, rigorous practice.
Episode 5 dropped today, June 30. Subscribe on Spotify or YouTube so you can listen.
💡The "Gold Nugget":
" Self-awareness is the most powerful act of self love and bringing love into the world."
🌍 GROWING THE ME & THE WE 🌍
We explored several paths to redefining our hustle and resetting our relationships this month. Here are the key takeaways for your practice:
For Your Self (The ME): On the blog and in Episode 14 of Love as a Strategy, we examined the biology of rest. I shared the honest truth about the 90 days of rest I promised myself when I moved to New Jersey and immediately broke. Remember: For high-achieving, mission-driven leaders, ease often feels more threatening than overwork. Rest is not an aesthetic; it is the biological and somatic work required to teach your nervous system that slowing down is safe.
For Your Leadership (The WE): In Episode 15 of our Love as a Strategy mini-series, we broke down the most important operational shift a leader can make: putting the health of the relationship first. Drawing from a recent Relational Reset with an organizational team that came in ready to dissolve and left saying "we are a safe place to land," we unpacked what it looks like to make connection your actual strategy. If you suspect relational fractures are the real obstacle to your team's outcomes, this is for you. If you missed them, catch the full playlist here: LAS Playlist
🎯 STRATEGY IN ACTION 🎯
The Practice: The Five Relationships Check & Relational Repair
How do we move from insight to embodiment? As we close out June, try these LBA strategies this week:
Micro (Self): The Five Relationships Check. At the center of grounded leadership are five relationships: the one with your source of meaning, the one with yourself, the ones with others, the one with the Earth, and the ones with systems. This week, choose just one of those five. Ask yourself honestly: is this relationship nourished or fractured right now? You do not have to fix everything. You simply have to stop pretending the fracture is not there. Repair begins with honesty.
Meso (Team or Family): Put the Relationship First. Drawing from our Relational Reset work this month, think of a team member or loved one where there is currently friction. This week, stop trying to fix the "issue" or the task, and instead tend to the connection. Take one step to make yourself a "safe place to land" for them whether that means stepping away from the email chain to get a cup of coffee, or simply acknowledging a recent disconnect without defensiveness.
🌸 The Invitation 🌸
Ready to root deeper personally?
Join The Cultivation Circle, our monthly membership for ongoing inner work.
Ready to transform your organization?
If you are a leader seeking to improve your team’s effectiveness, let's schedule a Discovery Conversation.
One new offering is available to you in July and it was born from the same recognition I shared in May: “it can be lonely at the top, and it does not have to be.”
The Leaders’ Circle is a free, monthly 30-minute space for founders, executives, educational leaders, and HR professionals navigating loneliness, isolation, burnout, or the weight of leading others. Come as you are. No agenda, no pitch, just a regulated container and a genuine conversation about what you are carrying.
With care and clarity,
Annie 💛
Your Curious Cultural Architect Growing compassion from the inside out.
P.S. — If the Leaders’ Circle is calling you, complete a contact form with the subject ‘LEADERS’ CIRCLE’ and I will share more information.
