# Ash Chudgar > I’m Ash Chudgar, an IFS coach, communications consultant, and writer in Minneapolis. I help people communicate more skillfully — out in the world, in groups and teams, and within themselves. Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts. Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`). ## Pages ### About Ash URL: https://www.chudgar.com/about/ Last updated: 2025-09-25T20:22:30.000Z ## Hi there! # I ❤️ communication ### What I love most is when people are free to communicate with each other, meaningfully and truly, about everything that matters. **Trauma and oppression cut us off from that freedom by making the truth unspeakable.** I know this from experience. **We heal and get free by restoring our freedom to communicate at every scale** — in the world, in our communities, and especially within ourselves. I know this from experience, too. I want the freedom to communicate for *everyone* — my family, my clients, the members of my communities, people I’ve never met, and indeed every being of every kind who is capable of making meaning. **That’s what my work is about.** # How I got here I’ve done many kinds of work in my life, for many reasons. But in all of them, I’ve tried to create the conditions for more communication, among more people, with greater honesty and depth. That’s not always what I *knew* I was doing at the time — but in retrospect, the pattern is clear. Click or tap these “résumé entries”: #### 🧐 1997 – 2001: studying philosophy I majored in philosophy in college, because that was where people seemed to be interested in talking about the biggest possible ideas — the nature of reality, the limits of knowledge, the nature of right and wrong, what beauty is, whether evil exists. That got me hooked on [the humanities](https://web.archive.org/web/20150905115035/https://www.macalester.edu/news/2012/10/keeping-us-human/#:~:text=Asserting%20that%20ways,shape%20they%20assume.%E2%80%9D). #### ****📚 2002 – 2009: becoming a literary scholar** Because all I knew how to do was school, I went on to get a Ph.D. in English literature. Grad school ushered me into rooms where other people communicated **really* intensely, with great rigor and fearless curiosity, about the meanings of books and poems and other meaningful things. I hated having to publish [scholarly papers nobody wanted](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=fUqGdA0AAAAJ&ref=chudgar.com), but the joy and wonder of shared intellectual work was enough to keep me going. #### 🎓 **2009 – 2014: professing English** By shocking good luck, I got a tenure-track position at a prestigious little liberal-arts college — but by the time I was scheduled to go up for tenure, I realized I didn’t want to spending the rest of my life communicating in highly specialized ways in **very* expensive rooms. [I quit my amazing academic job](https://www.macalester.edu/thewords/may-2014/farewell-professor-chudgar/?ref=chudgar.com), tried for a while to find other employment, failed dramatically, and then hastily reinvented myself as an independent communications consultant. #### 💼 ****2014 – present:** [****communications consulting**](https://www.chudgar.com/consulting) Consulting I spent a few years taking any communications job I could get, during which I learned to communicate about industrial adhesives and [healthcare](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/healthcare/), among other things. But I still wanted to talk about the really big stuff — reality, knowledge, justice — **humanities* stuff. That’s how I ended up doing consulting work mostly for folks in nonprofits, government agencies, faith communities, and organizing campaigns — [do-gooders](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/nonprofits/). If your business is making the world a better place, you **need* to talk about huge ideas to explain why. It’s an honor to help these caring people communicate more skillfully about their vital work, every time. #### ❤️‍🩹 2022 – present: [one-on-one coaching](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching) I never intended to be a coach at all — but a few years ago, I found the Internal Family Systems model at a really challenging period in my life. First [on my own](https://www.chudgar.com/https://www.chudgar.com/the-best-introduction-to-ifs/), and then with [a therapist](https://www.chudgar.com/find-a-therapist/), IFS led me to understand my own inner life in a liberating new way: as a rich inner ecosystem, peopled with all the many parts of who I am. That understanding of my own inner diversity allowed me to heal and get free in ways I had never thought possible. Today, as a coach, I get to accompany other people as they get to know their own inner worlds for healing and liberation. And the more coaching I do, the more I see how the skills of **inner* communication can help kind people communicate more skillfully, in more healing ways, in the **external* world. # Who I am I bring all of who I am into all the work I do, but how I think of “who I am” has changed a lot over time. **These days, I think of myself as:** - **Queer.** I’ve understood myself as gay ever since I learned what that meant. Over time, I’ve also come to understand [sexuality as a place where everybody can find greater liberation](https://www.chudgar.com/queerness-and-liberation/), which is what queerness means to me. - **Neurodivergent.** Over the years I’ve had the privilege to be diagnosed with an alphabet soup of mental illnesses, including ADHD, OCD, PTSD and CPTSD. Thanks to the advocacy and community-building of [other folks with unexpected bodies and minds](https://www.chudgar.com/some-things-ive-learned-about-embodiment/), I now proudly call myself *neurodivergent* — a person who, by nature and nurture, experiences the world in unexpected, challenging, and sometimes extraordinarily helpful ways. - **He/him *or* they/them.** When I was small, I did not take well to masculinity. I’ve become more comfortable presenting myself as a man over the years, since that’s how most people seem to experience me. But nowadays, they/them feels as comfortable to me as he/him, so take your pick. And while I’m perfectly happy showing up as a singular person in the world, my inner family uses the *we/us* of a plural system. (Here’s [more fun with pronouns](https://www.chudgar.com/the-joys-of-being-yourselves/)!) - **White in the world, biracial by heritage.** Because other people consistently experience me as a white person, that’s [how I sometimes identify my “race” on forms](https://www.chudgar.com/how-i-learned-i-am-white). But I’m also [the child of a South Indian immigrant father and a white American mother](https://www.chudgar.com/what-ive-been-learning-about-racism/), and I grew up eating mango pickle on Wonderbread in a bicultural, interfaith household. - **A survivor of child sexual abuse.** Like at least one person in every ten, I was sexually abused as a child. Healing from those experiences has been the greatest work of my life, and I stand firmly in solidarity with other people who are doing the work of healing for themselves. - **An abolitionist.** I believe that safety and healing require us to work toward a future without policing and prisons — [not only in the world outside us, but also within ourselves](https://www.chudgar.com/community-safety-from-the-inside-out/). I collaborate with and support lots of folks who don’t agree with me about this, but it’s at the heart of my approach to communication and life. - **A settler.** I live and work in [Mni Sota Makoce](https://themetropole.blog/2020/10/13/where-the-waters-reflect-the-clouds-examining-minnesotas-indigenous-history/?ref=chudgar.com), where the waters reflect the clouds, on the land of the [Wahpekute people](https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/a3cde44dec8d4c6a8ed79067bf386d12?ref=chudgar.com) of the [Oceti Sakowin nation](https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/plains-belonging-nation/oceti-sakowin?ref=chudgar.com). ### This website is all about my work as a [coach](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching/), [consultant](https://www.chudgar.com/consulting), and [writer](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/writing). Take a look around! If what you encounter here is interesting, I’d love to send [occasional ideas](#/portal/) straight to your inbox. ### Get in touch URL: https://www.chudgar.com/contact/ Last updated: 2023-10-24T21:00:27.000Z ## Let’s have a heart-to-heart. ## [Click here to book a free, zero-pressure **first coaching session**.](https://www.chudgar.com/free-first-session) No pressure, no obligation, totally confidential — just a chat to learn about each other and maybe work on an issue you’re dealing with. ## [Click here to book a free half-hour **chat about consulting services**.](https://cal.com/chudgar/consulting-inquiry?ref=chudgar.com) I’ll be happy to think through your work with you, whether we end up signing a contract or not. ## Or send me a little note right here☟ ### Thanks for coming by! ### Coaching (old) URL: https://www.chudgar.com/coaching-old/ Last updated: 2023-09-13T20:15:19.000Z ## Hurrah for all of you! # You are a community, and *every* part of you belongs. **Even the parts who cause you trouble.** ![Even the parts of you who don’t seem to make much sense, or make you say things you regret, or shame you into silence. Even — especially — the parts of you who are too scared or hurt to speak up.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/08/Screenshot-2023-08-11-at-1.06.17-PM-1.png) When you learn to welcome *every* part of who you are, even the troublesome ones, everything changes. I know this from my own experience — and the experience of my clients. **You can expect to feel more:** - **Calm, clear and confident.** Internal consensus among the different parts of you will give you the strength to speak clearly, think calmly, and act confidently in the world — even under pressure. - **Courageous and connected.** With the united support of your whole inner community, you’ll have the courage to connect deeply with other people and the world from a place of secure integrity. - **Creative.** When they feel a sense of inclusion and belonging, the diverse parts of your personality can generate astonishing solutions to difficult problems. - **Curious.** Your curiosity about your own internal world will make you more curious about the complexities of other people and systems. - **Compassionate.** Your love and kindness toward the most challenging parts of yourself will help you respond with compassion to the most challenging parts of other people. If this sounds like what you’re after, then I might be a good coach for you. #### My philosophy of coaching As a trained Internal Family Systems practitioner, I believe human beings’ inner lives are social systems, made up of many different parts — independent sub-personalities or inner characters. You might know some of your own parts very well already — perhaps an “inner child” or an “inner critic.” Others parts of you might be harder to notice, or hide from your awareness entirely. No matter how well you know them, all the different parts of you have their own abilities, temperaments, and ways of understanding the world. Most importantly, I believe every part of us wants to keep us alive, safe, and happy — but different parts of ourselves often have very different ideas about how to do that. Sometimes, those internal disagreements lead some parts of us to oppress others, which causes us great suffering. ****I believe we heal by bringing every single part of us into full membership in the community of ourselves.** As a coach, I support my clients as they do just that. #### Reasons to try coaching The sort of coaching I do [isn’t for everybody](https://www.chudgar.com/who-can-benefit). But it might be for you if you want … - ****To feel more comfortable being your whole self.** I think of mental suffering not as a symptom of mental illness, but as an invitation to internal community-building. As a coach, I’ll provide support and guidance as you explore your internal community, help hurting parts of you heal, and learn to take joy in **all* of who you are. - ****To pursue healing outside the mental health system.** If traditional therapy hasn’t worked well for you, or if the mental health system hasn’t been safe or welcoming, coaching might provide a better route to growth and healing. Here’s more about the difference between coaching with me and mental healthcare. - ****A focused commitment to personal growth.** If you’ve got specific goals for your own evolution as a person, coaching provides encouraging partnership and support, gentle accountability, and practical guidance — all in an efficient, limited timeframe. - ****Support through transitions and challenges.** If you’re going through a hard time or a period of change, coaching can help you find the internal clarity and courage you need to make it through to the other side. ### Learn more about my style of coaching [right here](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching-faq) — or, if you’re already into it, just [sign up for a free, leisurely 60-minute coaching consultation](https://app.practice.do/users/partsland/book/free-consultation?ref=chudgar.com). ### Coaching FAQ URL: https://www.chudgar.com/coaching-faq/ Last updated: 2025-06-10T21:25:26.000Z #### Our work together will look reassuringly familiar, right from the start. I’ll be a gentle professional you’re meeting with for a scheduled hour or so, over Zoom or in a quiet room. The setup is just what you’d expect if you were working with any helping expert, like a traditional therapist or a life coach. But if you’re new to inner exploration, your work with me is likely to *feel* disorienting at first. **Instead of treating what ails you or motivating you to change, I’ll be there by your side, offering guidance and solidarity as you find healing and liberation *within yourself*.** ## Questions? Undoubtedly! Here are some answers. - [**What are my options for coaching, and how much do they cost?**](https://www.chudgar.com/options-for-coaching/) - [**What is coaching going to be like?**](https://www.chudgar.com/what-to-expect) - [**Can I see how a session might go?**](https://www.chudgar.com/an-introduction-in-video-clips/) - [**Who can benefit from this kind of coaching?**](https://www.chudgar.com/who-can-benefit) - [**What kinds of clients do you like to work with?**](https://www.chudgar.com/folks-i-love) - [**How is this kind of coaching different from therapy?**](https://www.chudgar.com/differences-from-therapy) - [**What is Internal Family Systems (IFS) or “partswork”?**](https://www.chudgar.com/what-is-partswork) - [**Do I need a professional to do this kind of inner inquiry?**](https://www.chudgar.com/do-it-yourself) - [**How will coaching care for my wellbeing?**](https://www.chudgar.com/wellbeing) [Or give it a try yourself!](https://www.chudgar.com/free-first-session) ### FAQ: What is “partswork”? URL: https://www.chudgar.com/what-is-partswork/ Last updated: 2025-11-17T19:16:35.000Z # Partswork in three simple ideas **The healing I’ve experienced in my own inner world, and the healing my clients find within themselves, derives from three very simple principles.** They derive originally from the ideas of Richard Schwartz, the founder of Internal Family Systems therapy, but I have come to modify them for myself over time. Here they are: 1. **Inner attention.** I believe every human being has a built-in capacity for curious, compassionate attention to their own psychological processes, with an orientation toward happiness and wellbeing. Some people think of this fundamental identity as their Buddha-nature, or the “image of God” in them, or the ultimate realization of who they were meant to be. Others think of it more modestly: as a wise internal observer, the capacity for metacognition or mindfulness, or even old-fashioned self-awareness. However you conceive of it, your innate capacity for compassionate attention doesn’t have to be developed or cultivated over time, and it can’t be damaged or destroyed, no matter what happens in your life. 2. **Internal community.** It seems that most human beings have a bunch of different sub-personalities within us, each of whom is innately valuable and indispensable. Each one of the members of our internal community is a little person. IFS calls these sub-personalities “parts,” although I prefer to think of them as the *members* of an internal community. If you’ve heard of an “inner child,” that’s an inner community member in this way. So is an “inner critic” or an “inner champion.” We interact with our internal communities using the same respect and social skills we’d use with external people. 3. **Healing.** As human beings encounter challenges in life, the different members of our internal communities develop creative strategies for protecting us from harm. One part of your internal world might have learned to keep you safe by learning how to please others, for example; another part of you might try to keep you safe by keeping other people at a distance. When they’re working well together, you don’t even notice all the ways your internal community is working on your behalf. But sometimes, the protective strategies of your internal community members come into conflict with each other, or stop being useful and start causing you trouble. Fortunately, because you already have a capacity for internal awareness that’s oriented toward your own wellbeing, you have everything you need to help your internal community let go of protective strategies that aren’t working for you any longer, and find new strategies that do. **You don’t have to *believe* these premises to interact with your inner world — you can just as easily take them as hypotheses, and** [**test them out for yourself**](https://www.chudgar.com/self-therapy/)**.** # From IFS to partswork While Richard Schwartz didn’t know it when he started formulating the IFS model, he had stumbled on an ancient and globally widespread way of conceptualizing the human mind. From ancient Egyptian priests to Jungian psychoanalysts to 21st-century biologists to [Plural systems](https://www.chudgar.com/ppwc25/), many people have described the human mind as plural, just as IFS does. Today, we know the Internal Family Systems model is just one way to conceptualize our internal complexity for liberation and healing — one that works far better in combination with practices and ideas from kindred fields and disciplines. That’s why many practitioners of the model have come to think of ourselves less as “IFS practitioners” than as [*partsworkers*](https://www.chudgar.com/partsworker-1/): people who interact skillfully with the many parts of human minds for healing and liberation. [Back to FAQs about coaching](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching-faq) ### FAQ: Do I need professional to explore my inner world? URL: https://www.chudgar.com/do-it-yourself/ Last updated: 2023-10-01T19:49:13.000Z ### You are the world’s *only* expert on your inner world, and you can start exploring it all by yourself, right now. Many forms of healing, from religious rituals to therapeutic methods, are designed for professionals to use, and it wouldn’t be safe to try them on yourself. Internal Family Systems is different: it’s a model of human beings that you can learn quickly, practice safely, and use successfully all by yourself. [**Here are some ways to start exploring your internal world on your own — no coach required.**](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/ways+to+get+started) If these resources get you excited to work with a professional, come right on back and [**get in touch**](https://www.chudgar.com/free-first-session)! [Back to FAQs about coaching](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching-faq) ### FAQ: Who can benefit from coaching? URL: https://www.chudgar.com/who-can-benefit/ Last updated: 2023-09-16T23:35:53.000Z ## Reasons to choose Internal Family Systems coaching - **Healing outside the mental health system.** If traditional therapy hasn’t worked well for you, or if the mental health system isn’t safe or welcoming, coaching might provide a better route to growth and healing. [**Here are some of the differences between IFS coaching and traditional therapy.**](https://www.parts.land/differences-from-therapy?ref=chudgar.com) - **Focused commitment to personal growth.** If you’ve got specific goals for your own personal growth, IFS coaching provides partnership and support, consistent accountability, and practical tips — all in an efficient three-month timeframe. [**Here’s how it works, from start to finish.**](https://www.parts.land/what-to-expect?ref=chudgar.com) - **Support through transitions and challenges.** If you’re going through a hard time or a period of change, IFS coaching can help you find the internal clarity and courage you need to make it through this time in your life. [**Here are some kinds of folks I like working with the most.**](https://www.chudgar.com/folks-i-love/) ## Reasons to look for other kinds of support - **If you’re in crisis right now**, you need someone to talk to right away. [**Here are some free, confidential hotlines.**](https://www.chudgar.com/crisis-resources) - **If you need help managing the symptoms of a specific mental health diagnosis**, a clinical mental-health provider is the person you’re looking for. [**Here are two places to start looking for one.**](https://www.chudgar.com/find-a-therapist) - **If you need to pay for support using private insurance, Medicaid or Medicare**, you’ll need to find a therapist who takes your insurance. [**This page has some advice for doing that.**](https://www.chudgar.com/find-a-therapist) [Back to FAQs about coaching](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching-faq) ### FAQ: What kinds of clients do you like to work with? URL: https://www.chudgar.com/folks-i-love/ Last updated: 2023-09-16T23:34:57.000Z ## The particular set of [identities, experiences, and values](https://www.chudgar.com/about) I bring into coaching makes me take special joy in supporting folks who share some of them. #### ✊ Organizers, care workers, justice seekers The people I admire most in the world are those who devote their lives to building community power, caring for other beings, and fighting for justice. ****If it’s your mission to help the world heal, you probably have your own healing to do — and understanding your own** ***inner** **community can help.** Unlike most Western methods for personal growth, the work I do isn’t just about individual healing: it’s a liberatory theory of human systems at **every* scale. Exploring your own internal system can help you become a more powerful, joyful agent of care and healing in all the communities you care about. #### 🌈 LGBTQ+ and nonbinary folks At first I was a very feminine little boy. Then I became an angry gay man in combat boots, and after that a quiet gay man in business casual. Lately, I’ve been aging into a mellow and increasingly nonbinary queerness. ****Getting to know my inner world has helped me understand my own gender and sexuality in healing and liberating ways.** If you’re queer or enby in some way yourself (or might be), I’d love to help you explore your internal world to find your own kind of liberation. #### 💡 Creative people (current or potential) Maybe you’re a working culture creator: a writer, an artist, a musician, a performer. Maybe you know you have stories to tell, songs to sing, works to create, or worlds to build — if only you knew how. If you create, or want to, or think maybe someday you could, ****getting to know your inner family can liberate your creativity with astonishing results.** That’s exactly what happened for me [with writing](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/writing)! I’d love to help you explore the full range of your own creativity too. #### 🧠 Neurodivergent comrades I’ve always been very weird, which has led professionals to diagnose me in lots of ways over the years — everything from cyclothymia (which didn’t fit) to OCD and PTSD and ADHD (which do, kind of). But lately, other folks who are similarly weird have realized that our weirdnesses overlap, and we use the term [**neurodivergent*](https://embrace-autism.com/neurotypical-and-neurodivergent/?ref=chudgar.com#Hierarchy) to encompass those similarities. Understanding my own internal system has helped me make sense of my neurodivergence (and [neuroqueerness](https://neuroqueer.com/neuroqueer-an-introduction/?ref=chudgar.com)), manage the troublesome parts, and optimize the awesome parts. ****If you’re on the autism spectrum, have ADHD, or otherwise identify as neurodivergent, exploring your inner world can help you too.** #### ❤️‍🩹 Survivors of childhood abuse Like many people, I’ve spent much of my grown-up life trying to come to terms with the abuse I went through as a little kid. Many practices I tried, from traditional therapy to [restorative justice](https://hiddenwatercircle.org/our-approach?ref=chudgar.com), were helpful. But I didn’t really start healing those old wounds until I started exploring my own inner world. Through that process, I discovered the parts of myself who were still hurting from the past, learned how to help them heal, and built loving relationships with them in the present. ****If you’ve been struggling with your own history of childhood abuse, gentle inner inquiry is an exceptionally effective way to start healing.** I can tell you this from experience. #### 🪑 Folks in or out of 12-step recovery I spent 11 intense and rewarding years in 12-step recovery, and the people of A.A. (and some other fellowships) saved my life and then taught me how to live. Since then, my healing led me out of both A.A. and sobriety, and I’ve come recognize that some aspects of the program were quite harmful, to me and others. But I don’t regret a second of my time “in the rooms,” and I will always feel a deep kinship with others who share the 12-step experience. ****Whether you’re in or out of 12-step recovery, exploring your inner world can help you meet “life on life’s terms” with greater serenity and ease.** #### 🍁 Folks in midlife Many of us, me included, encounter huge and entirely unexpected challenges just when we’re starting the second half of our lives. (Dante called this the “dark forest” of middle age.) That’s exactly what happened for me: at 40, I found myself more confused, directionless and panicky than I’d ever been before. Fortunately, that’s when I found Internal Family Systems. Exploring my inner world gave me a whole new way to understand my decades of lived experience, the troubles that continued to vex me, and my purpose in the world. ****If you’re staring at the second half of your life and not sure what to do, this sort of inner work can help.** #### 📿 People of faith (of any kind) I grew up as a very pious Roman Catholic, with strong influences from my father’s Hindu faith. As I got older, I started questioning Catholic doctrine, and I went with my mother to a variety of Protestant churches. By my late twenties, I was going to an Episcopalian church, which never quite satisfied me — but the church I went to had A.A. meetings in the basement, where I found **exactly* what I had always been looking for. The fellowship of recovery gave me a new, deeply personal way of approaching “God as I understood God,” which persisted long after I’d left A.A. These days, my primary spiritual community is my internal family; my parts and I pray and practice [Buddhist meditation](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/buddhism) together every day. ****If you’re a person of** [***any** **kind of faith**](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/faith/)****, exploring your inner world can be a powerful way to deepen your own relationship with the divine, however you experience it.** [Back to FAQs about coaching](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching-faq) ### FAQ: How is coaching different from therapy? URL: https://www.chudgar.com/differences-from-therapy/ Last updated: 2025-09-08T16:28:22.000Z ### If you’ve been in therapy before – or even seen therapy dramatized on TV — Internal Family Systems coaching of the kind we’ll do is something very different. Here’s what to know. - **Coaching is not a substitute for mental healthcare.** If you have psychiatric diagnoses that benefit from medical help, as I do myself, you need and deserve the support of a certified clinical professional. [Here are some suggestions](https://www.chudgar.com/find-a-therapist) for finding a mental healthcare provider if you need one. - **Mental healthcare and coaching work well in combination.** Many of my clients do coaching with me *alongside* ongoing therapy, and that works very well. Me, I see a psychiatrist in addition to working with practitioners who use the [IFS model](https://www.chudgar.com/what-is-ifs). If you need mental healthcare *and* you like the IFS approach, an [IFS-trained clinician](https://www.chudgar.com/find-a-therapist) would be your best bet. (Traditional therapists who’ve been trained in IFS work very much the same way I do, but they can also diagnose and treat mental illness, bill insurance, and so forth.) - **Coaching is also a powerful method of healing all by itself.** Many of my clients, particularly folks who haven’t found the help they needed in traditional therapy, see coaching as an entirely different route to healing, one that works much better for them. That was my experience, too. ## Here are some more differences between traditional therapy and coaching with me: #### Therapy is healthcare; coaching is guidance - 🩺 Most therapists work on the model of doctors. They use the symptoms you report to diagnose mental-health disorders, and then they use their training to treat you for those disorders. They can also help you manage better in day-to-day life by teaching practical skills. - 🦮 As a coach, I’m not like a doctor who tries to fix what’s wrong with you. Instead, I’m a friendly guide who helps you explore your inner world safely, so you can develop a more comfortable relationship with every part of yourself. It’s not about about troubleshooting symptoms, but finding healing and liberation within yourself. #### Therapy treats illness; coaching cultivates wellbeing - 💊 Diagnosing and treating mental illnesses, as defined by the current edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s *Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders*, is what health insurance companies pay most traditional therapists to do. - 💡 In IFS, by contrast, we think of what’s usually called “mental illness” as a set of highly creative strategies that different parts of ourselves improvised to protect us in the past, but cause us trouble in the present. In coaching, you’ll learn to cooperate those protective parts of you in ways that work much better here and now. #### Therapy can be indefinite; coaching has a beginning and end - ♾️ If you pay for therapy with health insurance, your plan sometimes won’t pay for as many sessions as you really need. On the other extreme, people often continue seeing therapists indefinitely, without any specific endpoint. - 🗓️ With me, IFS coaching usually happens in blocks of 12 weeks, from start to finish. Some clients decide to continue working with me for more than one coaching term, but we’ll always be working within clear time limits. #### In therapy, you’re a patient; in coaching, you’re a comrade - 🏥 As mental health professionals, most therapists abide by strict rules about how much personal information they can disclose to their patients, when then can and can’t offer advice, and so forth. That clinical objectivity is important, but it can get in the way of a warm, trusting human relationship. - 👋🏻 In IFS coaching, both of us — you *and* me — get to be present as whole human beings. I’ll always treat you with dignity and professionalism, but *never* in a distant or clinical way. I may tell you about my internal system and what’s going on in my life. If you ask me for an opinion, I might actually give you one. And when you laugh or cry, I probably will too. [Back to FAQs about coaching](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching-faq) ### FAQ: How will coaching care for my wellbeing? URL: https://www.chudgar.com/wellbeing/ Last updated: 2024-04-16T21:22:43.000Z ### Exploring your inner world is guaranteed to take you pretty deep into your memories, your relationships, the legacies of your family and your cultural experience. You will probably experience very strong feelings along the way, or encounter thoughts or memories that trouble you. You might cry. All of that can be intense, so it’s important to know how we’ll take care of you as we work together. ## [Consent](https://partsandself.org/consent-in-ifs-practice/?ref=chudgar.com) Every part of our coaching relationship is voluntary — your choice to work with me, my choice to work with you, and the choice we both make to continue in relationship at every turn during our sessions together. - **You and *every part of you* have the absolute right to withdraw your consent for coaching at any time** — even right in the middle of a session, if you need to. - I have the right to discontinue our coaching relationship at any time, too. But I’ll only do so as a last resort, and only after communicating clearly to you about why. ## Confidentiality #### Protecting your privacy First of all, a simple promise, which we’ll agree to in [our contract](https://www.chudgar.com/sample-contract): when you’re my coaching client, *I will not voluntarily share any personally identifiable information about you without your explicit written consent*. Meanwhile, you can and should speak up to discuss any confidentiality concerns that come up during our work together. #### Possible (but unlikely) limitations When you talk to a physician, an attorney, a therapist, or a religious leader, what you tell them is confidential by law. **Since I’m a coach, what you say to me is *not* legally protected from disclosure by a special professional privilege.** For clients who do work that’s often criminalized — some forms of direct action, sex work, or plant medicine, for example — we can and will establish guardrails to protect us both in the highly unlikely event that I’d ever be subpoenaed to talk about it. #### Reviews or testimonials After we’ve finished a coaching engagement, I’ll give you the option to provide a review or [testimonial](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching#testimonials) about our work together, and I hope you will. But how and whether you discuss your coaching experience with me is *entirely* up to you. ## Safety The [Internal Family Systems model](https://www.chudgar.com/what-is-ifs/), as I was trained in it, is especially designed to make sure you always feel *safe enough* to explore your internal world, no matter how intense the work may get. Here’s how: - **Ecological awareness.** IFS teaches that everyone’s inner life is a “delicate ecology.” That means a change in any part affects the whole system. This ecological awareness lets us stay alert for harm to any part of your system, and respond quickly with compassionate repair. - [**Every part of you gets to consent.**](https://partsandself.org/consent-in-ifs-practice/?ref=chudgar.com) Just as you can withdraw your consent for coaching at any time, individual parts of your personality will sometimes refuse to cooperate with us. This is as it should be! We will never force *any part of you to do* anything it’s not comfortable with. - **Referral to mental health.** If the work we’re doing together suggests you might need the care of a mental health professional, you can trust me to tell you so immediately, and offer to [help you find one](https://www.chudgar.com/find-a-therapist). (I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to. But I’ll try.) - **My safety.** Finally, I safeguard your safety by taking care of my own system. I have a long-standing inner community practice of my own, and I have a strong and happy relationship with my own internal family. I’m also part of a rich and diverse community of other inner work practitioners and clinicians, who support me in my practice. [Back to FAQs about coaching](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching-faq) ### FAQ: What is coaching going to be like? URL: https://www.chudgar.com/what-to-expect/ Last updated: 2025-11-17T19:18:28.000Z ## 👋 Getting to know each other You’ll start by scheduling a free, friendly, zero-pressure first coaching session with me, so we can get to know each other. You’ll tell me what’s going on in your life and what you hope to get out of coaching, and I’ll answer any questions you have about me and how I work. You can **schedule your free first session** [**right here**](https://www.chudgar.com/free-first-session)**.** ## 🤝 Agreeing to work together If we both decide to work together, you’ll agree to [this coaching agreement](https://www.chudgar.com/sample-contract), which lays out exactly what we can expect of each other. I’ll answer any questions you have before you sign. ## 🗓️ Payment and scheduling - Once we’ve signed our contract, you’ll pay for your coaching in advance, [at the sliding-scale price you choose](https://www.chudgar.com/sliding-scale). 🫶 If you urgently need support with your inner world, and my reduced rates would cause you economic hardship, [**please get in touch*](https://www.chudgar.com/contact) — financial support may be available. - Once you’ve paid, you’ll get to schedule your sessions at times that are convenient for you, in person *or* online. ## 🖥️ Coaching sessions ![Gif of a bald man with a brown beard in two braids, wearing an Aloha shirt and headphones, talking animatedly](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/08/chudgar-coaching.gif) What you’ll see during a video call: me, talking with you. At the times you’ve scheduled, you and I will get together every week on a secure video call, for about an hour every time. (If you live in the Twin Cities, we might also [meet in person](https://www.chudgar.com/meeting-in-person/) in Northeast Minneapolis — just ask about that during our first call.) I’ll keep track of the time during our session, so you won’t have to worry about it. [These quick video clips will give you a sense of what your first session might be like.](https://www.chudgar.com/an-introduction-in-video-clips/) **Here’s what we’ll do, each time we meet:** - **Checking in.** We’ll start by checking in about what’s going on in your world. (You will get an email the day before your appointment, and you can reply to that email with updates if you like.) - **Getting comfortable.** If it seems right, I’ll invite you to do a little grounding exercise to get in touch with how your body and your inner world are doing. (We may not need to do this after a while.) - **Exploring.** Then we’ll explore the questions and ideas that come up for you. You are likely to spend some or most of your session with your eyes closed, looking inward. (You don’t have to, though.) Whatever you encounter, I’ll be right there to help you make sense of it. - **Planning your inner inquiry.** Before we end our session, we’ll decide on a way for you to continue exploring your inner community, every day, until next our next meeting. As we approach our final sessions, we’ll also talk about how to sustain all the progress you’ve made. [Back to FAQs about coaching](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching-faq) ### Coaching contract URL: https://www.chudgar.com/coaching-contract/ Last updated: 2026-07-18T18:59:45.000Z **Coaching is a partnership, and this agreement sets out how the two of us want our partnership to work.** It’s a legal contract, for sure—but more importantly, it’s a way for the two of us to build our partnership on the basis of shared understanding. > *Last substantively revised July 2026 to update pricing and payment terms (section 1, under “Paying for coaching”) and to set explicit boundaries around the use of A.I. (section 3, under “Confidentiality”).* # 1\. Qualifications, limitations, and promises ## A. Who I am **I’m Neil Ashvin Chudgar, Ph.D., but you can call me Ash** (he/him or they/them, whichever you prefer). I’m the coach in this partnership. My coaching approach builds on - a doctorate in literature, - ten years of experience teaching college and graduate students, - twelve years of experience as a communications consultant and facilitator, and - [Level 1 training, ongoing consultation, and continuing education in the Internal Family Systems model](https://ifs-institute.com/practitioners/all/101765?ref=chudgar.com) and other forms of [partswork](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/partswork/). ## B. What coaching can and can’t do for you **As an inner communication coach, my practice has clear (and liberating) limits:** - *I do not diagnose, treat, or claim to cure any illness of body or mind.* As a coach, I operate completely outside the pathology-based biomedical model of healthcare. - *I do not guarantee any specific results from coaching.* Based on my own experience and that of my clients, I have boundless confidence in this particular mode of coaching—and I am equally sure that the consequences of our work depend entirely on your circumstances, choices, and actions. **As your coach, here’s what I promise:** - I will use all my knowledge, training, and experience to help you live in greater safety, comfort, and harmony with every part of who you are. - I will listen to you with deep and focused attention. - I will reflect what I hear back to you with compassion and clarity. - I will help you interact more skillfully with all the parts of your internal world you choose to share with me. - I will treat every part of you with respect, always. - I will offer my honest opinion about other kinds of support you may need, including mental health treatment. ## C. How we’ll work together **Free first session.** I offer a free 60-minute session to every new client. (The applicable guarantees in this contract apply retroactively to that session, too.) **Sessions.** I expect you to arrive on time for every session you’ve scheduled, and to reschedule, if necessary, at least one hour in advance. You can expect the same courtesies of me. *If you don’t reschedule a canceled session within 30 days, then you’ll forfeit the amount you paid for it.* **Rescheduling and missed sessions.** If you can’t attend a session, let me know in advance, and we’ll try to reschedule if both our schedules allow it. I can’t promise we’ll always be able to, though. Because it’s important to prioritize coaching, *I won’t refund any amount of payment any sessions you miss, except by my own discretion.* ## D. Paying for coaching **Free first session.** I offer a free 60-minute discovery session to every new client. (The applicable guarantees in this contract apply retroactively to that session, too.) **Pricing and payment terms.** To make coaching as accessible as possible while honoring the value of this work, I set a standard rate of $150 per hour while asking clients to choose their own price—less if they need to, and more if they can. - *Pricing.* When you schedule, you will choose how much to pay, anywhere between limits I set at my own discretion. You agree to pay *as much as you sustainably can*, given what you pay for comparable services. - *Payment terms.* You’ll also choose whether to pay up-front or per session. The price and payment terms you choose are entirely up to you, and they have no bearing at all on the work we do together. You can change these choices whenever you commit to a coaching engagement, whether that’s a single one-off session or a multi-session package. # 2\. Relationships and consent ## A. The importance of consent Every part of our coaching relationship is voluntary—your choice to be my client, my choice to coach you, and the choice we both make to continue in our relationship at every moment during our sessions together. - You and *every part of you* have the absolute right to withdraw your consent for coaching at any time—even right in the middle of a session, if you need to. - I have the right to discontinue our coaching relationship at any time, too. But I’ll only do that as a last resort, and only after communicating very clearly to you about why. ## B. Relationships other than coaching Like many expert service providers, I sometimes work with clients I know in other contexts. Occasionally, a coaching relationship will lead to other forms of acquaintanceship or collaboration between me and a client. These relationships take some special care. - If you and I have a pre-existing relationship, I will clearly explain the boundaries between that relationship and coaching. I’ll explicitly discuss with you how coaching might change our non-coaching relationship before we start, and I’ll continually provide opportunities for us to reflect on how things are going. - If you and I should decide to remain acquainted in another way, during or after our coaching relationship, I will work with you to establish the boundaries between coaching and any other form of interaction we agree to. - *I will never engage in a romantic or sexual relationship with any coaching client*, during our term of coaching or at any time afterward. # 3\. Confidentiality and other terms ## A. Confidentiality **Your privacy.** When you’re my coaching client, *I will not voluntarily share any personally identifiable information about you without your explicit written consent*. Email and online forms count as “writing” for this purpose. **Generative Artificial Intelligence.** Because A.I. models cannot be held accountable for violations of privacy or harmful advice, I draw firm boundaries around their use: - I do not and will not willingly expose any information about any client to any A.I. model, including my notes about them. - I encourage my clients *not* to discuss their internal systems with A.I. models, and to exercise great caution if they choose do to so. **Consulting with other professionals.** If we decide it would be helpful for me to talk about you with another professional you know—a therapist, physician, or somatic practitioner, for example—I’ll ask you to give me written permission me to do that. **Possible (but very unlikely) limitations.** When you talk to a physician, an attorney, a therapist, or a religious leader, what you tell them is confidential by law. *Since I’m a coach, what you say to me is not legally protected from disclosure by a special professional privilege.* If you do work that’s often criminalized—some forms of direct action, sex work, or plant medicine, for example—we can and will establish guardrails to protect us both in the highly unlikely event that I’d ever be subpoenaed to talk about it. **Testimonials.** At some point during or after our work together, I may offer you the opportunity to provide a review or testimonial about our work together—but it’s *entirely* up to you whether and how you do. ## B. The very legal part This part of our agreement is about what we can and can’t promise each other as legal parties. Like most legal documents, it’s both very boring and very profound. **Your choices are yours.** Our relationship is based on mutual consent and mutual autonomy. As independent parties, neither of us has any authority to create any obligation or liability on behalf of the other. In specific: as a coach, I may sometimes make suggestions about things you might do—but the choices you make are *yours alone*, and you bear sole responsibility for the consequences of those choices. **My liability is limited.** In the event of any dispute between us, the only remedy you’re entitled to is the return of any money you’ve paid me. **How to resolve disputes.** We agree to do everything we can to resolve any differences between us by mutual consent. In the unlikely event that we can’t, though, you and I are both free to pursue legal action. In that case, whoever prevails in court may recover court costs and attorneys’ fees from the other party. **Things about this contract.** Finally, here are some very subtle things that the law wants us to agree about explicitly: - *Severability.* If any part of this agreement turns out to be void, invalid or unenforceable, the rest of it will continue to stand. - *Entire understanding.* This agreement supersedes any other coaching contract we have signed together. - *Waiver.* If either of us fails to enforce specific parts of this agreement, that doesn’t mean we’re relinquishing our right to do so in the future. - *Jurisdiction.* We agree that this agreement will be governed and construed in accordance with the laws of the United States of America and the State of Minnesota (since that’s where I practice). ### Concept kit URL: https://www.chudgar.com/concept-kit/ Last updated: 2026-04-16T16:55:36.000Z ## The concepts you use to understand your work set the limits of what’s possible. **No matter how complex your work, how varied your communities, or how urgent your mission, there’s a set of core concepts that underlies all of it — the ideas that allow you and others to understand what you do and why.** If you’ve never thought *intentionally* about the concepts at the heart of your work, you might be surprised to find that your team simply doesn’t agree about the most basic things — and that lack of shared understanding is absolutely holding you back. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/10/chris-ignizio.jpg) ## “A game-changer” My agency hired Ash to provide communication consulting services for us. ****His guidance and insights have been a game-changer.** He led us through a well-developed process that generated a very practical but aspirational toolkit, which I imagine we’ll be using for years to come — as both an internal compass, and as our external rosetta stone. ****— Chris Ignizio**, 2021 Creative Director, Scope & Sequence --- ### Here are a few examples of what concept kits can do in [philanthropy](#philanthropy), [healthcare](#healthcare), the [public sector](#government), and [healing](#healing). --- # Concepts for philanthropy Far too often, global development organizations with the best of intentions end up talking about their work in ways that dehumanize the very people they hope to help. In 2020, Eastern Congo Initiative wanted to refresh their brand and communications in a way that brought their deepest organizational values to life. That’s what this concept kit is for. [![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/3867d4ac-5cce-455b-923e-f06c1ed9a776/ECI-brand-book.png?format=750w)](https://bit.ly/eci-brand-book-2020?ref=chudgar.com) From “[The ECI Brand Book](https://bit.ly/eci-brand-book-2020?ref=chudgar.com)” (2020). This slide shows how a concept kit can bring an organization’s deepest ethical values into the smallest communications decisions. # Concepts for healthcare ### Breaking through decades of inhuman jargon Sometimes, the only way to start new conversations is to create a new kind of language for it. That’s what Minnesota’s nonprofit health insurers asked me to do for their industry — and this is the radically new set of ideas we created together. ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1565370372850-B4G0NOMCKQ3L0CUZHVSP/Screen+Shot+2019-08-09+at+12.05.30+PM.png?format=750w) From “[Ten Concepts for Health Care](https://www.neilchudgar.com/big-ideas/concepts-for-health-care-communication?ref=chudgar.com)” (2015). This is a photo I took of my friend Tyler’s father-in-law-Godfred, cuddling Tyler’s baby son Lucas (who is now not a baby any more). # Concepts for the public sector I’ve been teaching for going on two decades now, and I’ve learned how to use language as image to make ideas easier to remember. I built this training deck from the ground up to help the City of Saint Paul train 12,000 employees about data culture. ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1588607305869-SY1E5DGFMBUGUME4E2GV/every-use-of-data-is-a-moral-choice.png?format=750w) From “[How to use data to make Saint Paul better](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vTSIfl-JXfwPQBh1yNvdlOztkc6%5FG8zQuyKX4zDdKXE6wAPepUzqNy87Lq3%5FbTLnIpHaNu2xDfOSiVV/pub?delayms=3000&loop=false&start=false&ref=chudgar.com),” (2019) # Concepts for healing Sometimes, ideas are so new and deep that only new images will do. Here, I worked with [Luminary Lab](https://helloluminary.com/?ref=chudgar.com) and the brilliant illustrator [Cicely Combs](http://www.cicelycombs.com/?ref=chudgar.com) to distill a simple, beautiful and truthful series of words and pictures, designed to make sense anywhere in the world people are suffering. ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1581469018354-PMWLE3T2692S6HDSFCI0/Screen+Shot+2020-02-11+at+6.56.12+PM.png?format=750w) From “[The Healing Journey: Helping people heal from the pain of trauma](https://www.neilchudgar.com/big-ideas/trauma-healing-institute?ref=chudgar.com)” (2018) --- ## Price and process **For a fixed fee of $3,500, here’s how we’ll build your concept kit:** 1. To begin, I’ll **review materials you give me** about your work so I can get a sense of where you’re at and where you’re going. 2. Next, I’ll facilitate a **two-hour workshop with a team you convene** to generate an emergent consensus about the ideas that underlie your work—and how you understand them. 3. After that, I’ll deliver a **presentation with a draft of your kit**. Often, folks end up with kits that include these elements: - **Mission statement.** You can use this language on your website and marketing materials, in conversations with clients and potential clients, and — crucially — in your internal conversations about your work. - **Statement of values.** This language will help you make decisions about how you want your business to operate, day in and day out. - **Set of core concepts.** This flexible, modular kit of conceptual tools will be ready to use in any future communications, from web copy to strategic planning. 1. Finally, after **one round of revisions** in the presentation (if any are needed), I’ll deliver the final concept kit, which you can start using right away. [Let’s talk about the concepts that power your work!](https://www.chudgar.com/contact) ### Communications audit URL: https://www.chudgar.com/communications-audit/ Last updated: 2023-10-13T22:05:17.000Z ## When your organization speaks, what do your communities hear? **When it really matters what your work means in the world, a communications audit can provide crucial insight about what you’re actually saying — and what it means to the people you care about.** A communications audit provides crucial insight for strategic planning, marketing and branding work, development and capacity-building, and change management projects. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/10/Pahoua-Yang-Hoffman-1.jpg) ## From audit to action Mr. Chudgar reached out to 19 civic leaders … to discuss the Minnesota media landscape, the state of public policy debate in our communities, and the Citizens League’s own place in what comes next. The result of these conversations led to a polished report Mr. Chudgar wrote that included ****recommendations that we plan to put into action.** … The depth of his work was critical to our future planning. ****— Pahoua Yang Hoffman**, 2019 Executive Director, [Citizens League](https://citizensleague.org/?ref=chudgar.com) # Prices and process **Get deeper insight at the depth you need.** Every communications audit includes kickoff and wrap-up conversations, along with unlimited email support. #### Basic audit: $1,500 A basic communications audit includes a ****thorough review of your core communications pieces**, along with some research about your communities and your business. I’ll provide a ****written report of my findings** in whatever form you like best. #### Audit with interviews: $2,500 This includes everything above, **plus* a two hour-long meetings, in person or by phone: a one-hour stakeholder interview to begin, and a final one-hour interview to discuss a draft of the report. This [****example**](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G69Vlvcp4TXvUjMzrre75f1Kd1Q-vAZX/view?usp=sharing&ref=chudgar.com), prepared for the [Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research](https://collegevilleinstitute.org/?ref=chudgar.com), shows how interviews deepen the insight. #### Comprehensive audit: from $5,000 All the above, plus review of up to 2,000 pages of communications materials, three social media accounts, and up to 10 hours of stakeholder interviews. This [****example**](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Dr5d-qEqHGBuSsvcZEpw%5FMBdm6XwO%5FtQ/view?usp=sharing&ref=chudgar.com), prepared for the [Citizens League](https://citizensleague.org/?ref=chudgar.com), shows how deep this kind of work can go. [Let’s talk about your communications!](https://www.chudgar.com/contact) ## ### Options for coaching with Ash URL: https://www.chudgar.com/options-for-coaching/ Last updated: 2026-09-09T17:10:54.000Z # 💵 Pricing and payment **Because I work entirely outside the healthcare system, my clients can’t use health insurance to pay me.** For that reason, I think a lot about how to make this healing and liberating inner work as accessible as possible. (Particularly nowadays, as the world economy gets worse for pretty much everybody.) ## Choose your own price Every new client’s [hour-long exploration session](https://www.chudgar.com/free-exploration-session/) is absolutely free. Once you decide to work with me, you get to **choose your own price** from a three-tier scale, no questions asked: - 💰💰💰 Clients who can afford it choose my **generosity rate**, $200 per hour, to help make coaching more accessible for others. (Does anybody choose to pay this much? To my delight, indeed they do.) - 💰💰 Most clients choose my **standard rate**, $150 per hour—close to the “market rate” for expert one-on-one support of the kind I offer. (This is what I pay to work with other practitioners like me.) - 💰 My **accessibility rate** is $100 per hour. This is the lowest rate I can advertise publicly without devaluing the work of professionals like me. (Choose this rate if the standard rate is too spendy.) **If these prices are out of reach for you right now,** [**click here for options**](#support-for-less)**.** **Which rate should you pick?** A rule of thumb: think about what you’re willing to pay out of pocket for other expert personal services (like bodywork, hair, personal training, and such). ### Price tiers by package | | Accessibility | Standard | Generosity | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ------------- | -------- | ---------- | | **👋 [Exploration session](https://www.chudgar.com/free-exploration-session)** | free | free | free | | **🧭 [Inner Intensive](#inner-intensive)** Twelve 60-minute sessions | $1,200 | $1,800 | $2,400 | | **📍[Inner Focus](#inner-focus)** Four 90-minute sessions | $600 | $900 | $1,200 | | **1️⃣ [Single 90-minute session](#single-sessions)** | $150 | $225 | $300 | ## Choose how and when to pay When you sign up for coaching, you’ll choose how and when to pay, too: - Most people pay by **credit card**, but you’re welcome to pay by **cash or check** as well. - You can pay **up-front** or in **installments**. [Start by booking a free exploration session](https://www.chudgar.com/free-exploration-session) --- # Ways to work together ## 🧭 INNER INTENSIVE ### Three months of coaching, 60 minutes every week, to get to know your whole self. **If you’ve never explored your inner world before, this is the place to start.** When you want to get better acquainted with *all* of your complicated self, an Inner Intensive lets you bring focused attention to your own experience over 12 consecutive weeks. - In weekly hour-long coaching sessions, online or at my office in Minneapolis, I’ll support your inner exploration with compassionate guidance, honest encouragement, and steadfast solidarity. - My approach to coaching is designed to let you explore deeply enough to achieve transformative results — *and* gently enough to let you get on with ordinary life between sessions. - The new inner communication skills you learn in your Intensive will help you sustain the progress you make toward healing and liberation long after our last session. ### Inner Intensive price tiers For twelve 60-minute sessions: | Accessibility | Standard | Generosity | | ------------- | -------- | ---------- | | $1,200 | $1,800 | $2,400 | Pay up-front or in installments. If these prices are out of reach, [here are some options](#support-for-less). ## 📍 INNER FOCUS ### Four 90-minute coaching sessions, with a specific goal in mind. **Focused support for your inner world for a particular reason.** Sometimes, you don’t need to explore your *whole* inner world — just a the parts of it that are causing you trouble right now. - Maybe a new part of yourself has just emerged, and you want some help integrating them into your internal family. - Maybe there’s a big challenge going on in your life, and you want some support to make sense of it and get through it more comfortably. - Maybe there’s a specific pattern in your thinking or behavior that you feel ready to change for the better. ### Inner Focus pricing For four 90-minute sessions: | Accessibility | Standard | Generosity | | ------------- | -------- | ---------- | | $1,200 | $1,800 | $2,400 | Pay up-front or in installments. If these prices are out of reach, [here are some options](#support-for-less). ## ONE BY ONE ## 1️⃣ Single 90-minute coaching sessions ### Inner communication coaching, whenever you need it. *If you have already explored your inner world in depth*, you are welcome to schedule, **you can book a single 90-minute coaching session any time**, online or in person, at the sliding-scale rate that makes sense for you. ### Single session pricing For one 90-minute session: | Accessibility rate | Standard rate | Generosity rate | | ------------------ | ------------- | --------------- | | $150 | $225 | $300 | Pay up-front. If these prices are out of reach, [here are some options](#support-for-less). --- # 💡How to get support for less **I believe *everyone* deserves the chance to make peace with their inner world, no matter how much money they have.** If the prices on this page are standing between you and the support you’re looking for, here are some ideas: - **🫶 Ask me about lower rates or post-paid sessions.** If my lowest rate would cause you economic hardship, just tell me during our [free first call](https://www.chudgar.com/free-first-session)*.* I’ll work with you to see if we can find a price and payment structure that you can manage. - **📚 Do-it-yourself inner exploration.** Try [these free and cheap resources](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/resources/) to explore your inner world on your own. That’s how I started this work myself. - **🏥 Using health insurance.** If you have health insurance through your employer, an independent health plan, or a government program like Medicare or Medical Assistance, a mental-health professional trained in Internal Family Systems might be a more affordable option. [Here’s some advice about finding a therapist who takes insurance.](https://www.chudgar.com/find-a-therapist/) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/03/Ash-on-screen-2.jpeg) ## 🆓 Start with a free exploration session Rather than offering a 15- or 30-minute consultation, I take a whole hour to get to know every potential client. Zero pressure, totally confidential — just an hour for us to talk. [Browse available times](https://www.chudgar.com/free-exploration-session) ### Welcome to coaching! URL: https://www.chudgar.com/welcome-to-coaching/ Last updated: 2026-09-09T13:50:52.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/08/IMG_2216-2.GIF) ## Some tips as we get started # Payment and scheduling - **Booking difficulties.** I have yet to find a way of making booking, paying, and scheduling *completely* seamless — wonkiness may occur! Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you run into any trouble at all — I’ll help you sort it out. - **Rescheduling.** Life happens for both of us, so rescheduling will occasionally need to happen. You can reschedule using the link in the calendar invitation for your session; if you have any trouble, I’ll be happy to help you reschedule. - **Canceling.** If you cancel a session, I ask that you reschedule it *within 30 days*. # Our sessions Almost all my clients work with me by video call, but folks who live near the Twin Cities in Minnesota can also meet in person at my home office in Northeast Minneapolis. ### 💻 Video sessions - You’ll use **the link in the calendar invitation** to join our call through an app or a browser. If you ever can’t find the link, just text or email me and I’ll send it along. - You’ll need a **stable internet connection** *and* **a place where you can be private** and nobody will overhear you. - If internet connectivity ever becomes distracting for us — or if you’re finding eye contact difficult, or for any other reasons — **we can always fall back to audio**. Just let me know. ### 🛋️ In-person sessions [Here’s what you need to know about my home office.](https://www.chudgar.com/meeting-in-person/) # How and why to get in touch between sessions The real magic of coaching happens *between* our calls, as you get acquainted with all the different parts of yourself, day by day. What you discover in your inner world will almost certainly surprise you — sometimes in delightful ways, and also sometimes in ways that might feel confusing or scary at first. So remember this: ### You are welcome to get in touch with me between sessions! I know there are parts of you who will be reluctant to do that — so know that I am *very happy* to hear from you when … - Something administrative comes up (scheduling, payment, that sort of thing). - You aren’t sure how to do the inner inquiry you committed to last session. - You are getting confused by the complexity of your inner world. - You’re worried you are “doing it wrong.” - Any part of you is making you feel unsafe or overwhelmed. - It would be helpful for me to remind one of your parts of something, provide a little pep talk, or answer a question. At any of these times, just [**email me**](mailto:ash@chudgar.com)**,** [**send me a text**](sms:+16122255373)**, or** [**leave me a voicemail**](tel:+16122255373)**.** I *promise* you will not be disturbing me when you do, because I simply don’t answer when I don’t have time to do that. 😎 And if you ever need someone to talk to *right away*, [here are some crisis resources](https://www.chudgar.com/crisis-resources) that can be real lifesavers. # Some nice meditations If you’re eager to get started exploring your inner world, [these free guided meditations](https://www.chudgar.com/introductory-guided-meditations) are a lovely way in. **See you soon!** ### Welcome! URL: https://www.chudgar.com/welcome/ Last updated: 2026-04-27T18:53:17.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/02/2023-09-23-Ash-portrait-no-background-1.png) ## I ❤️ communication I’m Neil Ashvin Chudgar, Ph.D., but you can call me [****Ash**](https://www.chudgar.com/about). It’s my job to help people communicate more skillfully with their communities — [out in the world](https://www.chudgar.com/consulting), [in groups and teams](https://www.chudgar.com/training/), and (most of all) [within themselves](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching). [How?](#how) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/01/IMG_0822.PNG) ## Communicate more skillfully WITHIN YOURSELF As a trained Internal Family Systems practitioner, I help people with complicated brains explore their inner worlds for healing and liberation. [One-on-one IFS coaching](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/01/happy-inner-family-1.png) ## Communicate more skillfully IN GROUPS & TEAMS As a speaker, trainer, and facilitator, I bring diverse people together to ask new questions, make new connections, and imagine new worlds. [Training and facilitation](https://www.chudgar.com/training) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/01/World-of-overlapping-systems.png) ## Communicate more skillfully OUT IN THE WORLD As a communications consultant, I help people who do good in the world communicate skillfully with diverse communities. [Communications consulting](https://www.chudgar.com/consulting) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/08/2023-03-29-Ash-with-Debbbie-8.JPG) ## About Ash [Who I am, how I got here](https://www.chudgar.com/about) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/08/2023-08-23-cardinal-singing-in-beautiful-yard.GIF) ## Get in touch [Send a note or book a call](https://www.chudgar.com/contact) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2025/08/World-of-overlapping-systems.png) ## Living Plurally Now that the very idea of “diversity” is under attack, embracing plurality and multiplicity – in ourselves and our world – can help us survive, resist, and even flourish. With tips from IFS practice and assorted helpful ideas, my newsletter aims to help us all stay in touch with the beautiful complexity of our world. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. # 👔 About my business - **Partsland, LLC**, is the [Minnesota company](https://mblsportal.sos.state.mn.us/Business/SearchDetails?filingGuid=85b3d9b2-7876-ed11-9065-00155d01c614&ref=chudgar.com) under which I do all my my work. My coaching clients see this name on their bills and receipts. - As a [consultant](https://www.chudgar.com/consulting), I [do business as](https://mblsportal.sos.state.mn.us/Business/SearchDetails?filingGuid=af159361-c8b3-e911-9179-00155d01b32c&ref=chudgar.com) **Chudgar Consulting**. My consulting clients see this name on contracts, invoices, and such. # ⌨️ About this website - **Colophon.** I built this website on [Ghost](https://ghost.org/?ref=chudgar.com), a user-funded [open-source](https://github.com/tryghost?ref=chudgar.com) publishing platform run by a [nonprofit foundation](https://ghost.org/about/?ref=chudgar.com). Type is set in [Fraunces](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Fraunces?preview.text=Every%20part%20of%20you%20matters.%20Every%20part%20of%20you%20belongs.&preview.text%5Ftype=custom&ref=chudgar.com), a delightfully personable typeface by [Phaedra Charles](https://www.instagram.com/phaedra.xyz/?ref=chudgar.com) of [Undercase Type](https://github.com/undercasetype/fraunces?ref=chudgar.com), distinguished by features including “festive globules” and “precarious legs.” - **Content.** This site brings together information about all the ways I work — [coaching](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching), [consulting](https://www.chudgar.com/consulting) in various ways, and [writing](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/writing) — which used to be on separate websites. All the photos and drawings and such are by me, unless I credit somebody else. - **Wrong Partsland?** Partsland, LLC, is my coaching practice, named for those times when, while exploring our inner world, we encounter too many parts of ourselves to keep track of or identify — moments of being “lost in parts-land,” as IFS practitioners often say. FYI, there are other Partslands for [Polaris parts](https://partsland.com/?ref=chudgar.com) and [guitar parts](https://shoppartsland.com/?ref=chudgar.com). - **Creative Commons.** The contents of this website are published under a [Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0?ref=chudgar.com). You are free to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, even for commercial purposes. *If you do, you must credit Ash Chudgar or chudgar.com, and you must license the modified material under identical terms.* - **Newsletter.** If what you read here tickles your fancy or makes you think, I’d love to keep the conversation going. [Subscribe to my newsletter right here](#/portal/signup) for occasional new ideas from me in your inbox. Unsubscribe any time — I won’t be mad if you do. - **Current birds.** [This is a running list of the birds](https://birds.haikubox.com/listen/348518973538?ref=chudgar.com) who are being overheard singing in our back yard. ### Coaching URL: https://www.chudgar.com/coaching/ Last updated: 2025-08-04T21:09:38.000Z ## Make peace with **all* of who you are. ### Learn the skills of inner communication for healing and liberation. ### With some simple skills and a little practice, you can learn to harmonize all the conflicting thoughts, emotions, and perspectives inside your head. And when you transform your inner dialogue, you transform what it feels like *to be you.* When all the “voices in your head” can communicate freely, everything changes — how you feel about yourself, how you respond in relationships, and how you show up in the world. # About coaching ![A bald man with a long brown beard in a Zoom window waves at the camera and smiles.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/04/Ash-on-screen-2.jpeg) What you’ll see during a virtual coaching session: me, being friendly. ### **🗓️** From an [intensive exploration](https://www.chudgar.com/options-for-coaching#inner-intensive) of your inner world to [one-off sessions](https://www.chudgar.com/options-for-coaching#individual-sessions) when you need them, there are lots of ways I can support you on the way to inner healing and liberation. # What clients say #### “A personal paradigm shift” It wasn’t until I worked with Ash that I began to understand all the ways I had closed myself off to the world. Over just a handful of sessions, Ash expertly and compassionately guided me to what I now call a personal paradigm shift. It’s not as though I’m a new person, instead, ****the clarifying power of parts work has helped me better understand who I’ve always been, and how I can take care of myself.** ****— Daniel**, 2025 #### “Wonderfully not like a therapist” I feel so much trust with you — you’re punctual, accountable, clear, present, in your own feels, and ****wonderfully not like a distant, removed therapist!** You share an unending perspective and experience in PartsLand that utterly shifts my world view and view of self. ****— Meghan Chao Smith**, 2024 #### “Makes it feel safe” ****One of the most therapeutic and healing experiences of my life.** For me, traditional therapy was never a real fit. I always felt like I could intellectualize and control the process way too much. It always felt impossible to let my guard down enough to actually deal with anything real. But Ash is so deeply empathetic and present in his guidance that … he makes it feel so safe to share. — ****I.B.**, 2022 #### “It actually helps. Honestly” I have not had any hope surrounding therapy in many years and expected this to be more of the same. One of the first and most significant changes occurred pretty immediately—within the first 3 sessions, which was being able to perceive (a harsh inner critic) as someone trying to help … . ****It actually helps. Honestly.** … I can’t think of ways you could be better. — ****JMC**, licensed social worker, 2025 #### “Life-changing” Since working with Ash, I feel more integrated, more aware, and—most importantly—more compassionate toward myself. I don’t just understand my parts intellectually anymore; I feel them, and I know how to be with them. That has been life-changing. … If you’re considering coaching with Ash, just do it. Especially if you’re someone who’s sensitive, navigating trauma, or skeptical of traditional healing spaces—Ash brings something rare. — ****Rachel C.**, Minneapolis, MN, 2025 [Coaching options and pricing](https://www.chudgar.com/options-for-coaching) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/04/Screenshot-2023-08-23-at-3.33.54-PM.png) ## 📺 Video clips Here are some quick clips from a sample first session, with explanations for how the coaching works at each step. [Watch the videos](https://www.chudgar.com/an-introduction-in-video-clips) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/04/FAQ-graphic-with-big-borders.png) ## ℹ️ Frequently asked questions Start here for an easygoing overview of my coaching practice, from [how my work is different from therapy](https://www.chudgar.com/differences-from-therapy) to [pros and cons](https://www.chudgar.com/who-can-benefit/). [Qs and As about coaching](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching-faq) ## 🆓 Start with a free first session Rather than offering a quick “consultation,” I like to take a whole hour to get to know every potential client, so they can get a good feel for what it’s like to work together. Zero pressure, totally confidential — just an hour for us to talk. [Browse available times](https://chudgar.as.me/free-first-session?ref=chudgar.com) # More to learn The kind of work I do as a coach is endlessly interesting to me, and I write about it a lot for colleagues and community. Blog posts about partswork include handy resources, occasional dialogues among my parts, and other experiments in internal community-building. [📰 Read the latest posts about partswork](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/partswork/) Also, you don’t need a support from a professional like me to start exploring your inner world: you can start right now, today, for cheap or free. [🛠️ DIY inner inquiry resources](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/resources/) # How improving your inner communication can change your life ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/09/Screenshot-2023-09-13-at-2.46.11-PM.png) ## The human mind can be a noisy place. **Most people talk to ourselves all the time — sometimes out loud, and *constantly* in our heads.** These mental conversations, moment by moment and year after year, make up the internal community of *you —* diverse aspects of your unique personality, in constant dialogue with each other. - Some people’s inner communities are so harmonious and peaceful they don’t even notice them. (Or so I’ve heard.) - For other folks — especially those of us who’ve had experience of trauma or oppression — the “voices in our heads” can be so noisy, hostile, or confusing that they get in the way of our relationships, our work, and even our sense of self. ### If the conversations that go on in your head are causing you trouble, I can sympathize. I felt that way too, for decades. So I’m speaking from experience when I tell you that *the conversations in your head can change for the better*. ### ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-11-at-4.20.29-PM-1.png) ## ****For most of my life, my chaotic and distressing thoughts made me miserable.** I would do almost anything to avoid being “alone with myself.” (A small example: I never took a shower without the radio on.) Over the years, some healing practices helped me get some control over my inner dialogue, from A.A. to therapy to meditation to cannabis — but nothing ever made me feel truly *safe* in my own mind. **Then I learned a simple and powerful way to improve my inner dialogues: by taking them seriously.** Through a process of inner inquiry called “partswork,” which I learned about through a therapeutic model called [Internal Family Systems](https://www.chudgar.com/what-is-ifs), I found more healing and liberation than I ever suspected possible — simply by paying respectful attention to my own inner world. Now I help my clients find their own healing and liberation in the same way. # How I learned to harmonize the voices in my head As I’ve experienced it in my own life, using partswork so well for inner healing and liberation because it’s so simple and intuitive to put into practice. Here’s how this whole deal worked for me: 1. **Listening to my inner dialogue.** First on my own (with [this book](https://www.chudgar.com/the-best-introduction-to-ifs)), then with professional support (from [this amazing person](https://irwb.org/shawn-neel.html?ref=chudgar.com)), I learned to really *listen* to all the different parts of who I am — even the internal voices I didn’t like very much. 2. **Getting to know different parts of myself.** With practice, I got to know all the different parts of myself — some I knew about, some very surprising — and they got to know me too. I learned about their stories, their true intentions, their relationships with each other, and the work they’ve been doing to help me get through life. 3. **Building internal community.** And over time, with practice, my whole inner community has learned how to talk together in respectful, compassionate, and liberating ways. The model itself was so intellectually fascinating and spiritually rewarding that I became [a trained IFS practitioner](https://ifs-institute.com/practitioners/all/101765?ref=chudgar.com) myself. **Now as a coach, I support my clients as they do all these things for themselves.** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-11-at-4.20.32-PM.png) ## What to look forward to Today, the “voices in my head” are my loving internal family, and we grow and evolve together with mutual respect and support. Every part of who I am knows that, as a community, we can face whatever life has in store. Together, **we* keep us safe. # How better internal communication feels **Better inner communication will make you feel more:** - **Calm, clear and confident.** Mutual respect and support among the different parts of your personality lets you speak more clearly, consider things more calmly, and act more confidently in the world — even under pressure. - **Courageous and connected.** The united support of your whole inner team can gives you the courage to connect with or detach from other people and communities from a place of inner integrity. - **Creative.** When they feel a sense of inclusion and belonging, the diverse parts of your personality can generate ingenious solutions to difficult problems. - **Curious.** Your curiosity about your own internal world will make you more curious about the complexities of other people and systems. - **Compassionate.** Your love and kindness toward the most challenging parts of yourself will help you respond with compassion to the most challenging parts of other people. ### If you want to feel better being *all* of who you are, I’m here to support you. Browse available times for your free first session [right here](https://www.chudgar.com/free-first-session). Meanwhile, you and every part of you are warmly welcome to [peruse this FAQ](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching-faq), [watch clips from a coaching session](https://www.chudgar.com/an-introduction-in-video-clips), [take IFS for a test-drive on your own](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/ways-to-get-started/), and [scope me out](https://www.chudgar.com/about). ### Consulting URL: https://www.chudgar.com/consulting/ Last updated: 2025-01-10T17:19:41.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/02/2020-01-22-Govt-Plaza-platform-train-2.jpg) ## Find the words that move your people. Compassionate, rigorous expertise to help you connect with your diverse communities. ## World-class communications services for nonprofits, social enterprises, public-sector agencies, and other groups of caring people who serve a common cause. - 🆕 [**Recent work**](#recent-work) - 🧰 [**Consulting services**](#services) - **💼** [**Posts about consulting**](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/consulting) ## Quick facts - **🏆 Proud memberships.** Chudgar Consulting is a queer-owned CERT Small Business Enterprise and an associate member of the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits. - 💵 **Billing rate.** I charge $175 per hour for consulting services. Most clients work with me on fixed-fee or retainer contracts based roughly on that rate. I do not offer discounts, but I sometimes consult for free. #### How Chudgar Consulting has changed over 10 years After a dozen years teaching literature and philosophy to college students, I realized I wanted to help people communicate in the big off-campus world. I founded Chudgar Consulting in 2014 for just that purpose. Over time, after learning a lot consulting for big companies like 3M and UnitedHealthcare, I realized that the kinds of stories I **wanted* to tell — about big topics like good and evil, justice and power, oppression and healing — were just not very welcome in the profit-making world. So, over time, I started working more with people and organizations who think about big ideas every day: public servants, nonprofit workers, organizers, healers. Those are the folks I’m proud to work with today. # Recent work ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/02/SfG-image-4.png) ## Software for Good We reimagined [the vision and values](https://softwareforgood.com/about/?ref=chudgar.com) of a beloved Twin Cities institution for a new era of building technology for liberation. [The soul of technology](https://softwareforgood.com/software-with-soul/?ref=chudgar.com) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/02/StP-OFE-image-3.png) ## The City of Saint Paul We told the “big stories” of a bold new approach to how civic governance, from [transforming community safety](https://www.stpaul.gov/departments/neighborhood-safety/community-first-response?ref=chudgar.com#transforming-response) to [investing in equity for the long term](https://www.stpaul.gov/departments/financial-empowerment?ref=chudgar.com). [More big stories](https://www.chudgar.com/saint-paul-big-stories) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/02/District-logo-3.png) ## Osseo Area Schools We created a clear, just, and replicable process for responding to instances of identity-based hatred in school communities with healing. [Meeting harm with repair](https://www.chudgar.com/osseo-harm-repair) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/02/THI-image-2.png) ## Trauma Healing Institute We created simple resources to help people of faith all over the world respond to trauma with greater healing. [More about trauma and healing](https://www.chudgar.com/trauma-healing-institute) ## When you need to find the words that connect your mission with your diverse communities, [I can help](#services). # Consulting services ## 🧭 Communications leadership You can have a seasoned communications director on your team — for just as long as you need me. For a day, a project, or a year or more, get expert support for $175 an hour. [Get expert direction](https://cal.com/chudgar/consulting-inquiry?ref=chudgar.com) ## 🔎 Communications audit When you need to understand what your communities hear when your organization speaks, a communications audit can help, for $5,000 or less. [Get clearer insight](https://www.chudgar.com/communications-audit) ## 🧰 Concept kit In conversation with people in your communities, I’ll help you reinvigorate the work you do by transforming how you think and talk about it. Get your own for $3,500 flat. [Make deeper meaning](https://www.chudgar.com/concept-kit) ## 📝 Writing when it counts ****Your best ideas deserve the human touch.** When you have big ideas to share, I’ll find the words that make your meaning sing, in your voice. Create an original op-ed article for $1,500. [Express your best ideas](https://cal.com/chudgar/consulting-inquiry?ref=chudgar.com) [Let’s talk about your communications](https://cal.com/chudgar/consulting-inquiry?ref=chudgar.com) ## ### Free exploration session URL: https://www.chudgar.com/free-exploration-session/ Last updated: 2026-09-07T19:47:21.000Z If you’ve read [about who I am](https://www.chudgar.com/about), poked around [my coaching FAQ](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching-faq/), and maybe read some of my [posts about coaching stuff](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/coaching/), you might be thinking: “This Ash Chudgar sounds like someone I could work with.” I’m glad! But the only way to know for certain if I’m the right coach for you is to experience what it *actually feels like* for us to work together. ### **Click the button below to find a good time for your free session** — a whole hour, totally confidential, with zero pressure to make any decisions. ### [Browse times](#browsetimes) #### Why a free first session instead of a brief consultation? Most coaches (and therapists and other one-on-one helpers) offer free 15- or 30-minute “consultation” for potential clients. I used to do that too—but those quick sessions **inevitably* ran long, and almost always got pretty deep into the challenges new clients were facing. Eventually, I decided to make it an hour, and I’ve never regretted it. #### What will happen during my exploration session? ****The hour is yours, and you can use it any way you want to.** You can: - tell me about yourself, - ask me any questions you can think of, or even - work a bit on a specific challenge that you’re dealing with right now. Meanwhile, I will: - tell you anything about my life, my practice, or my expertise that you’re interested in knowing, - answer all your questions honestly, and - do a little coaching, if coachable stuff comes up **and* you give me your consent to do that. At the end of the call, I’ll thank you for your time and let you know how I’ll follow up. ****No decisions required!** #### Will I have to decide whether to sign up for coaching during our session? ****Nope.** By the end of our hour talking together, you’ll have a lot to ponder — and you deserve plenty of time to mull it over and reflect. ****I’ll follow up** ***after** **our call, at least a day later, to see how you’re doing and ask if you’d like to pursue coaching.** - If you do want to sign up for coaching with me, wonderful — we’ll go from there! - If you decide not to sign up, that’s great too. I’ll thank you for honoring your own wisdom and wish you well on your journey. ## Posts ### Consultation URL: https://www.chudgar.com/consultation/ Last updated: 2025-10-06T15:37:28.000Z _No content available._ ### Group: IFS for Liberation URL: https://www.chudgar.com/ifs-for-liberation-group/ Last updated: 2025-09-06T17:43:35.000Z **Wouldn’t it be great to feel a sense of freedom within yourself?** By the time we’re adults, many of us feel anything but free inside. That’s because parts of us have been trying to keep us safe using the strategies of social control they know from our families and society. So we get stuck in distressing patterns like perfectionism, resentment, hyper-independence, and over-accountability. ### **In this facilitated online group, we’ll use the Internal Family Systems (IFS) framework to meet the “cops in our heads.”** You’ll learn why they oppress other parts of who you are—and find ways to achieve a sense of safety without harsh internal policing. **The goal: Liberation for *every* part of you are.** ## Where and when? - **🖥️ Virtually, over Zoom** - **🪩 Wednesday evenings, 5:00 – 6:30 PM Central** - **🍁 Weekly for 8 weeks, October 1 – November 19, 2025** ## How much? Choose your own contribution using this scale: - If you can pay for what you need and some wants as well, contribute **$70 per session ($560 in all)** - If you can usually pay for what you need, contribute **$50 per session ($400 in all)** - If you sometimes have trouble paying for what you need, contribute **$30 per session ($240 in all)** You’ll pay before the group begins, and we can arrange a payment plan if you need to. ## Benefits of IFS for Liberation A participant shared what they got from last year’s group: “It feels easier to be ****more compassionate towards myself** now that I have an idea of how my system is set up.” [Interested? Let us know](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe%5Ff42tEFzOKt0iNNsrWdwJ5qwc4ti9oaSGNz-SDfVkdafzhA/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=108457420892114449257&ref=chudgar.com) ## How we’ll heal and get free together **By working with our internal oppression in community, we aim to help each other:** - Understand and heal the parts of ourselves that are protecting us in oppressive ways - Act more often in alignment with our values, without getting paralyzed *or* pushed into unsustainable action - Build resilience to the discomfort that comes from learning about the systems that cause harm and our role in them - Decrease our dependence on external guidance and affirmation - Increase our ability to connect and be vulnerable with others **By working toward individual liberation, we’ll help each other get free in community. And the more *we* get free, the better we can resist the forces of oppression in the world outside us.** ## Meet facilitators Augustin and Ash ![Photo collage of smiling two bald men with beards (one long and braided, one close-cropped)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2025/09/2025-09-04-Ash-and-Augustin-1-1.png) **Getting to know ourselves through the Internal Family Systems model let us both get free from internal oppression so we can live and work in freedom, aligned with our values.** - **Augustin**, a [therapist](https://augustinkendalltherapy.com/?ref=chudgar.com), identifies as white, queer, trans, and disabled. - **Ash**, a [coach](https://www.chudgar.com/about), identifies as a light-skinned biracial person, queer, and cis. We both stand in solidarity with our clients as they navigate their own journeys from internal oppression to liberation. That’s just what this workshop is for. ## What will group meetings be like? **We’ll be a small group — no more than 11 people in all, including the facilitators, and each meeting will last 90 minutes.** Here’s how each session will go: 1. **Grounding meditation.** To start, Ash and Augustin will lead the group in a simple exercise to get us all grounded. 2. **A round of check-ins.** Everybody will check in briefly, in response to a question we’ll pose. 3. **Exploration practice.** Augustin and Ash will introduce a simple practice for exploring our own inner worlds, and then invite everybody to do it for themselves (in groups, pairs, or individually). 4. **Group Discussion.** After we all practice, we’ll regroup in a circle to share what we’ve learned from it. 5. **Homework.** Ash and Augustin will introduce a “homework” practice to try during the coming week and answer any questions that come up. 6. **Closing.** We’ll bid each other farewell until next time. # Interested? Let’s talk! Because we’ll be talking about heavy stuff in a small group, we’re going to talk to folks beforehand so we can assemble a community that sets all of us up for healing and liberation. **Just fill out the form below (click [here](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe%5Ff42tEFzOKt0iNNsrWdwJ5qwc4ti9oaSGNz-SDfVkdafzhA/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=108457420892114449257&ref=chudgar.com) if that’s easier), and Ash or Augustin will be in touch to schedule a 15-minute chat.** Loading… ### Worldbuilding for Nonprofits URL: https://www.chudgar.com/worldbuilding-for-nonprofits/ Last updated: 2025-08-08T18:51:07.000Z *This workshop, originally created for St. Olaf College’s* [*Social Impact Scholars program*](https://wp.stolaf.edu/pipercenter/find-internships-research-opportunities/st-olaf-internship-research-programs/social-impact-scholars/?ref=chudgar.com)*, was presented in this form at a Minnesota Association of Nonprofits* [*spotlight series*](https://minnesotanonprofits.org/event/spotlight-worldbuilding-through-strategic-communication-values-based-narratives?ref=chudgar.com) *on August 7, 2025\. The slides are below, and a written-out version of the talk follows.* --- ## Nonprofits and new worlds I want to start with a simple fact: **Nonprofits (and other organizations of do-gooders) only come into being because the real world is broken.** People recognize that the world, as it is now, isn’t set up to make a good thing happen that they care deeply about. So they set up an organization to fix the world in such a way that the good thing they care about *can and will* happen. (By the way: all that follows applies not just to nonprofits, but to movement organizations, electoral campaigns, mutual-aid groups, and so forth — any society of people who come together to make the world different and better. I’ll just talk about “nonprofits” for simplicity.) You could say that, when they organize to make something good happen, people are simply modifying the real world. But I think they are also doing something much more profound: By creating the conditions under which something impossible becomes possible, nonprofits are *building a new world.* Here’s how I think of it schematically, where *X* is any good thing: In the real world, - **Problem:** Although X would be great, it’s just not happening - **Solution:** None; that’s how things are. By refusing to accept this state of affairs, the people who organize to pursue *X* are effectively creating a whole new world — one that’s identical to the real world, with one crucial difference. In Nonprofitland, - **Problem:** Reality is simply unacceptable unless X is possible. - **Solution:** We organize people, systems, and energy to make X happen. Problems and solutions exist in a world. Nonprofits have to *build the world* where the good thing they want to have happen is both necessary and possible, so they can organize other people, systems, and energy to achieve it. 🤔 ****What unacceptable failure of the real world motivates your work? Why do you feel so strongly about it?** ## “Another World Is Possible” Framing what nonprofits do as “worldbuilding” might seem like a fanciful metaphor, but I think it’s just a restatement of a familiar leftist maxim: “Another World Is Possible.” Here’s a beautiful illustration of that idea by Minneapolis’s own [Ricardo Levins Morales](https://www.rlmartstudio.com/product/another-world-is-possible/?ref=chudgar.com): ![A person in an environment of industrial agriculture pokes her head through a dome to see a beautiful small farm.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2025/08/Ricardo-Levins-Morales--Another-World-Is-Possible.png) Nonprofits begin from this belief — which sets up a tricky challenge for communicating. **How do you convince people that things don’t have to be the way they are?** That, in essence, is the problem of nonprofit communications. As the great prison abolitionist organizer Mariame Kaba puts it in [*We Do This ’Til We Free Us*](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24151550W/We%5FDo%5FThis%5F'Til%5FWe%5FFree%5FUs?edition=key%3A/books/OL32028148M&ref=chudgar.com) (2021), > “Our charge is to make liberation under oppression completely thinkable.” Making good things (like liberation) *thinkable* — under conditions (like oppression) designed to make make them *unthinkable*: that is what makes progress possible. The end of slavery in the U.S. was unthinkable until abolitionists made it thinkable. The right to vote for women was unthinkable until suffragists made it thinkable. And to make something thinkable, *you need a world to think it in*. That’s because, to quote a pioneer in public-opinion polling, > The way in which the world is imagined determines … what people will do. Walter Lippmann said that in 1929 — a time very much like ours, with soaring inequality and deep social conflict. He’s cited here by the quoted by [FrameWorks Institute](https://www.frameworksinstitute.org/articles/five-questions-about-framing/?ref=chudgar.com) — an excellent resource for people who have to communicate about social issues. They call the discipline of world-imagining “framing.” But I’d encourage you to call it what it is. “Framing” in issue means *building a world* in which the problems the real world accepts as inevitable can and will be solved. “Framing” is building the world you long to live in. 🤔 ****In your work, what social issues do you have to “frame” in a particular way? How does your “framing” implicitly imagine a new world?** ## Worldbuilding in fiction Fiction shows how purpose-built worlds can reimagine real-world problems in transformative ways. For example, in the real world: - **Problem:** Climate change is rapidly making life worse for humans. - **Solution:** ¯\\*(ツ)*/¯ You don’t need me to tell you that none of the solutions currently on offer is remotely adequate to the crisis. In the world we live in now, the problem of climate change is effectively unsolvable. In the world of N.K. Jemisin’s brilliant [*Broken Earth* trilogy](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL26848393M/The%5FBroken%5FEarth%5FTrilogy%5FThe%5FFifth%5FSeason%5FThe%5FObelisk%5FGate%5FThe%5FStone%5FSky?ref=chudgar.com) (2018), the problem is very similar, but reconfigured in a way that allows for a dramatically different solution. In this world, - **Problem:** The earth is punishing humanity for having hurt him - **Solution:** Humanity reorganizes to avoid making the earth angrier In the world that Jemisin imagines, it is commonly understood that previous generations of human beings antagonized Father Earth so grievously through their extractive practices that the planet himself began producing catastrophic geologic and environmental events in order to punish them. So humans have spent many generations re-learning how to live on the planet in ways that *aren’t* extractive, in the hope that Earth will stop punishing them with catastrophic weather. The world of small-scale human communities that Jemisin builds lets us imagine, in vivid detail, what it might *be like* to live in a post-extraction future — and where the very has the moral dignity of personhood. It reconfigures the problem to make a solution thinkable. Sometimes, fictional worlds can help us by heightening a real-world problem in a way that helps us understand it more vividly. In the summer of 2022, when I first gave this workshop, the Supreme Court had just confronted the real-world U.S.A. with the very same problem that plagues [Gilead](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL675783W/The%5FHandmaid's%5FTale?edition=key%3A/books/OL51647052M&ref=chudgar.com) (1984): - **Problem:** The law forces people to give birth against their will It was no accident that our national reality so closely resembled Margaret Atwood’s fictional world; in building it, [she resolved](https://lithub.com/margaret-atwood-on-how-she-came-to-write-the-handmaids-tale/?%5F%5FreadwiseLocation=&ref=chudgar.com) not to “include anything that human begins had not already done … or for which the technology did not already exist.” And people in both worlds have come to the same conclusion: - **Solution:** Oppressed people organize rescues & resistance As in Gilead, so right here and now. ## Handy worldbuilding techniques So: fictional worlds can transform how we communicate about the real world by reimagining unsolvable real-world problems in such that they can be solved. Here’s a nifty example, from the world of *Battlestar Galactica*: - **Problem:** Human beings mistreat other beings because they think they’re the only species that matters. - **Solution:** Nonhumans indistinguishable from humans vigorously argue this point, arriving finally at something like mutual respect. Here’s another one at a smaller scale, suggested by a workshop participant yesterday: - **Problem:** Students with unusual learning needs don’t get appropriate education - **Solution:** Identify, notify, and transport such students to free schools, created just for them That’s Hogwarts, of course. The United Federation of Planets comes up frequently in workshops, too: - **Problem:** Inequality runs rampant despite abundance - **Solution:** Representative democracy redistributes resources equitably and abolishes money Fictional worlds, as various as they are, reconfigure real-world problems in some common ways: - **Defamiliarize the problem**, so people can see it in a new way. (Non-human creatures are great for this purpose: consider *Zootopia*.) - **Deepening the sorrow**, so you can feel the problem more intensely. (Fiction lets you do this using point of view, as famously in *Uncle Tom’s Cabin*.) - **Make the problem literal**, so the world itself expresses the problem. (In *The Silo*, for example, exploited workers live physically *underneath* the professional-managerial class.) Fictional worlds allow for reimagined solutions, too: - **Make the solution familiar**, by describing it in vivid detail, or repeating it. (Often the structure of a quest or journey will help here.) - **Heighten the triumph** so you can feel the joy and happiness of the solution. (I think of the scene at the end of *Star Wars*.) - **Make the solution mythic**, so solving the problem is not just a matter of policy, but a matter of sacredness or bringing order to the universe. (The Narnia books are a great example of this, although the “problem” C.S. Lewis seems to be solving is modernity *per se*, which—?) 🤔 ****What’s your favorite fictional world? How does it reconfigure a real-world problem in to make it solvable?** ## Worldbuilding in Minnesota ### A world where all families are free Back in 2012, there was a problem that many Minnesotans wanted to solve: - **Problem:** Same-sex couples in Minnesota cannot marry The common-sense solution seemed to be to persuade voters to be more tolerant of sexual minorities. But that didn’t work, since Minnesotan straight people showed very little inclination to “tolerate” queer people. So the geniuses at “Minnesotans United for All Families,” the nonprofit PAC that was campaigning for marriage equality, imagined a different world where the problem was *entirely different*: - **Problem:** Some Minnesotan families are unfairly denied freedom. This is a completely different way to think about the problem. And once you’ve framed the problem that way, a new solution presents itself: - **Solution:** Persuade voters to defend freedom for all Minnesota families The orange-and-blue lawn signs were everywhere: “**Vote No: Don’t Limit the Freedom to Marry.**” That year, Minnesotans voted by a 110,000-vote margin to legalize same-sex marriage, and I myself am married to another man (for now)! **How did Minnesotans United rebuild a world around a new problem and solution? What are the advantages of the new world they built? Any potential disadvantages?** ### A world where everyone is safe Worldbuilding is hard: sometimes, the real world just isn’t ready to imagine that things can and should be different. Again in Minnesota, eight years later, the Minneapolis Police Department made the whole world focus on a very long-standing problem: - **Problem:** Police officers hurt and kill Black people with impunity - **Solution:** Stop police officers from hurting and killing Black people I bet you remember what that moment felt like — the problem was so vivid, so real, so horrifying, that it felt as though things had to change. Reality was clearly, obviously broken; another world *had* to be possible. At the time, huge majorities of Americans seemed to agree. The solution to the problem was clear — a solution that prison and police abolitionists had been proposing for decades: *Defund the police.* Here in Minneapolis, an amazing coalition of organizers advocated for a ballot measure to amend the Minneapolis charter to replace the MPD with a Department of Public Safety. Led by the brilliant JaNaé Bates, the Yes 4 Minneapolis movement framed the solution the problem of police violence in a more positive way: “**Expand Public Safety.**” Minister Bates and her team wanted us to imagine a new world where there was *more* safety, safety for *everybody*. I am very sorry to say that, despite truly heroic mid-pandemic organizing efforts, Minneapolis voters rejected that ballot measure by 12 points. Today, four years later, the Minneapolis Police Department has more funding than ever before; and nationwide, police officers killed more Americans in 2024 than in any year on record. 🤔 ****With worldbuilding in mind, why do you think the message of “expanding public safety” didn’t work, in the way “defending freedom for all families” did?** ## Now you try If you are in the business of nonprofit communication, the organization you work for has *already* brought a new world into being: a world in which the problem you want to solve is so intolerable that *reality itself* must change to make solutions possible. Thinking that way, you can transform how you think about your messages by building new worlds *on purpose.* And to do that, you can use the powerful tools of fiction. In the new world you build, - You can make the problem you care about helpfully unfamiliar, and you make the solution feel familiar. - You can deepen the sorrow of the problem, and heighten the glory of solving it. - You can make the problem concretely literal in some way, and make the solution noble and mythic. So go forth, communicator, and build new worlds. You cannot build too many. The rest of us need them all. [Keen to discuss? Let’s talk!](https://www.chudgar.com/contact) ### Rice and khadi URL: https://www.chudgar.com/rice-and-khadi/ Last updated: 2025-07-21T20:43:01.000Z ## Make rice - Combine 1/2 cup **white rice** (basmati is nice but not necessary), 1 cup **water**, and a pinch of **salt** in a little saucepan. - Bring to a boil, then cover and turn down to low for 18 minutes. - Let the rice rest covered till you are ready for it. ## Set up for the khadi While the rice is going, - Get 1/2 cup **plain yogurt**, any kind (my dad used plain Dannon, I use Greek-style cashew yogurt). - Get 1–2 cups of **water** — more if you like your khadi more soupy, less if you like it thicker. - Put **whole spices** in a little dish: 1/4 teaspoon each **mustard seeds** and **cumin seeds**. If you have them, you can add a **cinnamon stick** and a few **cloves**, 1/4 teaspoon **fenugreek** seeds, and a handful of **curry leaves**. You can put a - Put **ground spices** in a different little dish: about 1/2 teaspoon each of **turmeric** and **garlic powder**, plus **salt** to taste. If you have them and like them, you can add other spices too: a pinch of **cayenne** and **asafetida**, **cinnamon**, and **cloves**. (Only use the ground cinnamon and cloves if you don’t use whole.) - You might like to have some **sugar** on hand, too. ## Make the khadi Once you’re set up, - Heat up a medium-sized saucepan over medium-high heat, or an Instant Pot on the sauté setting. Have a whisk and the water nearby. - Once it’s hot, melt a couple teaspoons of some neutral-ish **fat** (**ghee** is classic, my dad used **vegetable oil**, and I use **coconut oil**). - Once the fat is hot, toss in the **whole spices**, and stir them around briskly until the mustard seeds start popping. - Once that happens, toss in the **ground spices** and stir them around for a few seconds, until the turmeric smells nice. - Carefully add the **water** (it will splash!), bring to a near-boil, and then lower the heat to low. Simmer it for a bit. - Once the broth is simmering, start whisking it, and add the **yogurt** a spoonful at a time, whisking as you go. As you do this, the khadi will become fluorescent yellow, like a highlighter! Keep whisking after all the yogurt is added, to keep it from splitting. Then turn off the heat until the rice is done. - Taste the khadi to see if it is right, and adjust the spices accordingly. At this point I usually add extra **garlic powder** and some **sugar**. ## Combine and eat Once the khadi is made and the rice is done, add the **rice** to the **khadi** and stir it around. Now you have a comforting bowl of rice and khadi! I like to put a spoonful of **mango pickle** on top of mine, but you don’t have to. ### Beyond IFS: Inner Work that Works for Plural Systems URL: https://www.chudgar.com/ppwc25/ Last updated: 2025-09-25T20:41:10.000Z # Video of the talk # Notes from the session *This session was presented at* [*The Plural Assocation*](https://powertotheplurals.com/?ref=chudgar.com)*’s seventh* [*Plural Positivity World Conference*](https://www.airmeet.com/e/f2bc8260-fc48-11ef-93d6-ab3a7b55aaec?ref=chudgar.com) *on May 25, 2025\. These are the notes we used to narrate the video above.* ### Contents 1. [Introduction](#introduction) 2. [IFS by the book](#by-the-book) 3. [Plural experiences of IFS](#plural-experiences) 4. [Beyond IFS: Suggestions](#evolving-IFS) 5. [Some invitations](#invitations) ## 0\. Introduction The Internal Family Systems model of human ecology, called IFS for short, is quickly growing in popularity worldwide. It teaches that human psychology is naturally multiple, and that healing happens when we know and love every part of who we are. Yet despite the clear affinity between IFS and Plurality, the model is still largely taught and practiced without considering the real diversity of Plural experience. As a Plural IFS practitioner, I want to change that for everybody’s benefit. It’s our belief that a model of human multiplicity that works better for Plural systems will serve singlets better too. Let me start by introducing my system. So, my name is Ash Chudgar. These days I think of myself as a median system of seven or so members, depending on how you count. We’re comfortable using he/him or they/them singular [pronouns](https://www.chudgar.com/the-joys-of-being-yourselves/) for general purposes. Among fellow Systems we really like having the freedom to use “we” as well as “I” to refer to our whole ensemble. Every Plural system is different, and the only one we really understand is our own. So we’ll use our own system as an example sometimes. If you can’t see me, I’m a light-skinned person with a bald head, 45 years old. I have a brown beard tied into two braids. I’m wearing a green quilted coverall with a red lining. I’m sitting in front of a bunch of bookcases with books and plants on them. If your system likes to take notes, you are welcome to — but I’ll also provide the slides at the end, if you want them. Feel free to experience this session in whatever way works best for you! We won’t mind. ## Our thanks We were a little nervous submitting the session, because we know that IFS is really controversial in the Plural community, for very good reasons. To our delight and panic, the session got approved — so we’ve been spending a lot of time learning from the IFS and plural communities to prepare. We want to offer our gratitude to a few folks in particular: - My friend and colleague Forrest Merrill for their wisdom about dissociation, - The coaching clients who have shared their plural experience with me, - The public scholarship of [Jamie Marich](https://jamiemarich.com/?ref=chudgar.com)’s system, - The Reddit communities of [/r/internalfamilysystems](https://www.reddit.com/r/InternalFamilySystems/?ref=chudgar.com) and especially [/r/plural](https://www.reddit.com/r/plural/?ref=chudgar.com). And of course thanks very much to the Stronghold system, and everymany who has volunteered to make this conference possible, and to every member of every system who is here! ## From IFS to plurality An important fact about our system: we came to understand our own plurality *through* IFS, well into adulthood: first by reading do-it-yourself IFS books, then by working with a skillful IFS practitioner, then by learning the model in the IFS Institute’s Level 1 training, then by working one-on-one with clients, including some Plural systems, then by reading up on Plurality and attending events like this one, and finally by coming to realize that, yup, we’re Plural ourselves. So as a system, *we* have experienced IFS as profoundly healing and liberating. But our experience is not the norm. Many if not most Plural systems encounter IFS as a therapeutic method in order to make sense of their system when it’s not working well. Too often, the IFS they encounter — through therapists or practitioners, independent reading, or social media — is unhelpful at best and traumatizing at worst. That means, for many systems (maybe yours), the most important concepts in IFS can be triggering all by themselves. ## Content advisory Hence this content advisory: - We’re going to discuss the IFS term for members of plural systems, which is “**parts**.” - We’ll talk a bit about the specific “**roles**” IFS describes for three separate kinds of parts. - And we are going to talk about the so-called **Self**, the IFS concept that describes the internal “seat of consciousness.” If your system has had bad experiences with these ideas in the past, I am truly sorry. I want to apologize to your system on the behalf of the IFS community. You deserve professional helpers and theoretical models that truly serve your system *as it is*. In today’s presentation, that’s what I’m hoping we can help IFS evolve into. Here’s how: ## Agenda 1. First, we’ll do a quick overview of **IFS by the book** — in this case, the current textbook that IFS practitioners are supposed to read to learn the model from. The idea here is to establish what “official IFS” actually says, and correct some common misconceptions. 2. Next, we’ll look at **how Plural systems experience IFS in real life** — which is often **very** different from IFS “by the book,” and works very badly for Plurals. 3. After that, I’ll offer a few very specific suggestions for evolving **beyond “by-the-book” IFS**, to make the model more helpful for Plural systems of all kinds. 4. Finally, we’ll offer you some practical **invitations** to make IFS work better for your system, if you want to. Okay: So what does IFS teach? ## 1\. IFS by the book ### Core IFS concepts Back to those trigger warnings — they’re the core IFS concepts. #### “Parts” > Parts are discrete, autonomous mental systems, each with their own … abilities, desires, and views of the world. … Every one of us contains an inner tribe of people. (Schwartz & Sweezy, 30f) IFS says that psychic multiplicity is in fact universal. It’s been characterized as “opting in to DID,” which is *kinda* right in some ways. #### “Roles” > In response to danger, the individuals in human systems … take on roles that can be categorized by three groups … Managers … Exiles … Firefighters. (31) IFS says that the parts of people tend to respond to trauma in three typical ways: - Some parts **manage** day-to-day life in order to keep overwhelming feelings at bay. - Others **are exiled,** kept out of awareness, along with their overwhelming feelings (like shame, terror, and so forth). - And then **firefighters** respond quickly when exiles emerge into awareness by using strategies that reduce overwhelm (by using numbing substances or distracting behavior, for example). IFS teaches that *all* systems have parts that play these roles. #### “Self” > Everyone can access the active, compassionate leader we call the Self, which is characterized by clarity, perspective, compassion … effective leadership. (44) IFS says that everyone has access to a Self, a “seat of consciousness” that is always calm, compassionate, and courageous. IFS teaches that this Self can’t be harmed or killed, and doesn’t need to develop. It’s just there in everybody, always available. IFS teaches that parts who play those three roles get in the way of Self’s leadership by occupying the seat of consciousness instead. Now, by-the-book IFS is *really, really* clear about these concepts. But as people practice the model and talk about it on social media, they get badly distorted in a few important ways. ### IFS misconceptions We see these IFS misconceptions everywhere — not only on Reddit or Facebook, but also among trained IFS practitioners who ought to know better! - A misconception about Parts is that they are “just metaphors” for feelings or mental states. This misconception can be really infuriating to Plural systems, as you can imagine. - There are two common misconceptions about those three roles IFS says Parts play: - First, it’s sometimes said that, once they abandon their roles, Parts should be integrated into Self. This is not true, but you hear it everywhere. And even some IFS practitioners who say this isn’t true actually act as though it is. - It’s also said that parts are *just* the roles the play. Again, absolutely not true; but you hear this all the time. Sometimes people even reduce parts to specific feelings, like “my anger part” or “my shaming part,” which is just not helpful at all. - Finally, a misconception about Self: that it’s “just the part who is (or should be) in charge.” That is not IFS teaching at all, but again — it’s a common idea. Let’s correct the record about what “by-the-book IFS” actually says: ### Common misconceptions corrected First, > Parts populate our inner world. They are not metaphors … . Rather, they are inner beings with full personalities. (Schwartz & Falconer, 94) Parts “are not metaphors.” Simple as that. Second, > Parts do not disappear under Self-leadership, but their extreme roles do, as does the rigid three-group arrangement of managers, firefighters, and exiles. (Schwartz & Sweezy, 39) Integration into the self is not, absolutely *not*, the goal of IFS. We can’t emphasize that enough. IFS teaching is also clear that parts are not just the roles they play; IFS says that parts get to decide what they do, and what they do can change. Finally, > The Self (is) either an active inner leader or an expansive, boundaryless state of mind … an “I” or an expansive sense of space and energy. (Schwartz & Sweezy, 45) In IFS, the Self is not just a special boss-part. It’s more like what you might call Buddha-nature, or the “inner light,” or a “compassionate awareness.” For by-the-book IFS, Self is fundamentally different in kind from Parts. So, that’s what IFS teaches by chapter and verse. But: Those common misconceptions about IFS are everywhere — not only on social media, but even among IFS practitioners who should know better. And even strictly by-the-book IFS, as we’ve presented it here, often doesn’t work for Plural systems. ## 2\. Plural experiences of IFS From here on out, we’ll be leaving the IFS textbook aside and staying with the real experience of Plural systems. My system knows how IFS doesn’t work for us. But we wanted to understand how IFS doesn’t work for other systems. To find out, we asked the IFS and Plural Reddit communities that exact question. The conversations that ensued were just massively interesting. Here are some highlights. ### What plurals say #### The trouble with “parts” First, how do Plural systems experience the idea of “parts”? - “Not everyone is plural!” IFS says everybody is; plural systems know better. - “We’re not metaphorical!” Members of Plural systems rightly resent being told that their headmates are just metaphors for something else. - In fact, some IFS practitioners struggle to grasp that some people really are internal multiple, rather than being “multiple” as a sort of therapeutic fiction. “IFS therapists I’ve worked with have been dismissive about us being a system.” #### The trouble with “roles” The idea of “roles” rubs Plural systems the wrong way, too: - “We are not just roles. We are people.” By-the-book IFS agrees. But much real-world practice treats parts as nothing more than functional units. - “We also particularly dislike thinking of ourselves as a family.” That’s fair, right? For lots of Plurals, “family” has never been particularly safe! - “Not every system is an internal family system.” I take this to mean that not every system is what Internal Family Systems says it should be. And IFS can do a lot of harm to Plurals by insisting otherwise. #### The trouble with “Self” Finally, the concept of Self is very troublesome for many of us: - “No one is ‘in charge,’ and no one should be.” This is true in my system as well. - “Systems don’t need to be/have hierarchies.” In fact, many plural systems (including this one) are deliberately anti-hierarchical. - “You need to be both in Self and in parts depending on the context. And this is what IFS pathologizes.” There is a really pernicious notion in IFS-world that you’re either “in a part” (which is bad) or “in Self” (which is good). This isn’t technically IFS teaching. But in practice, it’s 100% how people behave. So you will see a lot of IFS practitioners doing a really elaborate job of performing being “in Self.” So, in the words of our fellow Systems: the core concepts of IFS often just do not work. They’re not helpful, they’re not therapeutic, and they can be really harmful. But I think we can make them work better. ## 3\. Beyond IFS: Suggestions Those huge problems with IFS are real. But it’s also true that IFS is far and away the most Plural-friendly psychotherapeutic model available today. (If there’s a better one, please tell me!) So we want to offer some suggestions for ways the IFS model can serve Plural systems, of every kind, better. ### Evolving the core concepts First, the core concepts: - We think IFS can evolve to conceptualize the **members** of plural systems in much more accurate and respectful ways than by calling them all “parts.” - Rather than imposing a three-role taxonomy, IFS can evolve to encounter the structure of each person’s **system** as it actually is. - And rather than insisting on “Self-leadership,” IFS can adopt a more flexible understanding of how **agency** is distributed among the members of each individual system. So here are my suggestions for adapting IFS to serve Plural systems better. #### From “parts” to members 1. **Not everyone is plural.** This is important: this idea keeps us from thinking that IFS ought to apply to everybody, and preserving the uniqueness of Plural experience. 2. **System members are often not accurately described as “parts.”** Some are headmates, some are alters, some are introjects or fictives, and on and on and on — there are many kinds of beings in each system. 3. **Each system is unique.** Each system member is unique. This suggestion comes naturally to skilled IFS practitioners, but we want to stress it: every member of every system is unique. There is no universal template that fits everybody. #### From “roles” to system 1. **Externally imposed taxonomies are usually inaccurate.** The categories of “exile,” “manager,” and “firefighter” can be useful sort of “field guides” for IFS practitioners to have in mind. We use them that way in our own practice! But the idea that every member of every system has to fall into one of these categories is just wrong. 2. **There is no “right way” to be a system.** IFS often gives people the impression that the only healthy kind of system is a nuclear family, or a “well-run company,” or a “presidential democracy.” These are common forms of social structure in America right now, but obviously there are many, many, many other ways to describe well-functioning systems. 3. **Each system has the right to determine its ideal structure.** The idea here is that the ideal organization of any Plural system will arise from within, rather than being imposed from without. #### From “Self-leadership” to agency 1. **“Self-leadership” is not self-evidently ideal or desirable.** Your system might, in fact, work best when Self is a “good CEO” in charge of the “workers.” But that’s hardly obvious or self-evident, right? IFS thinks it is, but it’s just not. 2. **Many systems flourish without hierarchy.** In fact, lots of systems choose a model of [system responsibility](https://pluralpedia.org/w/System%5FAccountability?ref=chudgar.com) that’s radically democratic or even straight-up anarchist. My system, for example, uses a principle of “substantial unanimity” in decision-making. 3. **Independent action by system members is often beneficial.** Right this second, for example, a member of my system called the Professor is giving this talk. (We used to be a literal professor in the real world, so he’s got practice!) In IFS terms, we are “in Self” only to the extent that the Professor is sort of a conduit for what we think of as the light inside us. We are really eager to hear what you think of these suggestions in the Q&A! For now, we want to conclude with a few offerings: ## 4\. Offerings Lots of Plural systems, with or without DID or OSDD diagnoses, end up considering working with an IFS therapist or other IFS practitioner. I’ll offer some questions you might want to ask such people to figure out if they’ll be a good fit. Then I’ll offer a couple resources that might be handy for further inquiry, IFS-wise and Plurality-wise. ### Questions to ask IFS practitioners Now, you might or might not have access to an IFS professional at all — there aren’t a lot of us! And if you do, you might have to just take whoever you can get and hope for the best. But if your system does have the freedom to be selective, here are some questions to ask: 1. **How did you learn IFS?** Here, you’re looking for an answer that includes some kind of live, supervised, intensive training: one that includes both theoretical learning and opportunities to practice. If they say something like independent reading, social media, or YouTube videos — those are red flags. Evasiveness of any kind is a get-up-and-go dealbreaker. IFS is not hard to learn, but it does take a lot of in-person practice and nuanced theoretical understanding. 2. **For you, what is a healthy system like?** Here, you’re asking if the professional has a rigid idea of what “health” looks like. If they talk about integrating parts into Self, that’s a giant red flag. IFS professionals should never, ever tell you that you need to banish your internal complexity or any member of your system. 3. **Would you be open to finding alternatives to the concepts of “parts” or “Self”?** Here you’re looking for enthusiasm, or at least curiosity. A Plural-safe IFS practitioner is going to be *very* interested in what you mean here, and that might start a really good conversation. But if the answer here is any version of “no,” that’s probably a deal-breaker. If they’re not curious about how your system is different from the model they learned up front, they probably won’t honor your experience in therapy. 4. **Do you benefit from using IFS in your own life?** “Yes, and here’s how” is a great answer to this question. “You know, I don’t make time for my parts as often as I should” is an acceptable answer. “No” (or evasiveness) is a potential dealbreaker. An IFS professional who doesn’t use the model in their own life can’t really use the model skillfully, and might well do harm unintentionally. 5. **Would you feel comfortable telling us/me a little bit about your system?** If they are flummoxed by the question, or evasive, or just say no, that’s a red flag. Skilled IFS practitioners *expect* to be asked about their “parts,” and should be fluent in talking about them. (Even if only to say, “Huh, parts of me are surprised you asked!” or something like that.) If you do use these questions, [I am very curious](https://www.chudgar.com/contact) how practitioners will respond! Finally, we have a few resources to offer your system that have been helpful to ours: ### Resources If your system is interested in exploring IFS, here are three great resources to start with: - [The textbook of IFS](https://www.chudgar.com/schwartz-and-sweezy-individuals-as-systems-2020/) by Richard Schwartz, the founder of the model, and Martha Sweezy. - A book Robert Falconer wrote with Schwartz, called [*Many Minds, One Self*](https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/f3a66c97-e013-4c99-83c1-1b7507ef9ac7?ref=chudgar.com). It offers a much richer account of plurality than IFS does. - And a person called Levi has created a marvelous free online guide to IFS (and more) that lots of Systems find helpful. And then two Plural resources I’ve found especially helpful: - Jamie Marich’s brilliant first-person guide to plurality called [*Dissociation Made Simple*](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/710427/dissociation-made-simple-by-jamie-marich/?ref=chudgar.com), and - the welcoming [Plural community on Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/plural/?ref=chudgar.com). That’s all for this session! ### The Partsworker No. 4 URL: https://www.chudgar.com/the-partsworker-no-4/ Last updated: 2025-09-16T21:10:24.000Z # This Saturday, March 8, join a global celebration of DID Awareness Day ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2025/09/PW-4-1.jpeg) **This Saturday, March 8, The Plural Association is hosting their annual virtual celebration of Dissociative Identity Disorder Awareness Day, starting at 3pm ET / 8pm UTC.** It starts at 3pm ET / 8pm UTC, and tickets are pay-what-you-can from $10 up. You don’t need a DID or OSDD diagnosis to participate, or even to work with clients who do: any and all clinicians, coaches, and plural systems are enthusiastically welcome. After a keynote presentation by a plural peer support specialist focusing on human rights, housing, and outreach, we’ll exchange clinical knowledge and personal experience in breakout rooms. I attended last year’s event, which was a truly joyful celebration of inner multiplicity in all its forms, and of *immense* practical benefit to me, my parts, and my work as a partswork practitioner. I wrote about last year’s event — [give this a read](https://www.chudgar.com/the-joys-of-being-yourselves/#did-awareness-day-2024) if you’re not sure it’s right for you. [Get your DID Awareness Day ticket](https://powertotheplurals.com/events/?ref=chudgar.com) --- # The next global Parts Work Unconference is Saturday, April 5 — get your free ticket ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2025/09/PW-4-2.png) **Alex and Pau from the** [**IFS Collective**](https://www.ifs-collective.com/?ref=partsworker.com) **are throwing another virtual party for partswork enthusiasts worldwide, and you are invited.** It starts at 10am Eastern / 2pm UTC. Though donations are appreciated, tickets to the Unconference are completely free. This is the *ninth* Unconference that Pau and Alex have organized for our global community, which should tell you something about how thoroughly excellent it is. My system and I are hoping you will join us there. ### How to come to the Unconference - [Here’s an FAQ about the Parts Work Unconference](https://www.ifs-collective.com/unconference-faq?ref=partsworker.com) from Pau and Alex. - Anyone can propose an Unconference session during the event itself, but you’re welcome to [submit your session ideas in advance](https://ifs-collective.com/propose-session?ref=chudgar.com). You can also attend *without* proposing a session, and most folks do. Every Unconference is absolutely free to attend, but donations are gratefully accepted — please do chip in if you can! [Get your free Unconference ticket](https://www.tickettailor.com/events/ifscollective/1595232?ref=chudgar.com) --- # Call for contributions This email newsletter began out of an informal global working group, which has now [done its work and come to a close](https://www.chudgar.com/2024-12-23-working-group-report/#next). But we can still use it to share our expertise, build community, and expand the horizons of partswork far beyond the limitations of the IFS Institute. We have almost 100 subscribers from all over the world, and new folks sign up after every newsletter. So: **If you have ideas to share about IFS or any other form of partswork, consider publishing them in *The Partsworker*.** I’m especially interested in work that explores these ideas: - Partswork modalities other than IFS - First-person narratives about your own system - Tips and advice for practitioners - Intersections between partswork and other theoretical frameworks - Experiments in partswork beyond the therapy room - Community-based partswork in action - Partswork-based reflections on culture, politics, and society anywhere in the world Pitch me an idea or send me a story draft any time. [Email Ash with your idea](mailto:hello@partsworker.com) --- ### That’s all for this fourth edition of **The Partsworker**, colleagues. Please forward this email anyone who might be interested, or post [this link](https://www.chudgar.com/the-partsworker-no-4/) to your social networks to share. Like the first buds of spring, we too survive the cold and dark. 🌷 ### #NoKingsDay in Minnesota URL: https://www.chudgar.com/no-kings-day-demonstration-in-minnesota/ Last updated: 2025-02-22T19:55:27.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2025/02/IMG_3877.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2025/02/IMG_3878.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2025/02/IMG_3880-1.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2025/02/IMG_3882.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2025/02/IMG_3883.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2025/02/IMG_3891.gif) ### A brief story for times when you are shattered by ongoing suffering URL: https://www.chudgar.com/the-story-of-avalokiteshvaras-tears/ Last updated: 2025-12-06T20:39:43.000Z First, don’t worry: I am not going to write to you in any detail about what’s going on in the United States. If your internal family keeps vigilant eyes on the news, as mine does, you certainly don’t need me tell you about it. If your internal setup stays sane by ignoring the news altogether, on the other hand, you wouldn’t *let* me tell you about it. (In fact: if you don’t want to contemplate the news at all, even in general, you are welcome to skip my preamble and [just read the little story](#story).) Either way, I believe your current approach to the news is exactly the right one, for your specific internal ecology in particular, at this very moment. Just go with it. ## Feeling shattered The news is nothing to treat lightly these days. In the past couple weeks, my coaching clients and friends have been talking about its effects on them in vividly material terms. People tell me that current events have ground them into the dirt, crippled them, beaten them up, broken their bones, left them shattered. No matter what they are doing outwardly — posting through it, retreating to shopping or Netflix, organizing till they’re hoarse, simply surviving with their loved ones — the enormity of this moment feels physically unsurvivable. Let me tell you what I’ve been telling people who feel that way, including members of my inner family: If the conditions of the world at present are overwhelming you, that’s not because you are doing something wrong; it’s because the conditions of the world at present *are* overwhelming for people like us. If you are feeling shattered, that’s not because you’re too fragile; it’s because what’s happening right now is *supposed* to shatter ordinary human beings. The shattering-est part of what’s happening, from what I can tell, is realizing that the worldwide quantity of suffering is vastly greater than it was two weeks ago, and that this suffering is likely to intensify exponentially for the foreseeable future — across the United States and the western hemisphere and around the world, through the height and breadth of the biosphere, for years or even generations to come. While I’m sure there are some who think it’s not *that* bad, the people I talk to are pretty darn sure it is. I think so too, alas. There are some extraordinary people who can manage the knowledge of all that suffering without being overwhelmed by it. God bless them! The rest of us depend on such saints and moral heroes. But I am convinced that most of us human beings, the vast majority of our kind, are just getting by as well as we humanly can. By now, in my forty-fifth year of life, I feel certain I’m not in the same league as, like, Gandhi or Joan of Arc. You probably aren’t either. Neither, if you can believe it, was Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion himself! At least not all the time. In fact, legend has it, he was so thoroughly shattered by the suffering he witnessed in the world that it took the greater power of Tara, a brand-new goddess, to save him from utter despair. That is the story I want to share with you today. ## The story of Avalokiteshvara’s Tears, as told by Rachel Wooten ![A green goddess emerging from a lotus-covered lake, near a four-armed bodhisattva on a cloud.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2025/02/The-Birth-of-Tara-from-a-Lake-of-Chenrezig-s-Tears-1.png) This thangka painting, via [Tsem Rinpoche](https://www.tsemrinpoche.com/tsem-tulku-rinpoche/one-minute-story/ratnagiri-tara?ref=chudgar.com), appears to illustrate this very story. I wish I could read Tibetan. > \[This\] account of Tara’s origins comes from sutra texts related to Avalokiteshvara, or, in Tibetan, Chenrezig, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. … The main point of all these accounts is that Tara appears to Avalokiteshvara after he has been transformed by a shattering experience in the underworld or lower realms. There was a time when the great Bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokiteshvara, made a vow to free all sentient beings from the lower realms of existence. In a moment of high energy and great confidence, he vowed before other buddhas and bodhisattvas that he would work endlessly until all beings had finally been liberated. He proclaimed, “If I should hesitate in this task for even a moment, then let me shatter into a thousand pieces!” Having set his intention, he began to work with great vigor and amazing force. He felt tremendous joy as he freed one sentient being after another. Then he turned his gaze and looked behind him. When he saw innumerable other beings falling into the lower realms where they experienced great suffering, he hesitated. For one instant he gave up. According to his vow, he is shattered into countless fragments. The buddhas and bodhisattvas who had witnessed his vow and his great effort gathered all of the tiny pieces and put them together again. After Avalokiteshvara was made whole again, he wept profusely. His tears formed a pool in which a beautiful lotus flower blossomed. Tara arose from its open center, a buddha herself, the Goddess of Compassion. From that time forward, Avalokiteshvara had one thousand arms, many faces, and limitless power to liberate beings. And he now realized that he had a companion, Tara, dedicated to the same efforts as he. > The classic interpretation of this well-known narrative is that Tara sprang fully formed from Avalokiteshvara’s tears — that she was born from the tears of his compassion. I find it more likely that his ordeal shattered his former approach to life — trying to accomplish an impossible task alone with the sheer force of his hard work. His grief over his limitations in the face of ongoing and unending suffering broke him open to another reality embodied in a female buddha. He is not alone. From Rachel Wooten, [*Tara: The Liberating Power of the Female Buddha*](https://www.alibris.com/Tara-The-Liberating-Power-of-the-Female-Buddha-Rachael-Wooten/book/46204244?ref=chudgar.com) (Boulder, Colorado: Sounds True, 2020). --- ## How this story can be helpful I have found myself telling an approximate version of the story of Avalokiteshvara’s tears several times this past week, to clients and friends, at great length. It feels a little awkward to reach for a story I encountered just a few years ago, as a spiritual tourist in a foreign faith, rather than any of the Bible stories from my native tradition. But this story in particular speaks to how people are feeling in this shattering moment like no other story I know; it is both profound and comforting. Profound, because it shows that the vastness of the world’s suffering has *always* overwhelmed compassionate people — not only ordinary folk like you and me, but even actual [bodhisattvas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhisattva?ref=chudgar.com#:~:text=spiritually%20heroic%20persons%20that%20work%20to%20attain%20awakening%20and%20are%20driven%20by%20a%20great%20compassion)! The agony of knowing about suffering — like every kind of pain, physical or moral — seems to isolate us, to keep us captive in what some call “the bondage of self.” Just like Avalokiteshvara, many of us seem to think that we have to face the vastness of the world’s suffering *all by ourselves* — as though there were nobody else who saw it or felt it or wanted to help. That, thankfully, is simply not the case. The story is comforting, too — so comforting, for me, that I bought a small green statue of Tara specifically to remind me about it. Whenever we are shattered by the reality of suffering, the story suggests, the power of the Goddess of Compassion will spring forth, dazzling and divine, from the lotus flowers that grow from our heartbroken tears. And in the her powerful company, we realize that we have many more capabilities than we possibly could have expected. One thousand arms, many faces! With Tara’s infinite compassion on our side, we have the strength to *keep* being compassionate, in our much tinier way — no matter how great the suffering in the world — without being altogether overwhelmed. My internal family interprets Tara as a literal goddess, but you could just as well think of her in other ways — as a metaphor for the basic goodness in people, perhaps, or as a personification of the divine force that bends “the arc of the moral universe,” ever so slowly, toward justice. You could also think of her as an appealing character from a story you read in somebody’s newsletter. Not being a Buddhist myself, I have no wisdom to offer on that score. Theological considerations aside, I think the *idea* of Tara from the story can and will help you when the suffering you see in the world feels to great to bear. That is why I keep telling it, to others and myself, and why I wanted to share it with you. In my worst moments, when the news has splintered me into a thousand pieces, my friends’ kindness and my teachers’ wisdom has sprung forth from my sad little tear-puddle, just like Tara, to keep me company and give me strength. If you’re feeling shattered, I hope the story will do the same for you. ### The future of IFS in Minnesota: Ideas and an invitation URL: https://www.chudgar.com/minnesota-ifs-report-and-invitation/ Last updated: 2025-01-27T22:38:58.000Z # What it was like to be together It was bitter cold outside when we met, but the twenty of us brought plenty of warmth to an upper room at Grapevine Collective’s [New City Center](https://grapevinecollective.org/?ref=chudgar.com). We came from the western suburbs, Saint Paul and Saint Anthony, Northfield and every part of Minneapolis. We reported serving clients in our local neighborhoods, but also (by video) all over the place: in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Massachusetts, Saudi Arabia, Spain. Many of us, till now acquainted only by email and Zoom, were meeting in person for the very first time, and we hooted in surprise at each other’s unexpected three-dimensional forms. (“You have legs!” I marveled several times. Everyone had legs, as it happened, and we were all different heights.) Our hosts had arranged an ample spread of snacks on a beautiful tablecloth, and we noshed as we mingled. After a pleasant time of leisurely conversation, Zayla and Makai brought us together in a big circle and led our parts in a welcoming meditation. After that, we broke up into little groups to exchange ideas about the concept of Self, then reconvened in the circle to discuss what we’d learned from each other. # Generations of practice, together Makai, who is new in clinical practice, returned to the circle glowing with enthusiasm. “It is so fruitful to learn from everybody’s unique way of interpreting the model,” he said. “I’m very excited about so many things to try!” David Hawkinson was visibly touched to hear this. “Imagine,” he said to Makai, “being almost 75, practicing for almost 30 years, and feeling *your* energy. So moving.” Dorothea Hrossowyc, also 75, later told me that she is starting to feel like an elder: someone who contributes to the community not by *doing* anything, but by *being* in her dignity and wisdom. I observed how fresh new practitioners like Makai, Zayla and me relaxed into the support of all the Minnesota elders in the room — the pioneers who learned the model decades ago, even as Dick Schwartz and his colleagues were improvising it into being, and brought it to this place. For me, that was the greatest blessing of the gathering: the palpable continuity of this work we are blessed to do, from year to year and generation to generation. # Our dreams for our community After that discussion, our hosts invited me to report on the results of [our 2024 community survey](https://www.chudgar.com/2024-minnesota-ifs-community-survey/) and lead a sort of conversation about our hopes for the future. To start, I reminded folks of the resources our community might be able to pool together, given the right reasons: > *On average, folks seem willing to contribute $8.32, or volunteer 2½ hours, to the community every month.* With such potential resources in mind, I invited everyone to ask their *parts* what they hoped we might be or do in the future, no matter how outlandish, and to share whatever came up. After a brief pause for inner inquiry, we went around the circle twice and shared our parts’ ideas. **Here, in brief, are our systems’ dreams for the IFS community in Minnesota**.As you read these ideas, consider: *Does this idea excite my inner family enough to take some action?* ## Our systems dream of … ## 💡 More learning from each other - Making the **email list more active**, to share our expertise. - Standing up a **Minnesota practitioner directory** with everyone’s particular expertise, which would let us offer free consults to each other in our specialties. - Setting up a **virtual bulletin board** to show us what’s happening in the community. - Setting up a **Minnesota-specific IFS mini-conference**. - Establishing an **IFS forum**: given all the expertise in this very room, creating a venue for practitioners can come and share what they know. - Establishing a weekly online same-time **drop-in-consultation group**. ## 📿 More spiritual community - Establishing something like an **IFS church**: a regular meeting to come back to the spiritual elements of the model, including the best benefits of organized religion (potlucks! choir!). - Or convening a **weekly gathering** for meditation and consultation. - Nourishing **the spiritual self**, getting to know each other intimately and learn from each other. - Setting up local groups to do **journaling and dreamwork**. ## 🤲 More public service - Raising **public awareness** of IFS beyond mental health: breaking the link between the model and mental illness or therapists, but rather simply a powerful way to “update our programming” as we grow up, something we all need to do. Sending IFS learning out into the world. - Being intentional about **the Self-energy we offer to the world**, in community. - Setting up a **free drop-in clinic** where people can get partswork on demand. - Healing **ancestors and legacies**. ## 🎉 More social community - **Social events** for practitioners — like going to a play, then meeting afterward and talk about the parts of the characters. - Gathering in **smaller practice groups**, where we’re known as people to each other. - Finding ways to be a **touchstone presence** for each other — people we could count on seeing at the monthly gathering, for example. ## ⛓️‍💥 Different ways of being in community - Creating **liberatory space** — a space of freedom, not bound by a lot of rules and regulations. - Becoming a **living and breathing, shifting entity** — a discipline and a process, rather than a model — a lived experience. - Doing an exercise where we make a **living Venn diagram** to find out where our passions intersect, in the manner of improv. ## 📍Attracting more IFS Institute activity - Making the Twin Cities a **hub of IFS practice**, like New England or Chicago, where the Institute might bring more trainings and workshops. - Finding space where an in-person **IFS Institute training** might happen — a retreat center, perhaps? ☜ *Do you know of such a place?* [*Click here to email Jess Finney about it*](mailto:jessica@creativetransformations.me)*!* # An invitation to you Our January gathering happened because Zayla and Makai just *made it happen*. Same with this listserv. **That is how the future of our community will develop, too: when one or more of us, inspired by the enthusiasm of our inner families, just *does something* to build the community of their dreams.** You might have parts who feel as though you need some sort of permission to do the thing you want to do, whatever that might be. Consider this quote from Zayla your official permission slip: yes, please, “organize groups/events/etc. and communicate them through the listserv, knowing you won’t be stepping on anyone’s toes.” Whenever your system is inspired, whatever you want to do or build or convene, go right ahead! ### A call for help from the California wildfires URL: https://www.chudgar.com/a-call-for-help-from-the-california-wildfires/ Last updated: 2025-09-16T21:09:00.000Z Hi everyone this is Brigitte. I am in Santa Monica, California. **I am looking for anyone who is willing to offer professional emotional support for those experiencing trauma during this time.** I’m putting together a list of people who are willing to offer some form of trauma therapy / healing. Please message me if you can, and please pass my message on: email [brigbbythesea@gmail.com](mailto:brigbbythesea@gmail.com?subject=LA%20FIRE%20Support&body=Hi%20Brigitte%2C%20I%20want%20to%20offer%20my%20professional%20support%20to%20survivors%20of%20the%20LA%20wildfires.%20Here%E2%80%99s%20more%20about%20me%3A%20) and put LA FIRE Support in the subject line. [Click here to email Brigitte](mailto:brigbbythesea@gmail.com?subject=LA%20FIRE%20Support&body=Hi%20Brigitte%2C%20I%20want%20to%20offer%20my%20professional%20support%20to%20survivors%20of%20the%20LA%20wildfires.%20Here%E2%80%99s%20more%20about%20me%3A%20) It is truly devastating what we are experiencing here and it’s not over. 💔 ### Partswork working group: Updates, winding down, + 2 invitations for you URL: https://www.chudgar.com/2024-12-23-working-group-report/ Last updated: 2025-09-16T21:08:21.000Z Greetings everyone! **Here’s the news:** - [**What we’ve learned about “peer-to-peer” partswork**](#update) - [**Staus of other potential projects**](#projects) - [**Invitations to work together in new ways**](#next) --- # What we’ve learned about “peer-to-peer” partswork We were excited about the idea of making the benefits of the Internal Family Systems model radically more accessible through peer-to-peer partswork, and we imagined our working group might contribute by creating open-source infrastructure to support them. To that end, this fall Risa and Ash interviewed nine people who have created (or are creating) IFS-based groups designed for people who don’t have formal training. ## What we learned **⚠️ Skillful facilitators are absolutely necessary.** This was the clearest message we heard from the folks we talked to: *purely* “peer-to-peer” partswork on the model of 12-step groups — in which *any* participant can facilitate, just by following a simple script — is ineffective at best and harmful at worst. More on this point: - As Bill Tierney explained, he began his [free partswork practice group](https://www.billtierneycoaching.com/parts-work-practice?ref=chudgar.com) thinking “that we could create a group where people could come in and practice with each other. Nope! We’d need to have a trained facilitator in every breakout room.” - Shawn Gregory and Jenna Knapp of IFS Liberation Collective agreed: training people to do their own partswork is one thing, they said, but “it does *not* work to have people go on to lead circles — the skillset needed is different.” - Brandon Laird of [IFS Peers](https://ifspeers.squarespace.com/?ref=chudgar.com) reported something very similar: “We haven’t been able to grow,” he told us, because there aren’t enough people involved who are interested in developing the skill it takes to facilitate. **➕ IFS works better in groups when combined with community healing practices.** Because it was developed in the context of one-on-one clinical psychology in the global north, the IFS model isn’t easy to implement in open groups with minimal hierarchy. All the people we talked to use IFS their groups in combination with practices for healing in community: 12-step recovery, Mindful Self-Compassion, Non-Violent Communication, Authentic Relating, and many more. **❤️‍🔥 With skillful facilitation and associated healing methods, group partswork is powerful.** Everyone we talked to bore eloquent witness to the power of IFS in groups of people who want to heal together. Brandon said it well: “Once you get a bunch of people in a space, the Self energy of the group can do way more than a therapist can. … The group gives us power.” 🤔 **The need: Training curriculum for partswork group facilitators.** Almost all the folks we talked to identified a need for a simple, accessible training curriculum to equip folks *with no formal IFS training* to facilitate partswork groups skillfully, and some are already working on their own versions of such a curriculum. We see that need, too — and we think the folks who are *already* doing this work have the expertise it will take to create it. ## Risa’s next step: An in-person IFS group in her neighborhood For Risa, the appeal of group partswork is local and in person — and that’s where she wants to direct her efforts now. As luck would have it, she’s met a number of people in her Ontario neighborhood who are very interested in the idea of using IFS principles to come together in a healing way. In the year ahead, she’s going to experiment with making that happen. **If you would like to set up a similar local IFS group,** [**email Risa to collaborate**](mailto:risa.adams@protonmail.com)**!** ## Free IFS groups that are meeting now - **For practical IFS fundamentals:** [Bill Tierny](https://www.billtierneycoaching.com/parts-work-practice?ref=chudgar.com), an IFS coach, facilitates [free, open partswork practice groups](https://www.billtierneycoaching.com/parts-work-practice?ref=chudgar.com) on Wednesdays and Sundays for anyone who wants to learn about the model from scratch. - **For folks with addictions:** [PATH](https://path2recovery.org/?ref=chudgar.com) offers free, IFS-based [online support meetings](https://path2recovery.org/meetings?ref=chudgar.com) for “people all over the world struggling with addiction and its underlying trauma.” The meetings are facilitated by IFS-trained or IFS-informed [volunteers](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdFqB2EbOUnApTeRlkZnamifHUAu76D4ZRcXtAX2y0Q1waPfw/viewform?ref=chudgar.com), including our interviewee [Achara Tarfa](https://www.acharatarfa.com/about?ref=chudgar.com). - **For a 12-Step-inspired approach:** [IFS Peers](https://ifspeers.squarespace.com/?ref=chudgar.com), which evolved out of PATH, offers free “regular, confidential online support meetings for anyone healing from trauma/addiction.” Our interviewee [Brandon Laird](https://linktr.ee/brandonlaird?ref=chudgar.com) facilitates most meetings, along with some trusted colleagues. Their [10 Statements](https://ifspeers.squarespace.com/10-statements?ref=chudgar.com) show how they are adapting 12-Step ideas to partswork. ## Other group partswork resources - **Peacebuilding and direct action:** Members of the IFS Liberation Collective, organized by [Shawn Gregory](https://ifs-institute.ce-go.com/2023-ifs-conference/speakers?ref=partsworker.com#9166), [Jenna Knapp](https://ifs-institute.ce-go.com/2023-ifs-conference/speakers?ref=chudgar.com#7962), and [Ethan Hughes](https://ifs-institute.ce-go.com/2023-ifs-conference/speakers?ref=partsworker.com#9944), are using what they’ve learned from building [a peacebuilding community in El Salvador](https://cdaelsalvador.blogspot.com/2024/09/blog-post.html?ref=partsworker.com) to use IFS principles to train other peacebuilders around the world. - **Fostering group dynamics:** [Sabrina Santa-Clara](https://www.sabrinasantaclara.com/about-sabrina/?ref=chudgar.com) and [Kevin Fitzpatrick](https://www.sabrinasantaclara.com/kevin-m-fitzpatrick/?ref=chudgar.com) combine [IFS and Authentic Relating](https://www.sabrinasantaclara.com/ifsar/?ref=chudgar.com) to foster cohesion and safety in groups who are doing therapeutic or psychedelic work together. - **Handbook for self-supporting circles:** [Karl Steyaert](https://www.karlsteyaert.com/about?ref=chudgar.com), who uses IFS and other modalities to coach groups, is writing a handbook to create self-supporting circles using IFS and Non-Violent Communication. # Status of the other projects we talked about Our September call generated [ideas for three other projects](https://www.chudgar.com/the-partsworker-no-3/#working-group) to make safe and effective partswork more accessible around the world. Here’s where they stand now: - **Trust-based global community.** The idea for building a trust-based online community of IFS practitioners and other partsworkers was broadly appealing to us, but it’s a heavy technical and lift. Nobody has stepped forward to take the project on, so it remains at the stage of a good idea. - **Standards for partswork training programs.** We were excited by the idea of creating a “baseline IFS model” that establishes the minimum standards IFS or partswork training programs need to meet. To that end, Ash compiled Siobhan’s research into some training programs in [this table](https://www.notion.so/chudgar/142959d1f14b80a1a8efc27936a3ccb5?v=142959d1f14b8020a158000c9ca3a685&pvs=4&ref=chudgar.com). Alas, we can’t commit to expanding or maintaining this resource over time. - **Voluntary ethics code for practitioners.** Presley Pizzo talked with Ash about [her ethics code](https://partswithpresley.com/my-ethical-standards/?ref=chudgar.com), which inspired Ash to flesh out [their own](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching-contract/). The next step here would be to draft and collaboratively revise a prototype ethics code that other practitioners could use, but that hasn’t happened yet. # What’s next: Winding down this working group, collaborating in new ways We loved meeting many of you in September, and we love even more the idea that dozens of people around the world share our commitment to making the benefits of partswork as accessible as possible to our fellow human beings. But we don’t see a need to continue this working group without a clear shared mission. Now that the [Partswork Directory](https://partsworkdirectory.com/?ref=chudgar.com) is up and running, we decided collectively not to stand up a competing resource; and the other projects we identified haven’t built momentum beyond a handful of us. So, with gratitude and love, we will make this the last email we send to this particular group. But that’s hardly the end of our efforts! Risa and Ash would love to invite you to join us in shared endeavors: - **Develop local, in-person IFS communities.** If you’re interested in starting a group in your community that uses partswork principles to bring people together in healing way, as Risa is doing in her neighborhood, she would love to collaborate — [just send her an email](mailto:risa.adams@protonmail.com). - **Share your most interesting ideas in *The Partsworker*.** Ash wants to invite you all to share your most interesting thinking about human multiplicity in the email newsletter that arose out of this working group, [*The Partsworker*](https://www.chudgar.com/). If you have a practice to share, a meeting or event to report on, a controversial idea to float, a provocation to offer — Ash wants to know! [Click here to pitch an idea for an upcoming newsletter.](mailto:hello@partsworker.com) With that, friends, all our best to you and every part of you for a healing and liberating year ahead! In solidarity, [Ash](https://www.chudgar.com/about) & [Risa](https://www.risaadamsmd.com/?ref=chudgar.com) ### The wisdom of Trauma and Recovery URL: https://www.chudgar.com/the-wisdom-of-trauma-and-recovery/ Last updated: 2025-01-22T21:02:02.000Z I discovered *Trauma and Recovery* for the first time in 2020, when I was deep in the throes of the midlife crisis that was making me remember having been abused as a child. Desperate for insight, I was trembling my way through one of the very first books to be written about Internal Family Systems theory, Regina Goulding and Richard Schwartz’s 1992 [*The Mosaic Mind: Empowering the Tormented Selves of Child Abuse Survivors*](https://www.alibris.com/The-Mosaic-Mind-Empowering-the-Tormented-Selves-of-Child-Abuse-Survivors-Regina-A-Goulding/book/4472009?ref=chudgar.com). It’s a book-length account of how IFS therapy goes for one woman, whom they call Lorene, who was molested by her father starting at the age of three. “The main characters of this book,” the authors write, “are Lorene’s parts.” It’s a difficult book to read — particularly for folks who *also* survived incest, as I did myself. As you might know from experience, children who are abused usually end up believing that *they* are to blame for what happened to them — that, in one way or another, some evil part of them must have *deserved* the abuse. While I was reading *The Mosaic Mind*, those parts of me were very loud in my mind! Lorene, for whom we all felt deep compassion, was clearly and obviously an innocent child. But I, my inner voices insisted, had *really* deserved the abuse. And then we read this sentence, about parts of people who feel exactly the same way: > They often feel that nothing could possibly erase their badness because it permeates the fiber of their entire being. … A simple declaration that a part is not evil represents “a refusal to engage with the survivor in the **lacerating moral complexities** of the extreme situation” (Herman, 1992, p. 69) I must have read the phrase “lacerating moral complexities” a hundred times: it’s still burned into my brain. *Yes*. No matter how many times therapists and counselors had told me “it wasn’t your fault,” no matter how many times I’d told *myself* the same thing, parts of me insisted that I had never been innocent in the first place. Here, for the very first time, was someone who understood that it was complicated: “Herman, 1992.” The book Goulding and Schwartz were citing (I have a hunch that it was Goulding who had the page dog-eared) was *Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror*, then brand new. Herman’s work advanced the idea of “complex PTSD” as an identifiable form of suffering worthy of treatment — > The syndrome that follows upon prolonged, repeated trauma needs its own name. I propose to call it “complex post-traumatic stress disorder.” (119) — which is now so widely accepted that it’s listed in the World Health Organization’s [compendium of diagnoses](https://icd.who.int/browse/2024-01/mms/en?ref=chudgar.com#585833559). Re-published with a new epilogue in 2015, *Trauma and Recovery* has become one of my sacred texts – one of the places I return for wisdom, again and again, to understand myself, my clients, and the world around me. If you have any interest at all in how people get hurt and heal, there’s no book I recommend more. # Places to get *Trauma and Recovery* You can Herman’s masterpiece on paper, as an ebook, or as an audiobook wherever you usually get books. Here are some links: - [**Find *Trauma and Recovery* in a library near you**](https://www.worldcat.org/title/502450986?ref=chudgar.com) - [**Find a used copy**](https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/trauma-recovery/author/herman-judith/?ref=chudgar.com) - [**Buy a new copy**](https://bookshop.org/p/books/trauma-and-recovery-the-aftermath-of-violence-from-domestic-abuse-to-political-terror-judith-lewis-herman/12665927?ean=9781541602953&ref=chudgar.com) If you read the book, I’d love to talk about it with you! Just [**get in touch**](https://www.chudgar.com/contact). Meanwhile, here are some of the passages from the book I return to again and again. # My favorite passages All from Judith Herman, M.D., *Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror*, 2d edn. (New York: Basic Books, 2015). ### The social history of thinking about trauma > The study of psychological trauma has an “underground” history. Like traumatized people, we have been cut off from the knowledge of our past. Like traumatized people, we need to understand the past in order to reclaim the present and the future. Therefore, an understanding of psychological trauma begins with rediscovering history. (2) > Soldiers in every war … complain bitterly that no one wants to know the real truth about war. When the victim is already devalued (a woman, a child), she may find that the most traumatic events of her life take place outside the realm of socially validated reality. Her experience becomes unspeakable. (8) > The systematic study of psychological trauma … depends on the support of a political movement. Indeed, whether such a study can be pursued or discussed in public is itself a political question. (9) > Repression, dissociation, and denial are phenomena of social as well as individual consciousness. (9) > Trauma is contagious. (140) ### How Freud repressed what his patients were telling him > Hysteria was so common among women that if \[Freud’s\] patients’ stories were true, and if his theory were correct, he would be forced to conclude that what he called “perverted acts against children” were endemic … . This idea was simply unacceptable. It was beyond credibility. Faced with this dilemma, Freud stopped listening to his female patients. (14) > Out of the ruins of the traumatic theory of hysteria, Freud created psychoanalysis. The dominant psychological theory of the next century was founded on the denial of women’s reality. (14) > With a stubborn persistence that drove him into ever greater convolutions of theory, \[Freud\] insisted that women imagined and longed for the abusive sexual encounters of which they complained. (19) ### From PTSD among soldiers to trauma among women > The moral legitimacy of the antiwar movement and the national experience of defeat in a discredited war had made it possible to recognize psychological trauma as a lasting and inevitable legacy of war. In 1980, for the first time, the characteristic syndrome of psychological trauma became a “real” diagnosis. (27) > Not until the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s was it recognized that the most common post-traumatic disorders are not those of men in war but of women in civilian life. (28) > My own initial descriptions of the psychology of incest survivors essentially recapitulated the nineteenth-century observations of hysteria. … Hysteria is the combat neurosis of the sex war. (32) > The period of greatest psychological vulnerability is also in reality the period of greatest traumatic exposure, for both young men and young women. Rape and combat might thus be considered complementary social rites of initiation into the coercive violence at the foundation of adult society. (60) ### What trauma does to people > Sometimes situations of inescapable danger may evoke not only terror and rage but also, paradoxically, a state of detached calm, in which terror, rage, and pain dissolve. (42) > In situations of terror, people spontaneously seek their first source of comfort and protection. Wounded soldiers and raped women cry for their mothers, or for God. When this cry is not answered, the sense of basic trust is shattered. (52) > Traumatic events, by definition, thwart initiative and overwhelm individual competence. … In the aftermath of traumatic events, as survivors review and judge their own conduct, feelings of guilt and inferiority are practically universal. … It is the victims, not the perpetrators, who feel guilty. (53) ### Fairness and justice > The survivor’s shame and guilt may be exacerbated by the harsh judgment of others, but it is not fully assuaged by simple pronouncements absolving her from responsibility, because simple pronouncements, even favorable ones, represent a refusal to engage with the survivor in the lacerating moral complexities of the extreme situation. For those who bear witness, the survivor seeks not absolution but fairness … . (69) > No custom or common ritual recognizes the mourning that follows traumatic life events. (70) > Women quickly learn that rape is a crime only in theory; in practice the standard for what constitutes rape is set not at the level of women’s experience of violation but just above the level of coercion acceptable to men. That level turns out to be high indeed. (72) > The women who recover most successfully are those who discover some meaning in their experience that transcends the limits of personal tragedy. Most commonly, women find this meaning by joining with others in social action. (73) ### Trauma and the reality of evil > The victim cannot assume her former identity. … Her moral ideals must coexist with knowledge of the capacity for evil, but within others and within herself. (93) > The majority of people experience the bitterness of being forsaken by God. (94) > The child feels that she has been abandoned to her fate, and this abandonment is often resented more keenly than the abuse itself. (101) > The traumatic event challenges an ordinary person to become a theologian, a philosopher, and a jurist. The survivor is called upon to articulate the values and beliefs that she once held and that the trauma destroyed. She stands mute before the emptiness of evil, feeling the insufficiency of any known system of explanation. (178) ### How children adapt to trauma > The pathological environment of childhood abuse forces the development of extraordinary capacities, both creative and destructive. It fosters the development of abnormal states of consciousness in which the ordinary relations of body and mind, reality and imagination, knowledge and memory, no longer hold. These altered states of consciousness permit the elaboration of a prodigious array of symptoms, both somatic and psychological. And these symptoms simultaneously conceal and reveal their origins; they speak in a disguised language of secrets to terrible for words. (96) > All of the abused child’s psychological adaptations serve the fundamental purpose of preserving her primary attachment to her parents in the face of daily evidence of their malice, helplessness, or indifference. (102) > When it is impossible to avoid the reality of the abuse, the child must construct some system of meaning that justifies it. Inevitably the child concludes that her innate badness is the cause. The child seizes upon this explanation early and clings to it tenaciously, for it enables her to preserve a sense of meaning, hope, and power. (103) > Simply by virtue of her existence on earth, she believes she has driven the most powerful people in the world to do terrible things. Surely, then, her nature must be thoroughly evil. The language of the self becomes a language of abomination. (105) > Adult survivors who have escaped from the abusive situation continue to view themselves with contempt and to take upon themselves the shame and guilt of their abusers. The profound sense of inner badness becomes the core around which the abused child’s identity is formed, and it persists into adult life. (105) > Most abused children reach adulthood with their secrets intact. (110) ### Power and recovery > The first principle of recovery is the empowerment of the survivor. She must be the author and arbiter of her own recovery. … No intervention that takes power away from the survivor can possibly foster her recovery, no matter how much it appears to be in her immediate best interest. (133) > Working with victimized people requires a committed moral stance. … She must affirm a position of solidarity with the victim. This does not mean a simplistic notion that the victim can do no wrong; rather, it involves an understanding of the fundamental injustice of the traumatic experience and the need for a resolution that restores some sense of justice. (135) > It cannot be reiterated too often: no one can face trauma alone. (153) > Without freedom, there can be no safety and no recovery, but freedom is often achieved at great cost. In order to gain their freedom, survivors may have to give up almost everything else. (172) ### Testimony and mourning > In the absence of a socially meaningful form of testimony, many traumatized people choose to keep their symptoms. (184) > Traumatic losses rupture the ordinary sequence of generations and defy the ordinary social conventions of bereavement. The telling of the trauma story thus inevitably plagues the survivor into profound grief. (188) > Only through mourning everything that she has lost can the patient discover her indestructible inner life. (188) > Resistance to mourning can take on numerous disguises. Most frequently it appears as a fantasy of magical resolution through revenge, forgiveness, or compensation. … During the possibility of mourning, the survivor must come to terms with the impossibility of getting even. (189) > Mourning is the only way to give due honor to loss; there is no adequate compensation. (190) > The reconstruction of the trauma requires immersion in a past experience of frozen time; the descent into mourning feels like a surrender to tears that are endless. … It will almost surely take longer than the patient wishes, but it will not go on forever. (195) ### Trauma, injustice, and society > Though the survivor is not responsible for the injury that was done to her, she is responsible for her recovery. Paradoxically, acceptance of this apparent injustice is the beginning of empowerment. (192) > While there is no way to compensate for an atrocity, there is a way to transcend it, by making it a gift to others. (207) > The study of psychological trauma is an inherently political enterprise because it calls attention to the experience of oppressed people. (237) > Like traumatized individuals, traumatized countries need to remember grieve, and atone for their wrongs in order to avoid reliving them. (242) > Perpetrators will do anything in their power to preserve the principle of impunity. They demand amnesty, a political form of amnesia. (242) > If full justice cannot be achieved, public acknowledgment of the truth is more important than punishment of the perpetrators. (243) > Those who stand with the victim will inevitably have to face the perpetrator’s unmasked fury. For many of us, there can be no greater honor. (247) ### Guest post: on letting God be small enough to keep us company URL: https://www.chudgar.com/can-god-be-small-enough/ Last updated: 2025-03-18T14:38:32.000Z > The question at this moment is not: “Can our god be a great and powerful king?” But rather: “Can we let god be small enough?” Small enough to accompany us in all this? Today, 6 November 2024, I celebrated Eucharist twice: once at a cloistered women’s monastery early in the morning and then at noon on the campus of the university where I teach. For the first, I wore white vestments, on account of a saint on the women’s order’s calendar [Blessed Josefa Naval Girbés](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josefa%5FNaval%5FGirb%C3%A9s?ref=chudgar.com): a saint who cared for people and served in small ways in the midst of everyday life. For the second, I wore violet, since on my own order’s calendar, it’s our commemoration of All Souls, of the order’s dead, following upon our celebration of all our saints and martyrs yesterday. Violet is also a sign of penance and sorrow in my tradition. A friend encouraged me to write some notes from my first sermon today, as he thought they might be useful for people in the world today. ### Lections - St. Paul to the Corinthians - 1, 26-31 *God chose what is foolish by human reckoning.* - Responsorial Psalm - Ps. 130 *R/. You, O Lord, are my strength.* - Gospel according to Matthew - 11:25-30 *You have hidden these things from the learned and have revealed them to the childlike.* One of the nuns, by accident, read Galatians 6:1-10, as it was on the previous page. It had the verses (9-10a): > Let us not grow tired of doing good, for in due time we shall reap our harvest, if we do not give up. So then, while we have the opportunity, let us do good to all. So, I incorporated those too. ## Here’s what I said: --- Yesterday, I told friends that I wasn’t following the election. I’d voted by mail some weeks ago and the rest of everything wasn’t under my authority. So I went to Mass with a friend, took him to vote, and then we went out for dinner. When I got home, I noticed messages from friends about how the election was going. So I cheated, I peeked. I went out on the internet to check the results. I noticed something else too—some Catholics were posting memes claiming Christ as king, stating that we should acknowledge him as ruler. I have no objection to that, since it’s part of my order’s spirituality. But I wondered. Rilke, in his Book of Hours, [wrote about god](https://onbeing.org/poetry/gods-true-cloak/?ref=chudgar.com): > And when our hearts would open, our \[fervent\] hands hide You. And he then describes the scepter, gold, diadem, paint that we use to make images of god as king and thereby hide god from ourselves. A god who only ever wants to enter into our hearts. A god of humility and smallness. --- Drawing on today’s scripture, Paul tells us that god has chosen folly over the world’s wisdom. Weakness over the world’s strength. And indeed: Today we see what the great and the powerful of the world are doing! Y’all know me well enough to know that I won’t comment on politics while preaching, but I will say that our system is fundamentally broken. On both sides. And this is what the world’s strength and wisdom has produced, this is what the great and wealthy and powerful have wrought in our world. The question at this moment is not: “Can our god be a great and powerful king?” But rather: “Can we let god be small enough?” Small enough to accompany us in all this? Small enough to enter in our world through our system’s cracks? Small enough to let the Kingdom belong to the childlike? And: “Can we keep doing good in the midst of such brokenness?” Can we do good to everyone? Even those who do great wrong and even evil? Josefa, whose feast we mark today, did small acts of kindness in the midst of an ordinary life. In doing good, maybe our attention is on the small, on the ordinary, pleading that our god meet us there, that we might cooperate with the Kingdom. And that we might let god be small enough to enter our heart and our world through its cracks, even its brokenness. And come with god’s mercy, god’s smallness, god’s kindness, god’s love. The mercy and love by which the Kingdom is built. And by which we enter into it and god enters into us and our world. God waits for this, until our hands cease to hide. ### Hurrah, you found me! URL: https://www.chudgar.com/eiq/ Last updated: 2026-09-09T13:47:34.000Z **For a lot of LGBTQ+ folks, joy can be hard to find.** The reason is simple: when we were growing up, most of us learned to hide, deny, or even hate important parts of who we are. ### Learning to love *every* aspect of your complicated, wonderful queer, trans, or enby self — even the parts of your personality who cause you trouble — will transform your life for the better. That joyful transformation happened for me. It happens for my clients. And it can happen for you. As a trained Internal Family Systems practitioner, I help folks with kind hearts and complicated brains explore their inner lives to live more freely and fully. In one-on-one coaching sessions, online anywhere or in person at my office in Northeast Minneapolis, I’ll help you explore your own mind and memories to find healing and liberation for *all* of your unique self. Don’t take my word for it, though — I offer an hour-long, totally confidential, zero-pressure first coaching session for every new client, so you can find out for yourself what it’s like to work together. **Here are a few reasons to book your free session today:** - ✊ This isn’t talk therapy, but practical coaching for healing and liberation. - 🌈 I’m proudly queer, biracial, and neurodivergent. - ❤️‍🩹 Solidarity with fellow survivors of trauma and abuse is dear to my heart. - 💵 If you decide to book more sessions, I offer [affordable rates on a sliding scale](https://www.chudgar.com/options-for-coaching) — with a 15% discount especially for folks who mention EIQ. Extra financial help is available if you need it, too — just ask. - 🫵 I believe that *you personally* deserve to love *all* of who you are, to feel good in your own mind, and to be free. # [Click here to find a time for your free first session](https://chudgar.as.me/free-first-session?ref=chudgar.com), and thank you for visiting. Here’s to your queer joy! 🎉 ### The 2024 Minnesota IFS community survey: what we learned URL: https://www.chudgar.com/2024-minnesota-ifs-community-survey/ Last updated: 2025-01-27T22:38:45.000Z In the spring of 2023, IFS colleagues [Delta Larkey](https://ifs-institute.com/practitioners/all/15552?ref=chudgar.com), [Bridgett Littel](http://www.bridgetherapyandwellness.com/bridgettlittel?ref=chudgar.com), and [Ash Chudgar](https://www.chudgar.com/about) invited all the Minnesota IFS colleagues we knew to join a simple email list. Since then, Ash (that’s me) has been moderating the list as a service to our community. This summer, after big changes in the IFS Institute’s policies, I wanted to learn more about my Minnesota colleagues — not only to improve our email list, but also to explore other ways we might want to connect with each other statewide around the model we all love. So I created a survey and sent it out to the list. Out of 65 members, 22 of us participated — almost one in three, which is pretty impressive for a survey! After many months, I’ve finally put the results together. Here they are: - **📧 What’s changed.** The survey showed clear consensus about how we define our community and what we want messages about. [Here’s what we agreed about, and how the email list has changed](#email) to reflect the community’s wishes. - **💡What’s next.** When asked about our visions for the future of IFS in the state, survey respondents had a lot of ideas. [Here are our hopes for the future, and a proposal for what to do next](#next). --- # How the email list has changed ## Defining our community When we started the email list, Bridgett and Delta and I said it was “just for trained Level 1+ IFS practitioners in Minnesota.” I wondered whether that definition still fit our statewide community. As it turns out: almost! ![](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/slidesz/AGV_vUfuMtHsG3WgbX1GqJwpxY0BUWvTzqdYPiROVVZttJX6J--y47YfHUYhJjwk2DGQqcAYgVnHF6Tdvz5457QUOtMPzH1T3Ff-VU6j1R2ZV4gem8SjQnhudrvCFMAJnDkanCPOnJucyKK53tA6sI3xJVK0-cs2Aq0=s2048?key=zv1D_JmB3f6J1w6AOInanQ "Chart") **Our community seems to be people with formal IFS training from *any* source (not just the IFS Institute), who both live and work with clients in Minnesota.** ## What we want emails about A year and a half after we started the email list, folks have *opinions* about the kinds of messages we want to receive from the email list (and don’t). ![](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/slidesz/AGV_vUdzgfhWaqYeDzDFpkt_rIlyju-4aKUYzq-mo77MYyXUZObE3sL7k9HJ2E6Xlfo-pXfvoYFVN3G71vkEjag4BOcANW_m8e83b4xl8Wsms-1zS702pD0XnW3B7xqN5c-Gpohd6CQrOyIPKtiA1iKXiSRSdZXOdk4=s2048?key=zv1D_JmB3f6J1w6AOInanQ "Chart") **A clear signal: we do *not* want to get messages about paid resources that aren’t somehow Minnesota-specific.** ## New membership standards and community guidelines The survey made some areas of consensus very clear, so I’ve already made a couple easy changes to our email list: - **Description.** The list is now [described](https://gaggle.email/join/ifsmn@gaggle.email?ref=chudgar.com) as “for formally trained IFS practitioners who live and practice in Minnesota.” This removes the Level 1+ requirement. - **Affirmations.** New members must affirm that they have formal training in IFS, and that they both live and practice in the state. (Formerly, non-Minnesota folks signed up for the list pretty frequently simply in order to market their paid resources to us, which I found quite vexing.) I’ve added new guidelines to the welcome letter for new members to emphasize community and set standards for promotional emails. Here are the new community guidelines: ### Community guidelines **Community care.** As IFS practitioners, we support others as they take compassionate care of the communities within themselves. We ask that you bring the same spirit of curiosity and connectedness to our community of practice. **Referrals.** If you’d like to refer a client, make sure to mention their specific needs — if they need to use a certain insurance, issues they’re working with, hours they can meet, that sort of thing. If you want referrals from others, tell us the specifics of your practice, too. **Promotional messages.** You’re welcome to promote events, trainings, and resources of interest to the Minnesota IFS community within certain limits: - You are always welcome to promote free and very low-cost IFS trainings and resources, from anywhere, of any kind — the more, the better! - Promotions for paid IFS trainings and resources are only welcome *if they are Minnesota-specific* in a way you can easily explain. - If there is any cost associated with the resource you are promoting to the list, we ask that you clearly state the total cost in the body of your message (not just in an attachment or external website). If you have any feedback about the guidelines, just [let me know](mailto:ash@chudgar.com). # Our hopes, and a next step As the IFS method grows, the IFS Institute changes, and our community of practice evolves, how do we envision the future of the model in our state? More than half of respondents took the time to describe their ideas for the future of IFS in Minnesota in free-form answers. Some noteworthy themes: - **Community.** Almost all who added comments expressed the desire to gather as a community — online, in person, or both. - **Outreach.** Four people mentioned doing outreach to increase public awareness of the model and access to it. - **Skill-building.** Three people envisioned opportunities for skill-building and peer consultation. ## How we might contribute to the community Making those exciting ideas real will take time and money. The survey asked how much of both folks would be willing to contribute to the community every month. ![](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/slidesz/AGV_vUf_RyniUoCFiONj36FdW0sr_ZCJj_JZmFhCRYN9ampquTwJ7Cl-NKRSiU6dexThHIsDT93LmcaivIt1eKoz-oaFkZh-aQ0tk9FU6v6IpN94VBRoEPnrGNKFqBJQ3Aglc6pjnsDE5ewAyVIznVYK7bmh1S18CKQ=s2048?key=zv1D_JmB3f6J1w6AOInanQ "Chart") **On average, folks seem willing to contribute $8.32, or volunteer 2½ hours, to the community every month.** ## Next step: An online directory of Minnesota IFS practitioners The survey also offered some specific ideas for ways our community might grow together. One idea rose to the top quickly. ![](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/slidesz/AGV_vUfTnqYOnXcYsCJbTwK1wbZs1tP83ITcR4fpZIi9RswmohA6ZY8pIfOVq0gpHSsE5BnIIxC5ayltzY69ajesEGY_wbkHu3LbYuTX1mwHgYCSJXT6IwrfMXFCNmPhq-hdtmwwb7CUI7P27UjYTGa3DASs35iHbz49=s2048?key=zv1D_JmB3f6J1w6AOInanQ "Chart") **The idea of an statewide IFS practitioner directory seems broadly appealing — perhaps a good step toward a more formal organization.** And I would love to help our community make it happen! I’ve got many parts who love doing that sort of work, and the idea of making healing and liberation through IFS more accessible to more people in Minnesota is deeply compelling to all of me. While I’m not sure about specifics, I’m confident that we can get a Minnesota directory up and running pretty quickly and efficiently. I’ve already stood up a [tiny directory for folks in my Level 1 cohort](https://chudgar.notion.site/dd1f345ccd7548e7a08c1a76d97ad487?v=801f47ce7bca437399682cc9cfa12b95&ref=chudgar.com), and I’m part of an informal working group that trying to build open-source [infrastructure for safe and effective community-building around partswork](https://www.partsworker.com/2024-09-09-working-group-report/?ref=chudgar.com) — just the sort of infrastructure we’ll need for our state-scale directory. **If you like the idea of being part of an online directory for IFS practitioners in Minnesota, just** [**write to me**](mailto:ash@chudgar.com) **and let me know!** Meanwhile, thank you for being part of this wonderful community. It’s great to be here. ### Ash and Erin URL: https://www.chudgar.com/ash-and-erin/ Last updated: 2026-04-22T17:23:02.000Z [Email Erin and Ash (opens in your email app)](mailto:ash@chudgar.com,erin@helloluminary.com?subject=Hello%20Erin%20and%20Ash!) ### Free and low-cost support for exploring your inner world URL: https://www.chudgar.com/free-and-low-cost-support/ Last updated: 2024-10-10T17:43:26.000Z **As a completely non-clinical IFS-trained coach, my work is gloriously free from the institutional strictures of the American healthcare system** — its pathologizing insistence on expert diagnosis and symptom-focused treatment, its phobic terror of litigation, its abusive financial incentives. But this healing freedom comes at the price of accessibility: unlike a clinical practitioner, I can’t take health insurance, which makes one-on-one coaching with me too expensive for *most* people. Fortunately, generous [partswork enthusiasts](https://www.partsworker.com/?ref=chudgar.com) from around the world have developed brilliant low-cost and completely free ways to get support. Here are just a few: - [**IFS Peers**](http://ifspeers.com/?ref=partsworker.com)is “a community-led, IFS-based peer support organisation offering online meetings focused on healing from addiction and trauma.” They offer virtual meetings several times a week and have support spaces on [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/groups/ifspeers/) and [WhatsApp](https://chat.whatsapp.com/ETIqBQdAo4UIxduHTnS9Qu?ref=partsworker.com), all free to participate in. - [**Free(ing) IFS**](https://www.facebook.com/groups/381892294305724/) is a private Facebook group, maintained by my friend and colleague Siobhan Bale, where IFS practitioners can share free, donation-based, or low-cost resources and training. - [**The Integral Guide to Wellbeing**](https://integralguide.com/IFS?ref=partsworker.com) is an encyclopedic open wiki that synthesizes all the learning that helped a partsworker named Levi heal from trauma using IFS many other modalities. It’s a remarkable resource, free to everyone. - [**Meditations on Insight Timer**](https://www.chudgar.com/guided-introductions-to-your-inner-world/) are completely free to listen to, and the link will take you to some of my favorite partswork-friendly ones. ### The Partsworker No. 3 URL: https://www.chudgar.com/the-partsworker-no-3/ Last updated: 2025-09-16T21:10:37.000Z # IFS for Collective Liberation: an experiential in-person training this Oct. 23–27 **A month from now, IFS practitioners will gather in Maine, USA, to expand the IFS framework beyond individual healing toward collective liberation.** This embodied, practical training is about expanding IFS to include more robust ways of combating large-scale systems and cycles of oppression, applying traditional IFS techniques to the healing of legacy burdens that perpetuate harm, building relationships with local activists, and imagining next steps we might take as a community. Members of the IFS Liberation Collective, led by [Ethan Hughes](https://ifs-institute.ce-go.com/2023-ifs-conference/speakers?ref=chudgar.com#9944), will teach what they’ve learned from using the IFS framework “to build [a strategic peacebuilding community in El Salvador](https://cdaelsalvador.blogspot.com/2024/09/blog-post.html?ref=chudgar.com), do direct action to help prevent the building of fossil-fuel infrastructure, train peacebuilders in tools for nervous system regulation, and much more.” - **Where and when:** October 23–27, 2024, at [Little River Commons](http://littleriver.ju.mp/?ref=chudgar.com) in [Belfast, Maine, USA](https://maps.app.goo.gl/upWMZZKdqkFagZhh8?ref=chudgar.com). The closest full-service airport is in Bangor, and organizers will help coordinate carpooling from Boston. - **Who it’s for:** “IFS practitioners who are using (or wish to use) IFS as a framework for taking action to heal from systems of oppression, stop harm, and deeply embody the world that we wish to create.” Because this workshop assumes deep understanding of the IFS model, *you must have at least Level 1 or equivalent formation to attend* — plus “an openness and interest to bring this work into practical action in your own way.” - **Logistics:** Meals will be provided by local volunteers. There aren’t many beds, but folks can sleep indoors on a mat or sleeping bag, camp outside on the spacious grounds, or arrange your own lodging nearby. - **How much:** Like all the IFS Liberation Collective’s offerings, this training is offered as a gift. Those who are moved to contribute to the cost of the training are welcome to do so. [Learn more about the training here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Uwr7JrCflfxBfa%5FT46SvEOBcOTU5OEbAVKxhB2aItZ4/edit?usp=sharing&ref=chudgar.com) [Fill out this form to sign up](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdqQ7tsZKTXGTcS2wniSTKSAUE-aap-4Y2Ll2sCLpQGDoTcMQ/viewform?usp=sf%5Flink&ref=chudgar.com) --- # Reminder: Free tickets still available for the next Parts Work Unconference, this Oct. 12 **You can still get your free ticket to the next global Parts Work Unconference**, this Saturday, October 12, which alas is exactly Yom Kippur. Since folks are already signed up, they’re keeping the date, but Alex promises that they will definitely check the calendar for important dates *before* scheduling the next one. ### How to attend the 8th Parts Work Unconference - [Here’s an FAQ about how the Unconference works](https://www.ifs-collective.com/unconference-faq?ref=chudgar.com) from Pau and Alex. Read this first. - Anyone can propose an Unconference session during the event itself, but you’re welcome to [submit your session ideas in advance](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Cq1nk9NDpne1dkuYZRyNsPIopV0phyP5dcmCUdRllTg/viewform?edit%5Frequested=true&ref=chudgar.com). You can also attend without proposing a session, and most folks do. [Get your free Unconference ticket here](https://www.tickettailor.com/events/ifscollective/1356305?ref=chudgar.com) The Unconference is absolutely free to attend, but donations are gratefully accepted — please do chip in if you can! --- # Working group update: Four projects to make partswork more accessible **Earlier this month, members of our informal global working group met over Zoom to talk about how we might help make partswork more accessible to more people in more ways.** Our conversation revealed both opportunities and challenges, and we ended up with a clear list of four projects we want to pursue as a group: 1. Build a **trust-based online global community for partsworkers**, designed to build social trust and safety by allowing members to vouch for each other’s competence in practice. ⏭️ *Alex and Pau of the* [*IFS Collective*](https://www.ifs-collective.com/?ref=chudgar.com) *have been thinking about this idea for a while, but it’s a technical and resource challenge. We’ll need volunteers to start working practical implementation.* 2. Create and maintain an **open-source standard for partswork training programs** to help build a common understanding of safe and effective practice. ⏭️ *Siobhan Bale of* [*Free(ing) IFS*](https://www.facebook.com/groups/381892294305724) *has compiled a wealth of research into an array of IFS training programs, and she’s recruiting knowledgeable folks to help draft a prototype standard.* 3. Draft **voluntary ethical guidelines for partswork practitioners** that balance client safety with openness. ⏭️ *Our conversations show widespread interest in this idea, and voluntary standards already exist (like* [*this one by Presley Pizzo*](https://partswithpresley.com/my-ethical-standards/?ref=partsworker.com)*). We’re assembling a subgroup to start drafting a prototype guideline together.* 4. Create **infrastructure to equip non-clinicians to do peer-to-peer partswork** safely and effectively. ⏭️ *A subgroup led by* [*Risa Adams*](https://www.risaadamsmd.com/?ref=chudgar.com) *has been inviting practitioners who’ve been experimenting with peer-to-peer partswork groups to share about what they’ve learned, identify common challenges, and identify training and safety infrastructure that might be needed.* We plan another Zoom for the working group this December. If you’d like to join us, just reply and we’ll add you to our email list. --- ### That’s all for this third edition of **The Partsworker**, colleagues. Please forward this email anyone at all who might be interested, or post [this link](https://www.chudgar.com/the-partsworker-no-3/) to your social networks to share. Like the lotus flower, our work is opening up! 🪷 ### Report from Sept. 9 working group meeting: projects & next steps URL: https://www.chudgar.com/2024-09-09-working-group-report/ Last updated: 2025-09-16T21:07:10.000Z Hello friends! As promised, Siobhan and Ash are reporting back from the working-group call last Monday, September 9\. We ended up with a clear list of [four exciting projects to pursue](#projects). # Meeting recap - **Building a global community.** Klara kicked the conversation off by saying, “We’re all agreeing about building a global community.” We talked about that idea in several ways: - In response to a consensus about the need for free or low-cost partswork, Niney told us that the [Parts Work Directory](https://www.partsworkdirectory.com/?ref=chudgar.com) is building a way for people to search only for low-cost or pro-bono services. - Beyond the directory, Alex has been imagining the idea of idea of a person-to-person vouching system, which would let peer practitioners and clients validate other partsworkers’ competence. - The community evolving on Siobhan’s [Facebook group for free and low-cost IFS resources](https://www.facebook.com/share/g/KTt4Z2GrPm3cs5B4/) has made her think about a virtual “partsnet” (sort of like [mumsnet](https://www.mumsnet.com/?ref=chudgar.com)), which might incorporate such a vouching system. - **Balancing accessibility and safety in training.** We all seemed to agree about the urgency of making partswork accessible outside the therapy room by expanding high-quality training for non-clinical practitioners. But we quickly turned to the challenge of ensuring that partswork training is radically accessible to *without* compromising client’s safety. - We need, as Alex put it, “a baseline IFS model,” which clearly establishes the minimum standards any partswork training would need to meet. “ - Risa agreed on the idea of creating a standard of integrity for IFS training, and said she knew of another international group working on a similar project. She also suggested that we might offer basic free “IFS literacy” courses to help newcomers assess the quality of any training they may encounter. - Michael and András pointed to IFSI’s decision to prioritize training for clinicians as an opportunity to reimagine training altogether. Siobhan agreed: we have “a massive opportunity to create trainings that are *better* than the Institute’s.” - **Building infrastructure for peer-to-peer partswork.** We were also excited about the potential of peer-to-peer partswork, on the model of 12-step meetings — check-in meetings for people who need peer support with their parts. Here too, the question of safety came up fast — “the tension between democratizing and standardizing,” as Risa put it. - Becky observed that [PATH](https://path2recovery.org/?ref=chudgar.com) and [IFS Peers](https://ifspeers.squarespace.com/?ref=chudgar.com) have already designed models for peer-to-peer partswork in different ways. Ash mentioned “8C” meetings as well, which hew closely to the 12-step model. - (In trying to find a link for “8C” meetings for this report, Ash just learned that an 8C-based peer-to-peer IFS model [has recently shut down](https://cornsilk.carrd.co/?ref=chudgar.com) because of “significant internal disagreements about what safety should look like for our participants” — a timely reminder of the challenge.) - Since peer-to-peer models are already going strong, we came up with the idea asking their founders to share what they’ve learned so far. If it’s needed, we might want to create open-source “safety infrastructure” for future peer partswork groups. # Projects & next steps Here are the projects our working group is most excited about: ### 1\. Trust-based online community **Build a online global community for partsworkers, designed to build social trust and safety by allowing members to vouch for each other’s competence in practice.** - *So far:* Alex and Pau of the [IFS Collective](https://www.ifs-collective.com/?ref=chudgar.com) have been imagining such a “vouching” community for a while, and Siobhan’s Facebook group operates a bit similarly in principle. Niney has envisioned a social feature for her directory as well. - *Next step:* Find volunteers to lead work on this project. If building a trust-based online community for partsworkers sounds exciting to you, and you have a bit of time and energy to devote to it, [let us know](mailto:hello@partsworker.com). ### 2\. Standard for partswork training programs **Create and maintain an open-source standard for partswork training programs to help build a common understanding of safe and effective practice.** - *So far:* Siobhan has already compiled a wealth of research into a wide array of IFS Training programs that could lead onto creating a draft standard. She is keen to get knowledgeable professionals on board with this process. - *Next step:* Begin drafting a training standard together. If you’re interested in helping write and edit a partswork training standard, [let us know](mailto:hello@partsworker.com). ### 3\. Voluntary ethics code **Drafting voluntary ethical guidelines for partswork practitioners that balances client safety with openness.** - *So far:* Our conversations show widespread interest in this idea, and voluntary standards already exist (like [this one](https://partswithpresley.com/my-ethical-standards/?ref=chudgar.com), which Presley Pizzo shared with Ash). - *Next step:* Begin drafting an ethics code together. If you’re interested in helping write and edit a voluntary ethics standard for partsworkers, [let us know](mailto:hello@partsworker.com). ### 4\. Peer-to-peer training infrastructure **Designing a new partswork training program designed to equip non-clinicians to do peer-to-peer partswork safely and effectively.** - *So far:* Risa, Siobhan and Ash have been compiling a [list of people](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1R8AEyX3oMKrUYi1xwkK6xusgjLRFcKDxQDeBpgGPmHk/edit?usp=sharing&ref=chudgar.com) who have started peer-to-peer partswork groups, and we’ve [drafted a letter](https://docs.google.com/document/d/12WsoEjW66hc6VqdAmLEf7Qw9cmhlOYppfcEugF-iN34/edit?usp=sharing&ref=chudgar.com) to invite them to collaborate with us. - *Next step:* Convene a virtual meeting to learn what’s been done so far, discover what the community needs or wants, and decide on how to proceed. If you’re interested in helping cultivate peer-to-peer partswork training infrastructure, [let us know](mailto:hello@partsworker.com). --- [Email us](mailto:hello@partsworker.com) if you’re interested in moving any of these projects forward, or if you have any other thoughts to share. And as always, please invite anybody you know who shares our vision for partswork to join this working group! We’ll plan another online meeting in a few months. All our best, Siobhan & Ash ### The Partsworker No. 2 URL: https://www.chudgar.com/the-partsworker-no-2/ Last updated: 2025-09-16T21:10:46.000Z # A global directory of IFS practitioners is now online **There’s been an amazing development since our** [**last newsletter**](https://www.chudgar.com/partsworker-1/): thanks to the hard work of IFS practitioner [Niney Marie](https://www.everythingifs.com/niney-marie?ref=chudgar.com), “the Only World-Wide Directory for IFS Certified, Trained & Informed Therapists, Practitioners & Coaches” is now online at [partsworkdirectory.com](https://partsworkdirectory.com/?ref=chudgar.com), and hundreds of listings are already active. Here’s how it looks: ![Screenshot of the homepage at partsworkdirectory.com](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2025/09/PW-2-1.png) The directory is still in its very early “beta” days, but it already seems quite functional and very robust. Most importantly, Parts Work Directory broadens access to partswork worldwide by inviting membership from practitioners trained in several reputable IFS training programs, not just the Institute’s costly and exclusive Level 1\. At this point Parts Work Directory is emphatically owned by Niney alone, and it limits the scope of partsworkers to those trained in the IFS model — so it isn’t quite the collectively operated, radically inclusive directory that some of us have been [dreaming of](https://www.chudgar.com/partsworker-1/#project). But it is clearly a marvelous new resource for our global community, and I put up [my own listing](https://partsworkdirectory.com/listing/chudgar.html?ref=chudgar.com) as soon as I could. (While the process of creating a listing is still a bit challenging, I can confirm that mine looks very good, and shows up as expected when searched for.) While Niney intends to charge a fee for membership in the directory in the future, she is offering “FREE Lifetime Ads” — that is, directory listings — for all who join during this beta period. **You can start your own application to join Parts Work Directory as a “Beta Member”** [**right here**](https://partsworkdirectory.com/advertise?ref=chudgar.com)**.** --- # Next virtual Parts Work Unconference happens Saturday, Oct. 12 **Our generous colleagues Alex and Pau from the** [**IFS Collective**](https://www.ifs-collective.com/?ref=chudgar.com) **are throwing another virtual party for partswork enthusiasts worldwide, and you are invited.** This will be the *eighth* Unconference that Pau and Alex have organized for our global community — eloquent testimony to its value for everyone who attends. Though donations are appreciated, tickets to the Unconference are completely free. My system and I are hoping you will join us there! ![Screenshot of the page at https://www.tickettailor.com/events/ifscollective/1356305](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2025/09/PW-2-2.png) The last gathering, this past June June, was the first one I attended (thanks to my Twin Cities partswork colleague [Angie Star](https://www.connectedselfcoaching.com/?ref=chudgar.com)). Although the Unconference format was entirely unfamiliar to me at first, I figured out how it works in just a few minutes, and you can too. The community I found there vastly expanded my hopes for the future of IFS, spontaneously generated new projects and ideas, and inspired this very newsletter. ### How to come to the Unconference - [Here’s an FAQ about the Parts Work Unconference](https://www.ifs-collective.com/unconference-faq?ref=chudgar.com) from Pau and Alex. - Anyone can propose an Unconference session during the event itself, but you’re welcome to [submit your session ideas in advance](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Cq1nk9NDpne1dkuYZRyNsPIopV0phyP5dcmCUdRllTg/viewform?edit%5Frequested=true&ref=chudgar.com). (You can also attend without proposing a session, and most folks do.) - Now [get your free ticket right here](https://www.tickettailor.com/events/ifscollective/1356305?ref=chudgar.com), and make a donation if you can. --- # Project: Reimagining partswork beyond IFSI **Now that a global directory of partsworkers is up and running, the team of two dozen volunteers we assembled for that purpose has a new project in mind:** Reimagining partswork training, standards, and practice from the ground up, unburdened by the constraints of the IFS Institute™ and its leaders. On a Zoom call scheduled for this coming Monday, Sept. 9, at 3PM UTC, partswork practitioners and enthusiasts from around the world will gather to start imagining a liberating future for the practice of partswork together. In a curious and improvisational spirit, we plan to talk over ideas like: - Creating an **open-source standard for partswork training programs**; - Drafting a set of **voluntary ethical guidelines** for practitioners; - Building **our own partswork training** program according to our shared values; - and **who knows what else**. The full group of us, about two dozen so far, will ponder next steps over email afterwards. I’ll report on what comes of our conversation in the next newsletter. --- ### That’s all for this second edition of **The Partsworker**, friends. Write back if you’re so inclined, and please forward this email anyone who might be interested. We’re just getting started. ### Beyond “Self-Leadership” URL: https://www.chudgar.com/beyond-self-leadership/ Last updated: 2025-03-18T14:39:10.000Z *This page accompanies a workshop I am pre-proposing for* [*the next Parts Work Unconference*](https://www.tickettailor.com/events/ifscollective/1247149?ref=chudgar.com)*, this October 12, 2024, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Central.* [*Get your free ticket here*](https://www.tickettailor.com/events/ifscollective/1356305?ref=chudgar.com)*.* The Internal Family Systems model argues that human systems are naturally organized hierarchically: when you’ve healed, your Self leads and your parts follow. Despite the centrality of “Self-leadership” in IFS, however, people actually experience their sense of self in a vast diversity of ways. **This informal conversation will let us get curious about the many conceptions of “Self” there are, in the hope of opening new avenues for healing and liberation.** [Get your free Unconference ticket](https://www.tickettailor.com/events/ifscollective/1356305?ref=chudgar.com) ## ### Two weird tricks for getting by in overwhelming times URL: https://www.chudgar.com/two-weird-tricks-for-overwhelming-times/ Last updated: 2025-03-18T14:40:11.000Z > If you’re overwhelmed by the news, that’s not because you’re doing something wrong: it’s because, for human beings, the news *is* overwhelming. **Uffda, it’s been forever!** I sent you my last dispatch from this Year of Living Plurally in mid-March. Five months is a long time in any ordinary year; in 2024, it’s an eternity. “Unprecedented” time, we-are-witnessing-history-being-made time, feels very different from other kinds of time, perhaps the way cat- or dog-years are said to be seven times longer than ours. How long would the bonkers eventfulness of five 2024-months have seemed to beings in other eras? Like, fifteen 1993-months, maybe? A decade to a sixteenth-century monk? To an Eocene rock, five million years? Anyway — it’s been *a lot,* and it will certainly will continue to be a lot. Too much, in fact! And everybody seems to be feeling the strain, in proportion to their exposure to the violence of historical change. Trans people in the United States, for example, are under particular duress; so are American women and schoolchildren, people who live below sea level, everyone in Gaza. Even those of us who have lucked into relative safety from the worst perils of our age *are* deeply affected by them — and I think we are right to be. If you are avoiding the news for your own survival, you are absolutely right to do so; I trust your system absolutely. But if you *can’t* avoid the news, by profession or by temperament, you are almost certainly under considerable stress right now. (Ask my phone’s “Screen Time” how I know.) So, just in case you need to hear it, I want to offer a thought I’ve been sharing with my coaching clients a lot lately:If the news of the world we live in right now makes you sad, enraged, anxious, panicky, dissociative, or otherwise emotionally overwhelmed, *it should.* Your distress about the news is not a symptom of your personal trauma. It’s not something you have to get over, or work through, or resolve. It’s just your normal human response to the inhuman scale and velocity of the world we live in now. Like a city built below sea level, our existing emotional infrastructure was simply not set up to weather the accelerating crises of the Anthropocene. If you’re overwhelmed by the news, that’s not because you’re doing something wrong: it’s because, for human beings, the news *is* overwhelming. So I want to offer a couple practical ways to feel a bit more comfort and ease, even in these far too interesting times, by relaxing into your own multiplicity. I have more tips, and I will write to you about them. But these are the two that I’ve been using most. # 📿 Tip: It’s Okay to Pray First as a Catholic, then as an Episcopalian, then as a member of A.A., I prayed in all kinds of ways, and none of them worked at all — so poorly, in fact, that I left first the Church, then Christianity altogether, then even the subtly Christian-flavored spirituality of the Twelve Steps. For a few years afterward, every time I caught myself praying — for me, prayer is a deeply conditioned spiritual reflex — I’d stop myself short on purpose, because (as I’d firmly remind the pious parts of my inner family) “God just doesn’t work like that, honey.” But this Year of Living Plurally, which also happens to be a five-alarm fire of news, the prayerful members of my inner family are praying quite openly — and nobody else is stopping them. I find myself praying all the time now — often more than once a day, quite spontaneously, in response to reading or thinking about the news. I ask God to relieve suffering, to sustain an unlikely hope for more compassionate leaders, to make good prevail over evil. And I pray for these things even though there is a strong consensus among my inner family that “thinking loudly at God” (as one of us calls it) does not and *cannot* change God’s mind about anything. The internal consensus, these days, is that prayer is an innocent act, a sort of semi-magical custom, as harmless as wishing on a star or birthday candles. For that reason, my 2024 prayers don’t have the desperate urgency they used to when I was a child (and believed God heard my prayers, and could have helped me, but wouldn’t, until I found just the right words). Even though we’re more relaxed about it now, we find ourselves praying *all the time* — and we find curious comfort in the act of praying itself. It feels good to make explicit our deeply felt desire for the world to be better in specific ways — even if only in the silence of our heart, where perhaps only we can hear. Wishes are not fishes, as everybody knows; but why *not* cast a wee net? In the past, I’ve expressed my deepest wishes by engaging in vigorous and public political action — going to protests, campaigning for candidates and movements, canvassing. But that sort of work doesn’t feel like what I ought to do at present. (There’s another newsletter in that.) In anyone’s life, I now suspect, there is a time to tweet, and a time to refrain from tweeting; a time for phone-banking, and a time for silent prayer. And these two modes of action feel quite similar, honestly: speaking heartfelt words into a blank silence, always hoping for a friendly voice to answer. In both cases, I think the mere act of calling out is an act of courage and love, worthwhile for its own sake. Everybody and their dog Scout is hollering at you to phone-bank right now — which, if you want to, you absolutely should! (Pro tips: use *wired* earphones, set up a burner Google Voice account ahead of time, and *do not* phone-bank alone.) In this manic political season, I want to holler that you can *also* pray, if any part of you is so inclined — out loud or silently, formally or informally, in the prayers you learned as a child or in new rites you fangle for yourself, sincerely or ironically or both at once. Pray if you want to pray! There are almost certainly parts of you who are concerned about the safety or advisability of prayer — you can’t really get by in modern life *without* such skeptical inner voices, so this is a good thing. To them you can offer this mellow riff on Pascal’s wager: 1. If “praying” is just a weirdly superstitious form of self-talk or fantasy, then it’s not only harmless but meaningless — just an ephemeral shimmer of neurochemistry in some critter’s brain, as meaningless as shifting sand. If you don’t want to engage in this form of cognition, don’t; if you do, go right ahead. It doesn’t matter either way. 2. Meanwhile, if divine agents *might* hear and understand you when you pray, then prayer *could be* as potent a form of practical action as any human being could take, a literal superpower! A direct line to the divine! You’d be bonkers *not* to give it at least a whirl. It’s even easier than calling your Congressman, and potentially *far* more effective. My inner family and I suspect there are parts of most people, even extremely modern adults, who stubbornly believe (2) to be true, even while the overwhelming consensus of their inner voices insists on (1). When unacknowledged or driven underground, the pious parts of people contrive to take them to casinos, 4chan chatrooms, and other dangerous places built to encourage magical beliefs. (Like the bathhouses and leather bars of my youth, now that I think of it.) If, by contrast, you let the pious parts of you make their case in the public of your inner community, you might get to pray for what you *really* want: for the world to be better in specific ways, for particular sufferings to end, for hoped-for acts of kindness and of love. If praying works, it’s powerful; and even if it doesn’t, it still gives voice to your hopes, which is worthwhile for its own sake. That is how my inner family and I are thinking about prayer in this bewildering time, and we encourage you and yours to try the same approach. Why not? # 🎭 Tip: Your Ambivalence is Healthy and Good The thing that makes prayer tricky, for most modern people, is that parts of us definitely believe it works (because we are human and wired for faith), while other parts of us *insist* that it can’t possibly work, and that we’re literally crazy if we think it does (because we are also modern and “believe in science”). That ambivalence, as uncomfortable as it can be, is in fact a great blessing, and much to be encouraged. **Ambivalence is good!** In our minds as in our external communities, vigorous dissent is democratic; being consistently “of one mind” is a warning sign of inner autocracy. So it’s a very *good* thing when you react to a shattering historical event in more than one way at the same time. One long-ago day last month, to take a purely hypothetical example, - one part of you might might have thought fervently, “Dammit, I wish he’d have had better aim,” - while another part of you sighed, “Thank God he missed, or we’d be in a civil war,” - and still *another* part of you whispered tearfully, “It is scary to see that man bleeding from his ear! Why would someone want to hurt him like that? Please let him be okay!” This kind of ambivalence — purely hypothetical, mind you, and just by way of example — is not a sign that you’re crazy or murderous or cynical or fascist, or any other pathology. Your ambivalence shows that you’re *human.* Welcome to your own plurality! It’s a trip! If there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s that accepting and even *valuing* the diversity of perspectives within yourself — not choosing sides, not censoring any thought or wish, not shaming any part of who you are for thinking any thought — will make you much more comfortable as you navigate the complexities of human life. And as history complicates our lives faster and more completely than we could possibly predict, our plurality can save us — not just from emotional discomfort, but from the harmful seduction of enforced consensus. White supremacy, ethno-nationalism, nativism — these totalitarian ideologies attract the parts of people who are frightened by the mere fact of diversity. Honoring our own internal diversity is the most potent anti-fascist action we can take. So lean into your bonkers ambivalence, friends! I promise you’ll feel better if you do. Right now, some of my internal family are hooting with a giddy childlike optimism we haven’t felt since ’08; other parts of me are ringing bells to warn that Harris and Walz are just the latest stooges of neoliberal capitalism; other members of my inner community are focused exclusively on the suffering in Gaza; and still others are simply overjoyed by the beauty of my husband’s garden and the infinite variety of critters who visit it at every hour of every day. All these parts of me are welcome; they all learn from each other. That is the substance of this plural tip: *we are all diverse*, all the way down. Nobody is just one thing; to be human is to be multiple. And that knowledge, all by itself, can help you stay sane in these unprecedented times. #### If there’s anybody you know who could use more internal comfort in this absurdly eventful year, would you forward them this message? And as always, friends, I love to hear from you; just hit reply. Till next time — ### The Partsworker No. 1 URL: https://www.chudgar.com/partsworker-1/ Last updated: 2025-09-16T21:10:55.000Z TL;DR: [Welcome from Ash](#welcome) | [A report from the Unconference](#report) | [Building a directory of partsworkers](#project) | [Free peer-to-peer partswork + other resources ](#resources) # Welcome **Here’s a question: What do you call those of us who, knowing that the individual human psyche is naturally plural, deliberately interact with the many inhabitants of minds in order to relieve suffering and liberate potential?** These days, particularly in places where western-style psychology is the dominant way to think about healing, people who fit that description are usually Internal Family Systems practitioners, as I am myself. But the healing we do through IFS, and the model of human plurality that lets us do it, unite us in fellowship with many other inner workers, from Jungian analysts to shamans to co-ops of Plural systems. So what do you call all of us *together*, this whole community of workers who interact with the many parts of human systems to help us all heal and get free? Some of us have taken to calling ourselves, simply, *partsworkers*. Not an elegant word, perhaps, but it’ll work well enough until we think up a better name for ourselves. I think the word we choose for ourselves matters less than the recognition that what we have in common has the dignity of something worth naming. As all of us know from vivid personal experience, something powerful happens when a bunch of apparent strangers (or even enemies) realize that they are *actually* the members of a community, united by a common purpose too deep to deny. Perhaps warily at first, they start getting to know each other. They learn each other’s histories and values, their various strengths and quirks. They help each other heal, make amends for past wrongs, and learn how to support each other. They put their heads together to solve common problems. They are more powerful, more free, and more joyful together than they ever could have been alone. So what might become possible if *everyone* who works with parts to liberate and heal — every partsworker of every kind — recognized each other as members of the same community? What might we do if, bound together in a shared understanding of human nature and healing, we came together in harmonious collective action? This newsletter, *The Partsworker,* aims to help us all find out. So welcome, friends! Read on, share this message with any partsworker you know (send ’em to [partsworker.com](https://www.chudgar.com/)). And write back, whenever you want, with tips, reports, ideas, and invitations. In community, Ash Chudgar, Partsworker --- # Report from the June 2024 Parts Work Unconference: Reuniting global IFS + partsworker solidarity **At seventh global** [**Parts Work Unconference**](https://www.ifs-collective.com/unconference?ref=chudgar.com) **on June 1, 2024, IFS practitioners Pau Wojnar and Alessandro Pedori convened about 200 “IFS enthusiasts” from around the world to talk together about whatever we wanted to.** Alongside fascinating conversations about psychedelics, parenting, and finger puppets, many of us were eager to talk about the IFS Institute’s abrupt decision to restrict its official training to licensed clinicians. “We were hoping to offer a space for some of that to happen,” Alex and Pau [wrote](https://ifscollective.substack.com/p/about-the-unconference-this-saturday) ahead of time, “and it looks like it will.” Did it ever! Several dozen of us talked about how to respond to the IFSI’s sudden change of course across two intersecting conversations: one about reuniting the IFS community, another about imagining partswork beyond IFS. - **Reuniting the IFS community:** [JJ Stamatelos](https://www.jamesjstamatelos.com/biography-about/?ref=chudgar.com), who organized the petition and Declaration of Oneness at [self-led.org](https://self-led.org/?ref=chudgar.com), led me and dozens of others in a two-part conversation called “Beyond the Petition.” We talked about how to make the most of the excitement the petition has aroused among IFS enthusiasts who believe in a future where the model is available to all, far beyond the institutional boundaries of clinical mental healthcare. - **Partswork beyond IFS:** Many of the same folks, including JJ, joined me [to imagine what solidarity among partsworkers might be like outside IFS entirely](https://www.chudgar.com/partsworkers-unite/). What could we accomplish outside the IFS umbrella that we couldn’t accomplish in it? The conversations we had in these sessions revealed some common themes, some new questions, and many opportunities to experiment together. Here’s a quick summary of what I learned. ## Our thoughts on the IFS Institute™ The sessions JJ led started out focused on our responses to the IFS Institute’s decision to restrict Level 1 training to licensed clinicians. Here’s what I got from that part of the conversation: - **IFSI leaders are unlikely to change course.** While many of us feel deeply committed to the IFS model itself, I didn’t hear much hope that IFSI leaders would meaningfully retreat from their hard pivot toward institutional mental healthcare. Non-clinical practitioners seem likely continue to be second-class citizens in the world of Institute-approved IFS for the foreseeable future. ([I agree on this point.](https://www.chudgar.com/why-the-ifs-institute-probably-wont-budge/)) - **Level 1 training: not so great anyway!** We talked a lot about how Institute’s Level 1 training, as expensive and exclusive as it is, really doesn’t do that great a job of teaching people how to do partswork. People particularly noted how most Level 1 training diminishes or even ignores crucial features of real human systems — particularly unattached burdens, legacy material, and cultural context overall. - **Partswork is open-source technology.** We seemed to agree that the fundamental principles that underlie the IFS model — parts, Self, burdens and unburdening, and so forth — are ancient, globally distributed, and therefore entirely un-ownable by the Institute[™](https://tsdr.uspto.gov/?ref=chudgar.com#caseNumber=98151674&caseSearchType=US%5FAPPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch) or anybody else. In this respect, the IFS model is just a very recent contribution to the ongoing “[open-source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source%5Fsoftware?ref=chudgar.com)” project of partswork. ## Four benefits of *not* being a clinician Now that the IFS Institute has emphatically elevated licensed clinicians above other practitioners, is there anything *positive* that unites partsworkers who operate outside the mental health system? When I asked at the Unconference, four answers emerged quickly: 1. **Diversity of methods.** Although we all identified as “IFS enthusiasts” in one way or another, non-clinicians reported that we draw enthusiastically on other models of human multiplicity in our practices: Voice Dialogue, psychosynthesis, Vedanta, ancestry work, tulpamancy, and more. This diversity of theoretical and practical traditions can help us work more skillfully and flexibly. 2. **Freedom from the medical model.** Conceived and stewarded by American clinicians in the late 20th century, the IFS model can’t help but bear the burdens of the American health finance system: defensive credentialism and lawsuit-avoidance, an insurance-driven obsession with diagnosis and “evidence,” and a fat price tag on everything from training to credentialing to therapy itself. Most non-clinicians (and maybe clinicians trained in less oppressive medical cultures) simply never got those burdens handed to us — which lets us practice with greater ease and comfort, and share what we know more generously. 3. **Community orientation.** Modern medical psychology tends to treat people in isolation from their social and political contexts. Non-clinical practitioners, by contrast, seem more inclined conceptualize people *within* larger social systems, like economic structures, power relations, and cultural lineages. Our orientation to human multiplicity at *many* scales seems to attune non-clinicans to the complex social and political realities of our work — like the desperate need for access to partswork among low-income people. 4. **Expertise from personal experience*.*** Above all, non-clinical partsworkers reported that we learned partswork *within ourselves*, and only later learned how to help others work with their parts. We observed that many clinicians seem to learn IFS like any other “therapeutic modality,” without much or any exploration of *their own* inner worlds. Non-clinicians, by contrast, seem to end up as partsworkers *because* of the healing and liberation partswork made possible in our own lives. When we offer hope to our clients, we do so *from personal experience*, and we practice what we preach. ## What’s next My parts and I left the Parts Work Unconference feeling happier about the future of the healing work we love than we had in months. We’re connected to a global community of partsworkers on Pau and Alex’s Telegram channel, and we have many ideas for things to do together. Speaking of which … --- # Project: Building a directory of partsworkers Folks at the Unconference had lots of ideas for things to do next, but one quickly emerged as a *project* with real energy behind it: **creating an independent directory of partsworkers**, for and by our community, to offer a robust, diverse, and anti-corporate alternative to the IFS Institute’s [walled garden](https://ifs-institute.com/practitioners?ref=chudgar.com). - **Ongoing conversation.** Lots of folks at the Unconference were excited about the directory idea, and a few of us have been talking about it since, including [me](https://www.chudgar.com/about), Siobhan Bale (who wrote [this amazing essay](https://ifscollective.substack.com/p/exploring-the-parallel-between-dog) about partswork with dogs), and [Pau and Alex](https://www.ifs-collective.com/?ref=chudgar.com) of the IFS Collective. - **Resources we have now.** Siobhan, knows about a wide range of IFS training programs, has sketched out a draft membership policy. I have ideas about how we might make collective governance work, the technical platforms we might use, and how we might communicate about the directory. And of course Pau and Alex are experts at activating and organizing partsworkers from around the world. - **What we want to happen next.** As Siobhan put it, we want to convene “a collaboration of folk willing to give time and expertise” so we can create “a holistic and well rounded framework” for the directory. And here’s where you might come in … ## How you and your system can help If you have the time and energy to help us create this new directory, we’d love to hear from you. Consider this a *special* invitation to parts of you who have expertise or enthusiasm about: - co-op governance, participatory democracy, horizontal decision-making - federated online communities - open-source software for managing and displaying data - legal or regulatory issues around mental health and peer support Interested? **Just reply to this message and say so**, and I’ll keep you in the conversation. --- # Resources: Free peer-to-peer IFS + more - **IFS Peers**, at [ifspeers.com](http://ifspeers.com/?ref=chudgar.com),is “a community-led, IFS-based peer support organisation offering online meetings focused on healing from addiction and trauma.” They offer virtual meetings several times a week and have support spaces on [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/groups/ifspeers/) and [WhatsApp](https://chat.whatsapp.com/ETIqBQdAo4UIxduHTnS9Qu?ref=chudgar.com), all free to participate in. - [**Free(ing) IFS**](https://www.facebook.com/groups/381892294305724/) is a private Facebook group where partsworkers can share free, donation-based, or low-cost resources and training. This is another project of Siobhan’s. - **The Integral Guide to Well-Being**, at [integralguide.com](https://integralguide.com/IFS?ref=chudgar.com), is an encyclopedic open wiki that synthesizes all the learning that helped a partsworker named Levi heal from trauma. It’s a remarkable resource, free to everyone. --- That’s all for this first edition of *The Partsworker*, friends. Write back if you’re so inclined, and please forward this email anyone who might be interested. We’re just getting started. ### Schwartz and Sweezy, “Individuals as Systems” (2020) URL: https://www.chudgar.com/schwartz-and-sweezy-individuals-as-systems-2020/ Last updated: 2025-03-18T20:04:10.000Z ## This is how the chapter begins: > Early in the 20th century a group of organismic biologists recognized that studying the chemical and physical laws of a living organism’s components was limiting their understanding of how those components coordinated to function as a whole. Their explorations gave birth to a new way of conceptualizing and studying living organisms, which came to be called “systems thinking.” Rather than analyzing an organism’s components—which is now called *reductionistic*, *mechanistic*, or *atomistic thinking*—systems thinking is wholistic, organismic, or ecological. Rather than asking “What is this made of?”, systems thinkers ask, “How do the components of this function as a pattern?” and “What is the larger context in which it operates, and how is it affected by that context?” Rather than studying each part individually, they map relationships among a system’s parts and with its context. > > From those early explorations in biology, systems thinking produced a radically new conception of life. Click below to download the chapter in PDF form with my pencil annotations from 2021, or scroll down to read it on this page. [Schwartz and Sweezy, "Individuals as Systems" (2020)Schwartz and Sweezy, "Individuals as Systems" (2020).pdf8 MBdownload-circle](https://www.chudgar.com/content/files/2024/06/Schwartz-and-Sweezy---22Individuals-as-Systems-22--2020-.pdf "Download") [Did you read it? Let’s talk!](https://www.chudgar.com/contact) ### Partsworkers of the World, Unite! URL: https://www.chudgar.com/partsworkers-unite-2/ Last updated: 2025-09-16T21:13:23.000Z *This page accompanies a workshop I pre-proposed for* [*the Parts Work Unconference on Saturday, June 1*](https://www.tickettailor.com/events/ifscollective/1247149?ref=chudgar.com)*, online from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Central.* [Here’s how it went!](https://www.chudgar.com/partsworker-1#report) ## A workshop to imagine new forms of community among IFS and allied practitioners Since the IFS Institute abruptly restricted its training courses to licensed mental health providers earlier this year, non-clinical practitioners have been talking a lot among ourselves about where to go from here. - Some folks have deepened their commitment to the IFS Institute, organizing and advocating for change from within as program assistants, trainers, and members of the IFS community. - Others of us have begun to explore how we might continue to practice the therapeutic methods we learned from IFS [*outside* its institutional borders](https://www.chudgar.com/why-the-ifs-institute-probably-wont-budge/). - Lots of practitioners in both camps are also venturing beyond IFS as individual practitioners, combining IFS with other healing disciplines to form unique practices all of their own. - And many of us, at varying scales, are creating, imagining, and longing for communities of practice beyond IFS. **This workshop is a place for us to imagine new ways to work together with other practitioners, IFS-trained and otherwise, who share our approach to healing and liberation from the inside out.** I like to call us all “partsworkers,” but I imagine other folks have other words to describe what we have in common. ### Questions we might talk over - Do we have characteristics in common beyond our IFS training? If so, how might we find community around them? - How have our practices have evolved significantly past “pure IFS,” however we conceive of that? Do these evolutions seem to form any patterns? - What other communities of practice do we participate in? What can partsworkers learn from them? - Do we agree on any common principles or ideas? How about any interesting diversities of opinion among us? - What good might we be able to do outside IFS that we could not do inside it? ### Things we might decide to do - Spin up a way to keep the conversation going, like a Discord server or an email listserv - Draft a manifesto calling for global solidarity among partsworkers - Create a directory (formal or informal) so we can find each other and stay in low-key community - Enjoy our time together for its own sake, without any particular expectation or destination [Get your free Unconference ticket](https://www.tickettailor.com/events/ifscollective/1247149?ref=chudgar.com) ### Partsworkers of the World, Unite! URL: https://www.chudgar.com/partsworkers-unite/ Last updated: 2024-05-29T14:19:19.000Z *This page accompanies a workshop I am pre-proposing for* [*the Parts Work Unconference on Saturday, June 1*](https://www.tickettailor.com/events/ifscollective/1247149?ref=chudgar.com)*, online from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Central.* [*Get your free ticket here*](https://www.tickettailor.com/events/ifscollective/1247149?ref=chudgar.com)*.* ## A workshop to imagine new forms of community among IFS and allied practitioners Since the IFS Institute abruptly restricted its training courses to licensed mental health providers earlier this year, non-clinical practitioners have been talking a lot among ourselves about where to go from here. - Some folks have deepened their commitment to the IFS Institute, organizing and advocating for change from within as program assistants, trainers, and members of the IFS community. - Others of us have begun to explore how we might continue to practice the therapeutic methods we learned from IFS *outside* its institutional borders. - Lots of practitioners in both camps are also venturing beyond IFS as individual practitioners, combining IFS with other healing disciplines to form unique practices all of their own. - And many of us, at varying scales, are creating, imagining, and longing for communities of practice beyond IFS. **This workshop is a place for us to imagine new ways to work together with other practitioners, IFS-trained and otherwise, who share our approach to healing and liberation from the inside out.** I like to call us all “partsworkers,” but I imagine other folks have other words to describe what we have in common. ### Questions we might talk over - Do we have characteristics in common beyond our IFS training? If so, how might we find community around them? - How have our practices have evolved significantly past “pure IFS,” however we conceive of that? Do these evolutions seem to form any patterns? - What other communities of practice do we participate in? What can partsworkers learn from them? - Do we agree on any common principles or ideas? How about any interesting diversities of opinion among us? - What good might we be able to do outside IFS that we could not do inside it? ### Things we might decide to do - Spin up a way to keep the conversation going, like a Discord server or an email listserv - Draft a manifesto calling for global solidarity among partsworkers - Create a directory (formal or informal) so we can find each other and stay in low-key community - Enjoy our time together for its own sake, without any particular expectation or destination [Get your free Unconference ticket](https://www.tickettailor.com/events/ifscollective/1247149?ref=chudgar.com) ## Some context for this session ### Honoring the Institute’s protective system In January of this year, 2024, the IFS Institute abruptly announced that Internal Family Systems training, which had long been open to everyone, would immediately be restricted to licensed mental-health practitioners. Training courses that used to welcome students from *far* beyond mental health, including this kooky ex-academic consultant, were suddenly reinterpreted to have been meant for clinicians only all along. Trained non-clinical IFS practitioners like me were blindsided by the Institute’s sudden reversal, which upended decades of theory and practice. When pressed to explain themselves, IFSI higher-ups have provided no convincing rationale. A [petition to protest the change](https://self-led.org/?ref=chudgar.com) has attracted more than 800 signatures and counting from all over the world, including those of many clinicians who (with *exquisite* shade) “want to leverage our newfound privilege of status to state why we want to remain a united IFS community of equals.” I signed and circulated the petition; I hope you will too! But the skills I learned in my Level 1 training — skills I am now allegedly unqualified to practice — make me suspect that the IFS Institute is probably not going to budge. When IFSI now [declares](https://ifs-institute.com/trainings/level-1-admissions?ref=chudgar.com) that their trainings “have been designed *by* mental health professionals to enable *other* mental health professionals to work with *their* clients,” I hear the plaintive urgency of an extreme protective strategy, animated by a fear for survival. I don’t know what the Institute’s protective parts are afraid would happen if they *didn’t* make Dick Schwartz disavow his own long-standing teaching in this way. I don’t have a way to ask them whom, or what, they are protecting. But I do have an IFS practitioner’s hunch that the protective parts of IFSI leadership who seem to be running the show over there are unlikely to unblend any time soon. ### Imagining IFS practice beyond IFS™ So, once the initial sting of the decision wore off, I started to wonder: - As someone far outside the disciplinary gates of mental healthcare, who would I be if the Institute disavowed me? If I weren’t [an IFS™ practitioner](https://ifs-institute.com/practitioners/all/101765?ref=chudgar.com) any more, what kind of practitioner would I be? - If non-clinicians like me suddenly vanished from the IFS directory (a very thinkable possibility), by what authority could I claim to practice? - If I weren’t a member of the “IFS community” any longer, what other collectives might I be able to join or convene around the work the Institute trained me to do? The more I talk over such questions with my dearest colleagues, the more excited we all become about the possibilities they imply. And that is the institutional context for this proposed Unconference workshop. [Get your free Unconference ticket](https://www.tickettailor.com/events/ifscollective/1247149?ref=chudgar.com) ### Why the IFS Institute™ probably won’t budge URL: https://www.chudgar.com/why-the-ifs-institute-probably-wont-budge/ Last updated: 2025-02-04T15:55:21.000Z # Whiplash In January of this year, 2024, the IFS Institute abruptly announced that Internal Family Systems training, which had long been open to everyone, would immediately be restricted to licensed mental-health practitioners. Training courses that used to welcome students from *far* beyond mental health — including this kooky ex-academic consultant — were suddenly reinterpreted (or, less charitably, retconned) to have been meant *for clinicians only* all along. For safety, of course. IFS-Institute-trained non-clinical practitioners, from little me to distinguished elders like Robert Falconer, were blindsided. The Institute’s sudden reversal upended decades of theory and practice. When pressed to explain themselves, IFSI higher-ups have provided no convincing rationale. A [petition to protest the change](https://self-led.org/?ref=chudgar.com) has attracted more than 800 signatures and counting from all over the world, including those of many clinicians who (with *exquisite* shade) “want to leverage our newfound privilege of status to state why we want to remain a united IFS community of equals.” ## An extreme protective strategy I signed and circulated the petition; I hope you will too! But the skills I learned in my Level 1 training — skills I am now allegedly unqualified to practice — make me suspect that the IFS Institute is probably not going to budge. When IFSI now [declares](https://ifs-institute.com/trainings/level-1-admissions?ref=chudgar.com) that their trainings “have been designed *by* mental health professionals to enable *other* mental health professionals to work with *their* clients,” I hear the plaintive urgency of an extreme protective strategy, animated by a fear for survival. I don’t know what the Institute’s protective parts are afraid would happen if they *didn’t* make Dick Schwartz disavow his own long-standing teaching in this way. I don’t have a way to ask them whom, or what, they are protecting. But I do have a trained IFS practitioner’s hunch that the protective parts of the Institute’s leadership who seem to be running the show are unlikely to unblend any time soon. ## Imagining IFS practice beyond IFS™ So, once the initial sting of the decision wore off, I started to wonder: - As someone far outside the disciplinary gates of mental healthcare, who would I be if the Institute disavowed me? If I weren’t [an IFS™ practitioner](https://ifs-institute.com/practitioners/all/101765?ref=chudgar.com) any more, what kind of practitioner would I be? - If non-clinicians like me suddenly vanished from the IFS directory (a very thinkable possibility), by what authority could I claim to practice? - If I weren’t a member of the “IFS community” any longer, what other collectives might I be able to join or convene around the work the Institute trained me to do? The more I talk over such questions with my dearest colleagues, the more excited we all become about the possibilities they imply. That is the institutional context for [the workshop I proposed](https://www.chudgar.com/partsworkers-unite) for the June 1 Unconference. Here’s [what we talked about, and what might come next](https://www.partsworker.com/partsworker-1/?ref=chudgar.com). ### A role-playing game for IFS practitioners URL: https://www.chudgar.com/rpg-consulting-group/ Last updated: 2024-05-23T15:12:20.000Z Minneapolis psychologist [Allen Wood](https://www.deliberatepsych.com/about?ref=chudgar.com) has been leading IFS-based [therapy groups in the form of role-playing games](https://www.deliberatepsych.com/trpg?ref=chudgar.com), an idea so obviously brilliant that I immediately wanted to join one. Allen suggested an even better idea: what if we brought together a small group of IFS practitioners in an RPG consulting group? That is just what we’re doing now. - **What:** An experiential consultation group where we’ll use role-playing games to explore our systems and our practices. - **When:** Starting late this summer, once a month, for two to three hours each session. - **Who:** You and 3 other people Ash and Allen have invited. - **How much:** Free, unless we decide to make a purchase of some sort as a group. # What next? Just fill out this little form and we’ll be in touch! Loading… ### Ashvin Chudgar’s Tomato Soup Recipe URL: https://www.chudgar.com/tomato-soup/ Last updated: 2025-07-21T20:31:03.000Z My father Ashvin Jayantilal Chudgar immigrated from Ahmedabad, in northwest India, to the United States to go to graduate school. It was 1961, and he was just 22\. As an Indian boy, he had never cooked for himself before, or been formally taught how to cook — but he had watched his mother and other people cooking. In the alien environment of Raleigh, North Carolina — then Sacramento, then Reading PA, where I was born — he tried to reproduce what he remembered from ingredients he could find at American grocery stores. I grew up eating the “third-culture” dishes he improvised that way. This is one of my favorites: easy to do, very inexpensive and very comforting, and nice for children and grown-ups alike. --- ## Recipe ### Gather these things - 🥘 **a cooking pot** that can *comfortably* hold 2 soup-cans’ worth of soup - 🥄 **a spoon or spatula** - 🥫 **1 can of condensed Campbell’s tomato soup**, or any more-or-less neutrally flavored vegetable soup, like pea - 🧈 about **1 tbsp. ghee or neutral oil** (my dad used Wesson) - 🌶️ some **whole spices** (not ground), including any of these: - **½ tsp. cumin seed** ☜ *necessary* - **½ tsp. mustard seed** ☜ *necessary* - **1 small cinnamon stick** ☜ *important* - **2-3 whole cloves** ☜ *good to have* - **a few curry leaves**, dry or fresh *optional* (my dad didn’t have these, but they’re good if you have them) - 🫚 Some **ground spices**, including any of these: - **½ tsp. ground turmeric** ☜ *important* - **½ tsp. garlic powder** ☜ *important* - **½ tsp. ground ginger** ☜ *important* - **½ tsp. garam masala** *optional* - **dash of cinnamon** *if you don’t have whole* - **dash of cloves** *if you don’t have whole* - **dash of asafetida** *optional* (my grandmother sent my dad this potent spice in care packages — if you have some, use it, but don’t go out and buy it if you don’t) - **cayenne to taste** *optional* - **sugar to taste** *optional* Have all these things right by the stove ahead of time. The cooking goes super-fast. Tip: making this tomato soup is a great thing to do while you are making **grilled cheese sandwiches**, which take a while. They are a very good lunch or supper together. ### Now cook 1. Heat up the **ghee or oil** in the **cooking pot** over medium-high heat. 2. Once it’s nice and hot, dump in the **cumin seed** and **mustard seed** and swish them around. In a few seconds, the mustard seeds will start to pop and crackle. 3. When they do, add **the rest of the whole spices** and the **turmeric** the hot oil (cloves, cinnamon stick, curry leaves), and swish them around a couple times while the mustard seeds keep popping. The turmeric will turn a deeper orange shade and smell toasty in just a few seconds. 4. *Be careful: this will definitely splash!* Now pour the **condensed soup** right on top of the hot oil and spices. Swish it around with your spoon or spatula so the oil mixes in with the soup nicely. Turn the heat down to medium-low. 5. Now add the **ground spices** right on top and mix them in. 6. Fill the **soup can** with **water** from the tap, then add that on top of the condensed soup. Stir briskly till the soup is nicely combined. 7. **Heat** until it’s as hot as you like it. Add sugar and cayenne to taste. ### Serve Done! You can give people the soup you’ve made with grilled cheese sandwiches, goldfish crackers, or (my particular favorite from when I was small) hot mango pickle and white Wonderbread. The recipe is very forgiving, so feel free to experiment. The technique of cooking the spices in the oil first is something you can riff on endlessly, and add to everything. ### The Joys of Being Yourselves URL: https://www.chudgar.com/the-joys-of-being-yourselves/ Last updated: 2026-01-20T17:05:22.000Z **Here’s a fun language fact: English-speakers invented the singular *they* in the fourteenth century, when a vogue for stylish new indefinite pronouns referring to people of unspecified gender (like “everybody” or “no one”) created the need for a singular enby pronoun to refer to just one of them (“no one but *them*,” “everybody and *their* dog”).** Alas, I did not know that a decade ago, when I was an obnoxious young English professor. Back then I compulsively “corrected” what I then saw as my students’ grammatical sloppiness. I must have crossed out *~~they~~* and scrawled “s/he!” above it a thousand times — even though I could faintly sense that the effort was not only futile but also kind of creepy. To be clear, none of my students ever claimed *they/them* for themselves. By the time I quit professoring ten years ago, it still wasn’t customary to ask or offer pronouns, and I don’t think any student of mine ever told me theirs. Thank goodness they didn’t; I was so acutely uncomfortable with my own gender back then, I might have screamed or burst into flames if they had. But in the papers they wrote for my classes, my students used *they* as singular all the time — the way I’ve done three times in this paragraph already, just as ordinary users of English have been doing constantly since the early Renaissance. I was *literally* a literary historian by training, but I never bothered to find that story out. Instead, I obstinately hewed to the joyless rigor of the Chicago Manual of Style, which (then and now) bans the singular *they* in academic writing. Looking back on those years, I’m amazed by how tolerant my students were about my grammatical obsession. Though they gamely tried to purge their writing of singular *they*s, the sheer ordinariness of the word in actual English sentences defied my every attempt to eradicate it. By the time I finally washed out of academia, I’d come to admit that the word “they” will blithely continue to be as singular or as plural as it wants to be, ungendered and unbothered, seven centuries young. The parts of me who managed my masculinity, with *great* effort, felt defeated and alarmed. Accepting the singular *they* seemed to put us on a slippery slope to something or other. ## 👨‍🏫 Fun with Grammar: Gender and Number **Slippery it was, and slip we did: a decade later, I go by he/him *or* they/them, and it says so right on my business cards.** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/03/IMG_1531.JPG) Alt: The back of my business card, showing my pronouns (he/him or they/them), photographed against a glass **millefiore* paperweight and a white glass German pepper-pot with cobalt-blue print. My thanks to the people of [Smart Set](https://smartset.com/?ref=chudgar.com), the CWA union shop who printed it Almost everybody I interact with defaults to he/him, what with my bald head and beard and so forth, which doesn’t bother me at all. These days I feel quite comfortable being a man in social interactions. But a marvelous few people do use they/them for me, and I secretly adore them for it. That tiny grammatical change makes otherwise ordinary workaday utterances (“Ash is going to walk us through their slides”) burst festively over my head like glittery little fireworks. Hearing myself referred to that way sometimes even makes me blush, as though “they” were a lavish compliment that, deep down, I had always hoped to receive. Better yet, the word satisfies the compulsive urge for linguistic precision that bedeviled me as a professor. When applied to the human being known as Ash Chudgar, here and now, the word *they* is both idiomatically natural and rigorously grammatical in both gender *and* number. Permit us to explain! ### ⚤ Gender: epicene ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/03/IMG_1530-1.JPG) Alt: A variety of plastic beard-bobbles strung on black elastic bands, mostly transparent, including a golden smiley-face. There’s also a brass hex-nut in there **It is correct to call me *them* for because I am increasingly what grammar calls *epicene* and culture calls *nonbinary*.** I owe this startling development of middle age to the efforts of generations of queer elders and very lucky timing. My pokey progress toward wisdom and the grave intersected with history in such a way that my midlife existential crisis arrived just in time for an explosion of trans and nonbinary visibility around 2020\. Lifelong ways of understanding my past and purpose were failing me; long-attached identities started coming unstuck, like sticky name-tags from woolen sweaters. At a time of *Drag Race* on TV and trans intellectuals on Twitter and queer radicals organizing everybody all over town, compulsory masculinity — an identity I’d always performed resentfully and awkwardly — got unstuck pretty quickly. Today I am happy to report that my inner gender police force has been abolished, and all internal gender regulations not directly conducive to community safety have been repealed. This transformation, unexpected as it was, could not have succeeded without an internal truth-and-reconciliation process of sorts, whereby my former inner gender-cops and those they oppressed got to hear each other’s stories. Having taken public accountability for the harms they’d done, the former cops took on new and better jobs — bodyguard, doting grandpa, drag mother-goddess, etc. Their new vocation, which they find deeply meaningful and rewarding, is to cherish and defend the gender-nonconforming parts of me they used to beat up and send to jail. Meanwhile questions of gender expression, like most other day-to-day matters, are referred to an internal committee-of-the-whole. Every member of my internal family who wants to have an opinion gets to speak, and all significant non-emergency decisions are made by consensus. This deliberative process is how we decided to print *he/they* on our business cards, for example, and to soften the potential menace of our beard by braiding it with cheerful bobbles (seen above). ### ＆ *Number: plural* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/03/Chudgar-Collage.png) Alt: A collage of four photos of my body in different settings over the past decade, featuring several different beard-configurations and fashion choices. This is a clumsy representation of my plural being **It is also grammatically correct to call me *them* because I am increasingly what both grammar and culture call *plural*, as opposed to singular.** (Also as opposed to *dual*, about which more in the links below.) It would thus be quite right for my delightful colleague to say, for example, during a meeting, “Ash *are* going to walk us through their slides,” although that would not be very idiomatic. People would be like, “What?” But it would be, joyously, *correct*. This way of understanding my identity has been slipping gently into the periphery of my awareness over the past few years, more a faint tinkle of bells or a subtle perfume than an explicit belief. Then a conversation I had with a therapist friend a few weeks ago brought the grammar of who I am into my full awareness. “I have been wanting to ask you,” Augustin said tactfully, “about the name of your newsletter.” “‘A Year of Living Plurally’?” “Yeah. So, ‘plural’ is a word with a pretty specific meaning for—” “The plural community,” I nodded. Though I hadn’t really thought it through, my friend’s implied question made sense — and the answer felt pleasantly clear and easy. “I know; I’ve been reading a lot about plural folks. It’s — aspirational, I guess? It just feels increasingly … accurate. If that makes sense.” “I was just curious,” he said, grinning. “And I figured.” It was that conversation, I think, that made me impulse-buy a ticket to the webinar I attended last Saturday — among the most healing and liberating surprises of this Year of Living Plurally so far. ## 🎉 The Joyful Community of Communities **Last week’s** [**event**](https://powertotheplurals.com/events/?ref=chudgar.com) **was convened by Stronghold, the charismatic Dutch system who founded** [**The Plural Association**](https://thepluralassociation.org/?ref=chudgar.com)**.** They turned out to be much gentler and warmer in real life than their powerful, no-nonsense writing had led me to expect. They were convening the global community of plural people for a celebration to mark Dissociative Identity Disorder Awareness Day (March 5), an annual gathering Stronghold described as “the most anticipated event of the year for Systems!” A cynical teenage part of me rolled his eyes at that bit of copy on the website. I mean, how much can you really *look forward* to a two-hour Zoom about a mental-health diagnosis? A whole lot, as it turns out! There were two presentations, not only wildly informative but also deeply moving, by eminent plural systems — a distinguished clinician and a beloved community advocate. Both spoke with courage and candor about the complexities of their own inner communities. We had a lively Q&A with them and Stronghold afterward. But honestly, the content of the webinar was almost beside the point. Even on the internet, where all of us and our inner multitudes could only interact by way of a slender chatbox and little flurries of emoji, the warmth of solidarity with wildly various strangers was palpable. It’s a feeling I remember vividly from my years of sobriety. Waking into an A.A. meeting, any meeting, anywhere — different faces, different church basement, same weak coffee and steadfast fellowship among kindred weirdos, trudging the road together. **In the chat, as systems from all over the world shared our stories of struggle and swapped scars and lore, our pronouns flickered like cheerful candle-flames between “I” and “we.”** We asked each other plural questions we couldn’t ask our spouses or therapists or friends, and got answers. *Does anyone else have a little one who just cries all night?* Of course we did, and we had childcare tips. *What do you do with a headmate who wants to kill your body?* Sympathetic chuckles and practical advice arrived promptly with a flurry of hard-earned 😂s and warm ❤️s. Many of the systems on the call came with the diagnostic label of of Dissociative Identity Disorder (colloquially “DID,” pronounced *did*) stuck to the outside of their human bodies, tightly or loosely. It was under the banner of that malady, after all, that Stronghold summoned us all. Many of us came stickered up with other [DSM letters](#linkies), too — lots of PTSD, CPTSD, and OCD (all of which I have worn on my tweedy lapel), and above all the dreaded BPD (which I only escaped, I think, because I am not female). But few beings in attendance seemed to find these psychiatric stickums particularly binding or authoritative. Among my fellow plural systems, I gathered, such categories are understood to be kludgy workarounds that, in the best cases, enable certain kinds of external support and internal self-understanding — but more often result in self-hatred from within and oppression from without. It is one thing to *claim* a plural identity in comfortable middle age, as my inner family and I have done, after discovering your own multiplicity on the way to healing and liberation. It is far more common to have your multiplicity diagnosed as a terrifying symptom of a sinister spiritual or psychiatric disorder and treated accordingly — or to have your very experience of consciousness written off as a fantasy, a delusion, or a lie. (Many thanks to my friend Forrest and their inner world for helping me think this through.) The other systems I encountered on Saturday brought the same scientific skepticism to the myriad therapeutic strategies mental-health practitioners have devised to reckon with internal multiplicity — including Internal Family Systems, the model that introduced me to my own system. There are many others, from EMDR to PIT to TIST. ([So *many* letters!](#linkies)) We talked about how we’ve tried them out, put them through their paces, and taken what works while leaving the rest. Saturday’s joyful community of communities taught me something very important. No theoretical model, no matter how elaborate, can possibly encompass the sublimely opulent diversity of life in human beings’ inner worlds. And, even better: no theoretical model can capture the sheer joy of being a *we* among *us*es. No matter how frustrating or infuriating or downright scary the sundry inhabitants of our consciousness may be, their company is the one thing we can be sure of, always and forever. When you’re plural — when you know and feel yourself to be not just *I* but also *we* — you can always say, no matter what external others may believe, with grammatical rigor and (eventually) even joy: ![An animated gif of Vin Diesel saying, “I got family.”](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/03/I-Got-Family--from-The-Fast-Saga.gif) “I got family.” If there’s even a little inkling of multiplicity in you, dear reader, I think you get what we’re saying here. You and your whole family are invited to next year’s gathering. **But if you all this seems too good, or too weird, to be true — if you feel like you’re just the one person, a single consciousness without any internal complexity — then we invite you to try on plural pronouns for size, just as an experiment.** --- # Three Easy Ways to Enjoy Being Yourselves ## 1\. 🏟️ Root for Your Team Although it’s still considered exotic to refer to *yourself* as “we/us,” larger forms of plural identity are common and widely celebrated. If you’ve never experienced yourself as plural before, this is an easy way to try multiplicity out. **Try saying “we” along with the community you identify with most joyfully** — for example, - all the fans of our team, - all the stans of our icon, - all the partisans of our ideals, - all the members in good standing of our club, - all the fellow travelers on our chosen path, - et cetera. **Say, “*We* are the best!” Say, “Never count *us* out!” Say, “Yes *we* can!”** This kind of chosen big belonging — fellowship, fandom, *esprit de corps* — is the easiest, most frictionless way I know for a person to move from the lonesome isolation of *I/me* to the joyful plurality of *we/us*. If you find yourself struggling to identify this kind of *us*, imagine *them —* those you are opposed to on a visceral level. For example, your *us* might emerge from your rage at those who would deny your bodily autonomy, or your inchoate loathing of the Dallas Cowboys. (Now, if the the *us* you discover in this way makes you uncomfortable, take heart: you can always pick a different *us* to belong to.) ## 2\. 👪 Celebrate Your Entourage Now move a little inward, from the kinds of *us* you’re part of with otherwise-strangers to the *we* you are with the beings you live most of your life with — those the absurd French language, adorably, calls your *entourage*. **So try saying “we” in a way that includes those who are close to you**, who might include: - the couple you are with your partner or spouse, - any family members you’ve ended up sharing your life with, - whatever non-human animals you have chosen to take care of, - the ancestors who still show up for you, - and so forth. So say, for example, “*We* enjoy video games.” Say, “*Our* house is your house.” Say “Get off *our* lawn.” **Say whatever is true of the *us* you find yourself sharing your life with, here and now.** This is a practical, day-to-day way to be more than just *I/me*. Using plural pronouns in this way will help you show up more comfortably in your relationships, even if they are very troublesome. ## 3\. 🎤 Speak for More of Yourself Moving even farther inward, you can try out plural pronouns all by yourself, simply by taking your ordinary mental dialogue seriously and literally. **This is a handy trick to practice any time you’re feeling *beside yourself*** — undecided, torn, conflicted, irrational, or crazy. Such common human states of mind are much less unpleasant from a first-person plural point of view, believe it or not. Try it and see! This doesn’t require any outward action, or even any particular effort of imagination. Just saying the words in your head will do the trick nicely. For example: - When a nasty inner critic whispers, “Ugh, you’re disgusting,” take a breath before you react. Imagine that critical voice is a *part* of you — not all of you, for sure, but *somebody* inside you, with a perspective that should count. And together, you and this part of you are constitute an *us*. So you can **say, in your head: “*We* are feeling disgusted at the moment.”** And just like that, the critical part of you knows they’re not alone: they’re part of the *we* that you brought them into just by saying those words in your head. Magic! - When a frightened inner child throws a tantrum in your belly, don’t kick it out of consciousness for being such a stupid baby. Instead, include that inner child’s experience: **say, “We’re a little bit frightened right now.”** And just like that, the little one inside of you has you for company, so things don’t feel so scary. **Including various parts of yourself in the *we* of your inner dialogue is magic.** But again, don’t take my word for it — try plural pronouns out for yourselves. #### That’s all for this week, friends — write back for any reason, or none at all. --- # 🔗 Links ## 🔠 So many freaking letters Here is a handy glossary of all those mental-health initialisms: - [**DSM**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic%5Fand%5FStatistical%5FManual%5Fof%5FMental%5FDisorders?ref=chudgar.com) refers to the *Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders*, a stunningly popular compendium of monetizable fantasies about madness now in its fifth (!) edition. If you are an American human being, this is the book that tells the healthcare system how to parse your spiritual and psychological wellbeing. Read it with, um, caution. - [**PTSD**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-traumatic%5Fstress%5Fdisorder?ref=chudgar.com) refers to post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition of persistent horror initially described among survivors of the First World War as “shell shock.” The DSM has included PTSD as a diagnosis — that is to say, a medical condition that clinicians are allowed to get paid to treat you for — since 1986, after the condition was widely recognized among American soldiers who had survived their deployment as weapons of war in Vietnam. - [**CPTSD**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex%5Fpost-traumatic%5Fstress%5Fdisorder?ref=chudgar.com) is *complex* post-traumatic stress disorder, first described by the great psychiatrist Judith Lewis Herman in 1992: “The syndrome that follows upon prolonged, repeated trauma needs its own name. I propose to call it ‘complex post-traumatic stress disorder.’” Herman derived this description from years of treating the extraordinary suffering of ordinary women, from which she concluded that “the most common post-traumatic disorders are not those of men in war but of women in civilian life.” I cannot recommend [her book](https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/trauma-and-recovery-the-aftermath-of-violence-from-domestic-abuse-to-political-terror-9780465061716?ref=chudgar.com) enough. - [**OCD**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive%E2%80%93compulsive%5Fdisorder?ref=chudgar.com) refers to “obsessive-compulsive disorder.” This is what a psychiatrist gave me fluoxetine for, and it fits my inner family rather well. - [**BPD**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline%5Fpersonality%5Fdisorder?ref=chudgar.com) is an elaborate slander against traumatized women the psychiatrists who write the DSM refer to as a “disorder.” - [**EMDR**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye%5Fmovement%5Fdesensitization%5Fand%5Freprocessing?ref=chudgar.com) is “eye movement desensitization and reprocessing,” an interesting somatic form of psychotherapy that got popular in the aughts. It works by cuing your body to interact with your memories in different ways. - **PIT** is Pia Mellody’s “[post-induction therapy](https://www.themeadows.com/blog/what-is-post-induction-therapy/?ref=chudgar.com),” a 12-step-flavored account of internal multiplicity that I learned some things from. - **TIST** is Janina Fisher’s “[trauma-informed stabilization treatment](https://janinafisher.com/tist/?ref=chudgar.com),” a version of Internal Family Systems therapy my friend Forrest told me about. I really like Fisher’s concept of the “going-on-with-everyday-life self.” ## ✨ Grammar & glamor - The grammarian **Katie Wales** is a queer icon in waiting. Observe this sickening shade from her discussion of the singular *they* in [*Personal Pronouns in Present-Day English*](https://www.google.com/books/edition/%5C%5F/d68sHzfpWVMC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA125&bsq=%22singular+they%22&ref=chudgar.com) (Cambridge, 1996), darling: [![Screenshot from Wales’s book in which she schools “Quirk et al.” for their misogyny](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/03/Screenshot-2024-03-16-at-7.54.15-PM.png)](https://www.google.com/books/edition/%5C%5F/d68sHzfpWVMC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA125&bsq=%22singular+they%22&ref=chudgar.com) “Less acceptable to whom?” — Katie Wales 🔥 - Meanwhile, [**The Oxford English Dictionary is here to school the bigots**](https://www.oed.com/discover/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/?ref=chudgar.com). - The glamorous linguistic innovations of the fourteenth century apparently corresponded to a revolution in couture, apparently: “The draped garments and straight seams of previous centuries were replaced by curved seams and the beginnings of tailoring, which allowed clothing to more closely fit the human form.” [**That fancy tall medieval lady’s hat is called a “hennin,” it turns out**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1300%E2%80%931400%5Fin%5FEuropean%5Ffashion?ref=chudgar.com). ## 🍒 The sexiest grammatical number - Between the lonely singular and the sociable plural is the grammatical number called [***dual***](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual/%5F%28grammatical/%5Fnumber%29?ref=chudgar.com), which my Greek professor memorably explained as referring to “natural pairs, like balls.” This is the gnarly grammar work in words like “specs” and “either,” and the equally gnarly configuration of personhood that shows up in culture in such diverse forms as Dr. Jekyll / Mr. Hyde, Dr. Tobias Fünke / Mrs. Featherbottom, the Kevins / Mr. Vincent Adultman, and so forth. - The community of plural systems, meanwhile, have collectively elaborated [**a rich taxonomy of dual ways of being**](https://pluralpedia.org/w/Dual/%5F%28Disambiguation%29?ref=chudgar.com). ## Forward this email to a weirdo you think might dig it, won’t you? Ox.Ash ### About meeting in person URL: https://www.chudgar.com/meeting-in-person/ Last updated: 2025-04-03T20:42:30.000Z 🖥️ ****It’s always OK to switch to video.** If ever you can’t make an in-person session, we can **always* meet on a video call instead — just let me know at any time and I’ll send you a link. ## Good to know **My office is in my house**, where I live with: - my **husband** 🧔🏼‍♂️ and - two (2) **orange cats** 🐈🐈. All three are quiet and friendly, and you may encounter one or more of them in the front yard or the living room. We’ll have our session behind a closed door in my office, where we have complete privacy — no one can hear us while we are talking. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/02/49F02FEB-619E-4DF8-A3DE-1360BE4CA89E_1_201_a.jpeg) ## Getting here - **My office is the front room in my house in Northeast Minneapolis**, [right here](https://goo.gl/maps/bZiggrq5Pk1KrFdx9?ref=chudgar.com). The address will also be in the calendar invitation for your session. - **If you’re taking transit** 🚍, take the 4 bus on Johnson or the 10 bus on Central and get off at 37th Avenue Northeast. Then go down 37th toward Buchanan Street — it’s nine blocks east from Central, two blocks west from Johnson. - **If you’re driving** 🚙, you can park on the street right out front. If you have any trouble finding the place, just [shoot me a text](sms:+16122255373). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/02/2024-02-21-office-1.JPG) ## Once you arrive - 🛎️ I’ll probably see you coming and open the door, but if I don’t, just ring the **doorbell** when you get here. - 🥾 There’s a little chair where you can **take your shoes off** just inside the front door. - 💧 I’ll offer you **water** and show you where the **restroom** is on the way to my office. You’ll find fidgets and doodads in a bowl by the blue sofa, along with kleenexes, and there are afghans and pillows you can adjust for maximum comfort. - 🤗 After your session is over, I’ll walk you out. **Hugging or handshaking** are always welcome, but *never* expected! [Back to FAQs about coaching](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching-faq) ### Coaching FAQ URL: https://www.chudgar.com/coaching-faq-post/ Last updated: 2024-02-22T21:09:41.000Z #### Our work together will look reassuringly familiar, right from the start. I’ll be a gentle professional you’re meeting with for a scheduled hour or so, over Zoom or in a quiet room. The setup is just what you’d expect if you were working with any helping expert, like a traditional therapist or a life coach. But if you’re new to inner exploration, your work with me is likely to *feel* helpfully disorienting at first. **Instead of treating what ails you or motivating you to change, I’ll be there by your side, offering guidance and solidarity as you find healing and liberation *within yourself*.** ## Questions? Undoubtedly! Here are some answers. - [**What are my options for coaching, and how much do they cost?**](https://www.chudgar.com/options-for-coaching/) - [**What is coaching going to be like?**](https://www.chudgar.com/what-to-expect) - [**Can I see how a session might go?**](https://www.chudgar.com/an-introduction-in-video-clips/) - [**Who can benefit from this kind of coaching?**](https://www.chudgar.com/who-can-benefit) - [**What kinds of clients do you like to work with?**](https://www.chudgar.com/folks-i-love) - [**How is this kind of coaching different from therapy?**](https://www.chudgar.com/differences-from-therapy) - [**What is Internal Family Systems?**](https://www.chudgar.com/what-is-ifs) - [**Do I need a professional to do this kind of inner inquiry?**](https://www.chudgar.com/do-it-yourself) - [**How will coaching care for my wellbeing?**](https://www.chudgar.com/wellbeing) [Or just see for yourself!](https://www.chudgar.com/free-first-session) ### Some belated valentine ideas 💌 for our dear departed 🪦 URL: https://www.chudgar.com/plural-valentines-for-the-dead/ Last updated: 2025-12-06T20:41:35.000Z *Another leisurely longread today, dear friends — I have not yet cracked the puzzle of writing briefly. I eagerly welcome your tips about how to write less, so send me ’em if you got ’em.* - [**A story**](#story) about music, grief, and the comforts of being more than just one person - [**This week’s plural practices**](#plural-practices): 3 valentine ideas for the dead - [**Links**](#linkies): woolly mammoth, 2 obituaries (both really good), clever dactylic wordplay # ❄️ Winter landscape with red Solo cup **My boyfriend and I had just got back from our first visit to the old** [**Bell Museum**](#linkies) **when my phone buzzed in my pocket.** It was December 29, 2011, the day after my 31st birthday. My sister was calling to tell me that my father was in the hospital, and might not survive the night. At the time, the Bell was the old-fashioned kind of natural-history pageant where bright-eyed taxidermies strike dramatic animal poses against oil-painted backdrops. My boyfriend and I had both loved it, in part because we’d discovered there my boyfriend’s wildlife doppelgänger (*Lontra canadensis*, the river otter). But some superstitious young parts of me, still prone to mistake correlation for cause, blamed our visit to the Bell for all the grief that followed, and felt a sort of horror about the place ever after. We never went back. A decade later the museum moved its taxidermies into a beautiful new building, not far from where my then-boyfriend and I now live in married contentment. When we drive by the new Bell these days, my young parts heave a little sigh of relief. It is consoling for them to know that the cursed old museum will never again be part of a sequence of events in which somebody’s father ends up dying. **By ten the next morning, Eastern time, I was driving a rental car from the Allentown airport to the Reading hospital, feeling as small and scared as I ever had under the dull white winter skies of the place where I was born.** Dread overwhelmed me: father in the ICU or already dead, mother overcome with grief, little sister in need of comfort, brother far away, and everyone looking to me, insanely, as though I would somehow know what to do. Back then, years before I would meet my inner family, I had no way of understanding what was going on within myself. - I couldn’t thank capable young Johnny for booking the flight, packing the suitcase, renting the car, and driving it at a prudent four miles per hour over the limit. - Nor could I comfort the the poor little Mouse, who was writhing in shameful agony in the pit of my stomach — certain, poor creature, my innocent father had been stricken down by a vengeful God to punish him for all my awful sins. At the time I assumed, as singular people often do, that I was probably just going insane. My anxiety intensified as the murmuring grown-ups of the underpowered Allentown public radio station dissolved into static. Being alone with my thoughts and feelings seemed *highly* unwise in those circumstances, so I jabbed at the *seek* button on the radio with growing panic. Hollow Christian rock, cruel shock-jockery, yammering ads — every new sonic assault made me feel smaller, crazier, more inadequate to the incomprehensible task before me. The words “God help me!” tumbled out of my mouth — and before I could scold myself for bothering my Higher Power with such a frivolous prayer, the very next radio station, coming in strong and clear, was playing “Red Solo Cup” by Toby Keith. ## 🍻 The best frat-house party banger to lose a parent to **That song might sound especially familiar at present; it was the background music for many TV and radio stories about Toby Keith’s untimely death, this February 5, at just 62 years old.** This deepest part of winter, between the new year and the spring, seems to be a time when lots of people die — including, six weeks after my visit to the Bell Museum twelve years ago, my father. - **Toby Keith**’s legacy is complicated, as the obituaries have remarked. He was remarkable for blunt-nosed proto-MAGA jingoism in the wake of September 11, but he had little patience for queer-bashing, xenophobia, and culture-war bully-bait overall. I learned more about him the week after he died than I’d ever thought to wonder about him before. He clearly loved beer, singing, and inexpensive conviviality. - **Ashvin Jayantilal Chudgar**, who was 72, died twelve years ago this month as well — a decade less untimely, but more suddenly. He did not like Toby Keith particularly or country music generally, and I don’t think he ever went to a kegger in his life. He only drank with company, which we had seldom; but when he did drink a beer or a little glass of blended scotch on the rocks when people were over, he became jolly and gregarious and laughed uproariously. Alcohol agreed with him; it let him proceed to party. Beyond their mutual sociability, the strongest link between my father and Toby Keith is the warm good cheer I feel in my heart whenever I hear that wonderful song. That first time I heard it, in the rental car on my way to the hospital, my whole inner world fell silent just to listen. I was listening to a lot of country radio in those days, so the high-gloss twang felt familiar and comfortable. And the words, at once so goofy and so elegant — addressing the cup, Toby says, > I háve to admít that the ládies get smítten > Admíring how shárply my fírst name is wrítten > On yóu with a Shárpie, when I get to hittin’ > On thém (to hélp me get > Lúcky). — melted my fear-tightened face into a loopy grin. If I’d known to pay attention, I could have felt Johnny relaxing our white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel as the music soothed Mouse’s pain in our belly and Buddy’s shoulders squared. At the time, I only knew the song had quickly, thoroughly cheered me up — and not just because it is a song precision-engineered for maximum cheer. More profoundly, the *me* it had cheered up, the version of myself who just freaking *loved* this goofy country song, was a strong and capable adult, not small and scared at all. He was sober in A.A.; he had a sponsor and home group, and he sponsored other men. He had good friends, a good job, even a long-term boyfriend. He drove a rusty 1994 Toyota pickup with the windows down all summer long. He lived in Minnesota, his home; and now he was a being a good son, flying back to a place he’d long since outgrown to take care of his family, who needed him. At the hospital later, after my mother and I had made the necessary decisions, I called one of my A.A. buddies to tell him why I wouldn’t be at the meeting that night. “So they’re going to do the surgery,” I concluded, “but it’s 50-50 that he survives. And even if he does, there’s no telling how long he might be in the ICU. So I don’t know when I’ll be able to get back to Minnesota.” “That sucks, man,” my buddy said sympathetically. Then he added, in a cheerful A.A. fashion: “Guess it’s time put your big-boy pants on.” It was a figure of speech, but I looked down at my legs automatically. I was wearing brown corduroy Levis, clean and neat, which fit my grown-man’s legs well under a somber black wool overcoat. In my mind’s ear, Toby Keith was still slurring words of good cheer like a beery guardian angel: *You’re more than just plastic. You’re more than amazing, you’re more than fantastic!* God, I loved that song. “Already have ’em on,” I replied, grinning. ## 🎶 You are the fruit to my loom **To my great good fortune, the country-music station in Reading played “Red Solo Cup” approximately every five minutes that winter.** My father survived the surgery on New Year’s Day, only to languish in the ICU without any end in sight. I had gone back to Minnesota and my job — I had classes to teach — once it became clear that nothing more could be done until he got better or died. He did not get better, but he did not get worse, so his death came as another shock. In mid-February, when I flew back for his cremation and memorial service, the same song was *still* playing just as often, or at least so I remember it. I never, ever got tired of hearing it. I still haven’t, if you can believe it. To this day, I insist on including it on many of the seasonal playlists my husband and listen to after work. (He says, tactfully, that he’s not tired of it either.) My fondness for “Red Solo Cup” really seems to defy the laws of association that cursed the old Bell Museum in my imagination. Reminders of a bad time end up as bad memories, don’t they? The cologne I happened to be wearing that winter, for example, got so thoroughly skunked by its association with my father’s death that I feel queasy even *remembering* what it smelled like. You’d think the song that imprinted itself on my imagination during those same awful days in Pennsylvania would be just as intolerable. But instead, no matter how many times I hear it, the song makes me remember my father with happy love — not as he was during those horrible last months in the ICU, but as he was when he was most himself: - taking a macro photograph of the center of a single flower, - falling softly to sleep with the cat on the sofa, - humming as he cooked his own improvised curries, - making faces at babies so they would laugh, - reading little me the funnies on Sunday mornings. When Toby Keith passed earlier this month, just a few day’s before the anniversary of my father’s death, the intense affection I felt for the man surprised me. I only really knew him from that one song; I was hardly a fan. Yet there it was: a goofy grin, happy feelings, wistful love. I felt about Toby Keith the way Toby Keith felt about his friend the red Solo cup. After much internal conversation, my parts and I have come to a surprising conclusion. The person who loved “Red Solo Cup,” the grown man who got through his father’s final illness and death with dignity and aplomb, was a marvelous spontaneous collaboration among the very best qualities of us all: Digby’s daring, the Professor’s smarts, Tony’s confidence, Johnny’s competence, the Badger’s charm, the Mouse’s humility, and Flora’s divine attention to beauty glittering above us all. Years ago, I had no way to understand myself with such precision. All I knew was that the song made me feel grown-up, capable, and sane enough to survive whatever was to come. And that I did. --- # Valentine ideas for your dear departed ![Photo collage of an Indian man and a white man, both grinning, with a valentine heart in the middle that says “Rest in Peace.”](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/02/2024-02-18-Valentine-for-D-and-Toby-Keith.png) A valentine collage for my father Ashvin Jayantilal Chudgar (1939 – 2012) and country legend Toby Keith (1961–2024). **Many people around the world grow up with beautiful rituals for maintaining a loving relationship with those we’ve lost, like burning a Yahrzeit candle or leaving offerings at graves, but I wasn’t one of them.** If they had such rituals, my Catholic mother and Hindu father did not pass them along to me, and I never sought out or invented my own. I thought I did not need them. But this Year of Living Plurally has made me aware of the parts of myself who miss my father very much — and my grandparents, and friends I’ve lost, and beloved elders I never got to meet. So when the Badger suggested the idea of making a little valentine for Toby Keith, the rest of us agreed — even Johnny, who said we could count it as work if we wrote a newsletter about it and logged the time. The result is above. Therefore, friends, here are some plural practices to try for showing your love to your dear and departed. You could have done any of these practices on Valentine’s Day, if I’d sent this newsletter earlier; sorry! But you can just as well make a valentine on the anniversary of the person’s death, a meaningful date on whatever calendar you like, or any random day, like today. ## 1\. 💌 ✍️ Write them a love letter **Parts of you who never got to express all their love for the person you’ve lost will deeply appreciate the opportunity to write down what they wanted to say.** Because such parts are often very young, they often find it possible to believe that writing to the person actually *reaches* the person, which you may or may not believe also. (I am agnostic on the question myself.) This is not a new or particularly interesting idea, but it makes a lot of sense to me, and I have done it. - **✨ Fancy**: Special stationery, your best handwriting, perfume, etc. - **📧 Plain**: Post-It notes work perfectly well for brief love notes. So do emails! (Tip: if have a Gmail account, you can make a special-purpose email address after a plus sign, like so: `yourgmail+othername` at gmail dot com. Gmail will send it to your regular inbox, and you can label it according to who it’s for.) - **🔥🗄️ Sent or kept**: You can send your letter along it in some way, perhaps by burning it or burying it in a special way. You can also tuck it away for yourself to read later on. ## 2\. 🌷💧 Grow them a special flower **This my husband’s beautiful botanical practice for the dead, which my he has agreed to let me share with you.** His father died when he was just 14, and nobody taught him how to grieve at the time. So the next time he lost someone he loved very much, his beloved cat Alex, my husband quietly invented his own private way to grieve. 1. **Start winter-flowering bulbs,** like paperwhites, amaryllis, or hyacinths. You can get the bulbs very cheaply at a nursery or a hardware store, or online, then start them in a pot of dirt or even just in water. [Here’s an article about how to do it.](https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/force-bulbs-indoors-36703574?ref=chudgar.com) 2. **Have your grief spend time with the plant as it grows.** For best results, you’ll want to be able to see the plant grow all the way from the bulb, or from little tiny green shoots, to the beautiful flowers. Depending on the plant you’re growing, this will take weeks or even a months, and it impossible to predict exactly. That’s as it should be. Following the plant’s lead is important here; you don’t know how long the practice is supposed to take, so you’re trusting the plant’s own timing. When it blossoms, imagine the flowers are showing the one you have lost how much you love them. 3. **Once the flowers have faded, bid them farewell.** Winter-forced flowers don’t last very long — a week and change, at most. Watching them wither is part of the practice, too; it’s a way of being with your own grief. Cut down the flower-stalks, which you may want to do in a solemn way, while leaving the plant’s green leaves to continue growing for a while. This is a way of reassuring the departed that you are carefully, lovingly, continuing to live. Some plants, like amaryllises, will remain very happy houseplants after the flower is gone. You can keep an amaryllis alive that way for years, although it probably won’t bloom again unless you take special steps. Some bulbs can be planted outside, but most forced bulbs will go into the compost after the foliage dies. If you want any advice on this practice, just hit reply and I will ask my husband for you. He’s an [official master gardener](https://extension.umn.edu/master-gardener/about-master-gardener?ref=chudgar.com) now. ## 3\. ✂️🖍️ Make them a valentine by hand **If any part of you is inclined toward arts and crafts, this is a simple and lovely way to tell your departed you love them.** You can make your valentine out of whatever supplies you have handy, in whatever form you find most congenial: for example, - origami - paper and glue (collage, découpage, quilling, etc.) - tattooing - *amigurumi* (crocheting tiny creatures out of yarn) - calligraphy - doodling on scrap paper The valentine the Badger made for our father and Toby Keith was made in Google Slides, the medium we find most fluid these days. #### That’s all for this week friends! Some interesting links follow. And a belated happy Valentine’s day from all of me and my dear departed to all of you and yours! Write back any time: we all love to hear from you. --- # 🔗 Linkies ## 🦦🦣🏛️ The Bell Museum It’s really wonderful! There is a life-sized woolly mammoth there, posing imposingly in a sleek cantilevered box! It’s not actually haunted or cursed. [An actual 🦣 mammoth](https://www.bellmuseum.umn.edu/?ref=chudgar.com) ## 🪦 In memory of Ashvin Jayantilal Chudgar Here is the obituary I wrote for my father, which I am shamelessly republishing *without* permission from the ghoulish obituary racketeers who run legacy dot com. [He loved flowers 🌷](https://www.chudgar.com/in-memory-of-ashvin-jayantilal-chudgar/) ## 🔴🍺 Red Solo Cup ### The phenomenon This obituary of Robert Hulseman, who died in December of 2016, offers an excellent introduction to the American icon that is the red Solo cup. (He invented the disposable coffee-cup top we all use today, too, with the drinky hole.) According to his son, the inventor died unwilling to acknowledge that our strange culture had adopted his practical stackable invention not as a wholesome family soft-drink receptacle, as he had intended, but as the very emblem of vulgar frat-boy libertinism. “It was for *families*,” he was said to insist. [They used to come in peach? 🍑](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/30/507505728/creator-of-red-solo-cup-robert-hulseman-dies-at-84?ref=chudgar.com) ### The song ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/02/Screenshot-2024-02-19-at-12.49.53-PM.png) The first three bars of “Red Solo Cup” arranged for piano, via [Musicnotes](https://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/mtd.asp?ppn=MN0098934&ref=chudgar.com). #### Lyrics Written by the Warren brothers, Brett and Brad, and the Beavers brothers, Brett and Jim, recorded by Toby Keith, and released October 10, 2011. **I.** Now, a réd Solo cúp is the bést recéptacle For bárbecues, taílgates, faírs, and féstivals; And yoú, sir, do nót have a paír of tésticles If yoú prefer drínking From gláss. (*Meter continues in the same way*) A red Solo cup is cheap and disposable; And in fourteen years they are decomposable, And unlike my home, they are not forecloseable (Freddie Mac can kiss My ass). **CHORUS** (*Dum-dum-dum,*) Red Solo cup: I fill you up! Let’s have a party? Let’s have a party! (I love you,) Red Solo cup, I lift you up: Proceed to party? Proceed to party! **II.** Now, I really love how you’re easy to stack, But I really hate how you’re easy to crack — ’Cause when beer runs down the front of my back, Well that, my friends, is quite Yucky. But I have to admit that the ladies get smitten Admiring how sharply my first name is written On you with a Sharpie when I get to hittin’ On them (to help me get Lucky). **CHORUS** **III.** Now, I’ve seen you in blue, and I’ve seen you in yellow, But only you, Red, will do for this fellow, ’Cause you are the Abbott to my Costello, And you are the fruit to my Loom. Red solo cup, you’re more than just plastic — You’re more than amazing, you’re more than fantastic! And believe me that I’m not the least bit sarcastic When I look at you And say — (*Speaking, con passione*) Red Solo cup, you’re not just a cup. You’re my — friend. Friend! Lifelong. Thank you … for being my friend. **CHORUS** #### Video This video is honestly not *super*\-safe for work, in that it’s got a lot of young white women in bikinis being leered at by white men of all ages and a middle-aged white Toby Keith. I like it, though. ### Telling the “big stories” of the City of Saint Paul URL: https://www.chudgar.com/saint-paul-big-stories/ Last updated: 2024-02-12T21:50:23.000Z # A quiet revolution in local government In just a few years, the city of Saint Paul, Minnesota, has quietly implemented some of the boldest, most innovative municipal policies in America. City workers, working across department lines and with unprecedented community participation, have been busy designing and implementing those visionary policies — but not talking *about* them. As the deputy mayor told me, “It’s pretty impressive what Saint Paul is achieving. It’s one thing that we get stuff accomplished, but *stories matter*. We need to train ourselves to tell a story across programmatic areas.” But the departmental structure of the city government made it hard for anybody in city government to step back far enough from their own areas of work, for long enough, to learn and retell the biggest stories of civic progress that cross departmental lines. As a result, the most holistic and transformative Saint Paul policies were succeeding brilliantly — without anybody’s knowing about it. **That’s when Chase Maxwell, who manages Saint Paul’s communications, got in touch.** Together, Chase’s team and I came up with an ambitious plan of work we called the Big Stories project to tell the transformative civic progress in Saint Paul — what those stories are, why they matter, and how they’re changing real lives for the better, now and for generations to come. # What we did We’ve been doing this work one Big Story at a time, from the story of the city’s new [Office of Economic Empowerment](https://www.stpaul.gov/departments/financial-empowerment?ref=chudgar.com) to a community-first [reinvention of “emergency response](https://www.stpaul.gov/departments/neighborhood-safety/community-first-response?ref=chudgar.com).” For each story — we’ve told four of them so far — the process has been the same: - **Deep interviewing.** Saint Paul’s communications team and I spent lots of time interviewing the people who know those stories best — workers at every level of city government, community leaders, activists and organizers, and Saint Paul residents from all kinds of walks of life. “Those interviews are so useful,” Chase told me, as a form of *institutional memory.* “The work that we did has allowed us to memorialize that history in a way that the City wouldn’t normally do.” - **Making meaning.** Our interviewees’ words, carefully memorialized, helped me create clear, simple, powerful communications guidance — a very brief Big Story narrative, message guidance for city leaders, and actionable recommendations for content strategy (stories to tell, videos to make, data to visualize, and so forth) — which every interviewee got to review and revise along with me. “That process of actually talking to people, getting their unvarnished perspectives,” said Chase, “was crucial to put forward recommendations that felt authentic, and really portrayed the people we talked to in an honest way.” # What’s next **There are many more Big stories to tell about Saint Paul, but it’s already making a difference — not only in how people perceive Minnesota’s capital city, but in how the city functions in service to its people.** “We continue to lean into the messaging we created on financial empowerment,” Chase told me. “The interviews you conducted were really helpful in helping (the city’s incoming equity chief) get up to speed. And we’ve had nothing but positive feedback on the Community-First Public Safety story, which has been really helpful as the City has received additional funding for the federal government for enhancing public safety response.” ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/02/Chase-Maxwell.jpg) ## “Sensitivity and care” There’s a high level of sensitivity and care in how Ash engages stakeholders. For me and my team, bringing people along with us, making sure they’re comfortable, is a key to our success. I feel confident in Ash’s ability to manage that, to understand the sensitivities. That’s one reason we’re so comfortable working with him — that attention to relationships. — ****Chase Maxwell**, Communications & Digital Media Manager, City of Saint Paul ### Who’s afraid of a goblin’s butt? URL: https://www.chudgar.com/whop/ Last updated: 2024-02-12T14:43:48.000Z ## On being naked > The Lord God called out to the man, “Where are you?” > > He answered, “I heard you in the garden; I was afraid and hid from you, because I was naked.” > > “Who told you that you were naked?” God asked. > > — Genesis 3:9–11 [GNT](https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=Genesis+3&version=GNT&ref=chudgar.com) **One of things I like best about Jason, my new body’s trusty mechanic, is that he does not inspect my private parts.** In fact, I get to keep my shorts and undershirt on the whole time I am on the warm table getting my new surface interface poked. (This past week’s visit was all about kidney buttons. Jason confirmed that my invading windy influence was already in retreat, beaten back by steady doses of the emollient flowers he’d prescribed. To press our advantage, he said, we were coaxing more *yin,* which repels such winds, from the organs this body uses to produce it. “I guess you can’t spell ‘kidneys’ without *yin,*” is what I should have said at the time, but didn’t. I just thought of it now.) This new kind of body-service is infinitely less stressful than the occasional physical examinations that I made my poor old patient-body endure, naked and ashamed, at the chilly gloved hands of physicians. I was technically in charge in all those interactions, paying a fancy expert a pretty penny to perform a service, which I would be implored to evaluate on an elaborate satisfaction questionnaire. But zero parts of who I am experienced anything like the confidence of a “healthcare consumer” with a white-suited professional peering expressionlessly at my naked patient-body under cold fluorescent lights. Instead: - My patient’s body itself, which identified as a sickly coward (it/it), trembled in anticipation of cold instruments, needles, scalpels, and pointy fingers that hurt. - The parts of me who are invested in my dignity — the Professor, Johnny and Tony — experienced medical nudity as a sort of ritual abasement, the kind of locker-room humiliation they remember keenly from junior high. - The little Badger dreaded the scolding that would inevitably arrive when the doctor found some telltale evidence of bodily negligence in my swimsuit area, like a little boy who’s shattered some costly grown-up thing and clumsily hidden the broken shards under the sofa. In recent years, once we all established open lines of internal communication, I could easily sympathize with such concerns and keep the parts of me who had them relatively calm through the whole ordeal. Other parts of me, however, were not so easily comforted at the doctor’s office: - Digby, the guardian of my undercarriage, was extremely concerned that the doctor’s prodding would trigger an accidental boner, the obscene impropriety of which would trigger some nightmarish horror-sequence of sexual humiliations, punishments, or crimes. This has never happened, not even a little; but Digby is vigilant. He sometimes seems to think our body is a savage man’s body, powerless to control its violent urges. - The brave Mouse, the smallest part of me but by far the most valiant, is utterly undone by the sight of naked human bodies, our own above all. He believes they are evil by nature, radiant with harm. These parts of me come by their worries honestly. Like lots and lots of other ordinary people — at least one in every ten grown-ups, by one recent estimate — I first learned about sex from being abused when I was little, which made the very idea of nudity all kinds of troublesome ever after. For us as for old Adam, it was sin that told us we were naked. Even the *word* “naked,” as I type it now, gives me the kind of phobic jolt you might feel leaning over the railing of a skyscraper or seeing a menacing spider. (Cpl. “Radar” O’Reilly, with whom the Mouse feels a spiritual kinship, seemed to feel the same way. In one episode of *MASH*, which I will never forget, the poor corporal was so mortified by the actual words that he coined the less scary terms *nakedidity* and *nudeness,* which the Mouse prefers to this day.) That intense fear of nakedness belongs properly to Digby and the Mouse, who courageously intend to protect the rest of my inner world from it. But alas, owing to our shared nervous system, we *all* feel their terror when it happens — a feeling Jason the acupuncturist never *ever* causes. He lets me me keep my shorts on; he makes my parts feel safe. ## The concerns of a mother in Florida I wasn’t conscious of my gratitude for not being naked when I left the acupuncture studio last week; I was admiring my new nostrils’ dewy receptivity to ambient outdoor fragrances, intensified by this recent winter heatwave. **But the next day, I read a news story that brought all my complicated feelings about nudity vividly to mind.** It seems that Jessica Pippin, a concerned mother in Florida — you know the type — recently demanded the removal of several picture-books from an elementary-school library, on the grounds that they contained “pornographic” illustrations “harmful to children.” The books included Maurice Sendak’s *The Night Kitchen,* the article said, and other > books with drawings of figures without clothes, including *Unicorns Are the Worst*, a book about a goblin complaining about how much people like unicorns. … Another book Pippin sought to remove was [*Draw Me a Star*](https://bookshop.org/p/books/draw-me-a-star-eric-carle/7308279?ref=chudgar.com) by Eric Carle, … . Pippin was concerned about this image of “two adults that were naked.” She said that her concerns were addressed when the district librarians drew “board shorts on the man” and “put the girl in a bikini.” ![An illustration of a tree and a naked black-haired man and woman.](https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/ericcarlepage.jpg?w=642) The two adults. I told my husband about it over dinner Friday night. “So there’s this mom in Florida who objects to a picture-book in the elementary-school library because it has a goblin’s bare bottom in it,” I said. “And another one because there’s a nak— a little boy without clothes in it.” He shook his head in amazement. “Bonkers. Moms for Liberty, right?” “Bonkers is right,” I said. But then I went on. “I mean, bonkers, but it was kind of funny and sweet, the way it happened. The lady’s only request was that they put a little overalls on the goblin, and briefs on the little boy. Oh, and in another book, she wanted them to put a bikini and board shorts on what looks like Adam and Eve. For some reason she specified the clothes, ‘bikini and board shorts.’ That was all she wanted, just to cover up the private parts. So I guess the board had the librarian scotch-tape clothes on all the naked cartoon bodies in the books, and they went right back into the library.” He furrowed his brow and asked, politely, in what way creeping fascism was “funny and sweet.” I found myself bristling. “Maybe she just wanted to protect kids from learning about sex too soon,” I replied, too loudly. “I mean, who knows? Maybe she was sexually abused as a kid, the way I was. And maybe she just wanted to spare other kids from the kind of sexual trauma she went through herself, and there are parts of her who honestly believe seeing a goblin’s butt would be enough to traumatize a kid. You don’t know her motives aren’t good. You didn’t even read the article!” I was suddenly conscious of huffing and puffing, so I busied myself with my noodles. My husband is a gentle and soft-spoken man, which is fortunate because he is also very burly and strong — but at this line of argument he almost raised his voice. “I’ve read enough articles about *Moms for Liberty,*” he said forcefully, “to know this woman doesn’t give a shit about protecting kids. Those people are perfectly happy when trans kids kill themselves. They *want* gay kids to stay closeted forever. They call you and me ‘groomers’ and ‘pedophiles.’ This woman is a cynical political actor with an openly fascist agenda.” Like a wise and skillful spouse, I replied anxiously, “Are you mad at me?” My husband set his fork down. “I am one hundred percent not mad at you,” he said. “I think you’re just giving these people *way* too much credit for good intentions.” “You *seem* pretty mad at me, though,” mumbled the Badger, with my mouth. “Sweetheart,” he said, picking up his fork again. :You are talking about something that matters a lot in our culture right now. People have strong opinions about this book-banning stuff. Including me.” He looked thoughtful for a second. “Might make a good topic for your newsletter, actually.” “And make *everybody* mad at me?” I scoffed. “For heaven’s sake.” ## Why part of me loves Mrs. Pippin **Mere seconds of research proved my husband entirely correct.** This Jessica Pippin character, bless her heart, turns out to be a cartoonishly provocative hard-right political bomb-thrower. Her earlier efforts to “protect children’s innocence” have included protesting an illustrated version of the diary of Anne Frank, then appearing on an infamous antisemite’s podcast to crow about it. (That made *international* news.) And Moms for Liberty, the Proud-Boys-adjacent SPLC-designated hate-group of which she is a leading member, is plainly a force of moustache-twirling wickedness in American social life. This latest campaign, to clothe the naked goblin’s butt and put Eve in a bikini, is nothing less than a cartoonish little pratfall further down the slippery slope to fascism. You do not, under any circumstances, “have to hand it to them.” I take all of this very personally, too — for heaven’s sake, I was *literally groomed by pedophiles* as a child, like lots and lots of other people. The books that might have taught me to protect myself are the very books they want to ban — and today, if Jessica Pippin met me, I imagine she wouldn’t hesitate to call *me* a ~~groomer~~ and a ~~pedophile~~ to my face. She and her movement are leaving children vulnerable to abuse — most of all the very little ones whose unconventional bodies and minds make them extra-abusable to start with. This enrages almost every fiber of my being. *Almost.* In this Year of Living Plurally — which turns out to be kind of uncomfortable sometimes, you guys! — I can’t very well dismiss the diversity of opinion about Moms for Liberty that exists inside myself. Every grown-up part of me, and the teenagers too, is outraged, disgusted, and horrified. So too is the young Badger, who remembers exactly what elementary school was like for a queer little boy in the eighties. (He is baring his sharp little teeth right now. “That lady,” he growls, “is *not* a responsible adult.” He’s right.) Digby, whose daring jiu-jitsu skills and helpful shamelessness have transformed sex from a secret shame to a source of joy in my life, is perhaps the wisest of us on this score. “I can see the hurt in people like that, my dudes,” he says sorrowfully, with a shake of his silver beard. “The young parts of them are so scared of kids getting hurt that they grown-up parts of them can’t see the kids they’re actually hurting. It’s a fucked-up bummer, man.” All that is true; the consensus is overwhelming. And yet a little part of the Mouse — a tiny part of a tiny part of me, a *partiño* if you will — believes Mrs. Pippin is doing precisely what she says she is: protecting little children from the awful sight of naked bodies. He whispers in my mind’s ear, so quietly I can barely hear it: “If Mrs. Pippin had been your mother, *she* would have protected you.” He is whispering, but I hear him. After years of practice listening to each other, every part of my inner family hears him. ## When oppression feels like safety > The repression of childhood pain influences not only the life of an individual but also the taboos of the whole society. — Alice Miller, [*The Drama of the Gifted Child*](https://www.google.com/books/edition/The%5FDrama%5Fof%5Fthe%5FGifted%5FChild/pV827ez1FlYC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22The+repression+of+childhood+pain+influences+not+only+the+life+of+an+individual+but+also+the+taboos+of+the+whole+society.%22&pg=PA3&printsec=frontcover&ref=chudgar.com) **Years ago, when I was still a lonely singleton, I would not have known where that whisper came from** — the Mouse, if you can believe it, only crept tentatively into our awareness earlier this year. And because that whisper of childish love for a protective mom so utterly defied the overwhelming consensus of my rational brain, I would have violently suppressed it as “childish” or “irrational” or “crypto-fascist, you sick fuck! What the hell is *wrong* with you?” I think it is precisely that internal maneuver — the scornful rejection of our deepest, longest-lasting childhood hopes and fears — that sets people up to harm children in the present. Perhaps a Mom for Liberty, deep in her heart of hearts, is doing her level best to protect the frightened little girl she used to be. # A practice for comforting a fearful young part of yourself **Perhaps a good way to inoculate ourselves against fascism in the present is to take *extra* care of the youngest parts of us, who still feel the deepest fears of the past.** I’ve gone on far too long this week, and I have to take the bus to acupuncture in, like, five minutes. (After my visit with Jason, I am going to try floating my new body in the sensory-deprivation tank. I’ll report back.) So by way of #PluralPractices this week, **I am just going to tell you what we did when a little part of the little Mouse confessed his love for Mrs. Pippin.** - The Badger picked the Mouse up gently — they are fast friends — and settled him into the soft breast pocket of his paisley dressing-gown. - Good old Digby sat down in a rocking chair by the fire, and the Badger clambered right up into his lap. - Once they were settled, the Mouse poked his head up out of the pocket and looked curiously around the room with his bright eyes. - Johnny, thoughtful lad, popped back from the kitchen with little snack for the kiddos (miniature Lance Toast-Chee crackers, a current favorite, and lukewarm tea). We did’t need to say it out loud, but we were proving an important point. The Mouse doesn’t need Mrs. Pippin to protect him after all. He’s got all of *me*. --- ### If you have thoughts about goblin-butts or Moms for Liberty or nudity or deep dark fears, I want to hear them. Talk to you next week! I’ll tell you about the float-tank thing. It contains *eight hundred pounds* of Epsom salts, they tell me. What! All our best to all of you, Ash --- # 🔗 Linkies - Judd Legum, a dogged independent journalist, was the one who broke the goblin-butt story in his newsletter *Popular Information* and then [in *Mother Jones*](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/02/moms-liberty-book-bans-florida-nudity-censorship-maurice-sendak/?ref=chudgar.com)*.* - David Gilbert’s 2023 reporting on Moms for Liberty in *Vice* is harrowing. Be warned, [this story](https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy3gnq/what-is-moms-for-liberty?ref=chudgar.com) begins with a gay child’s suicide attempt. - Good news, though: just this week, [CNN reports](https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/03/us/moms-for-liberty-scandal-opposition/index.html?ref=chudgar.com) that “Moms for Liberty’s burgeoning influence in Republican national politics may be faltering.” - Katie LaCelle, the colleague I mentioned, has a fascinating practice that uses IFS principles to help folks “befriend their bodies,” as she puts it. You can visit her [here](https://www.cressanallc.com/?ref=chudgar.com). ### Some new bodies to try this week URL: https://www.chudgar.com/some-new-bodies-to-try-this-week/ Last updated: 2024-06-19T17:23:56.000Z ## “Welcome fragrance” **Thursday morning, to my surprise and delight, I got a new body, a much better one, for just 168 American dollars.** An amazing bargain, even considering the mileage on it. This model is many thousands of years old, from what I’ve heard — I haven’t dug into the documentation yet — but even after all the millennia, it still has that intoxicating new-body smell. And I *can* smell it, too — a blissful return to form after weeks of nasal congestion. Three days in, this novel nose is performing as well as any I’ve had in years, thanks to my new body’s ingenious surface interface. About a quarter-inch down and out from each of my new nostrils, invisible to the untrained eye, is a tiny button that, when pressed in just the right way, dramatically recalibrates the olfactory machinery inside. I was lying face-up in my underwear on a warm table in a warm room in a little building in Northeast Minneapolis, spangled with tiny needles, when the technician showed me how the nose-buttons worked. After a few moments of warmth and tingling, the distinct perfumes of my deodorant, and the technician’s different deodorant, became delightfully apparent. “Jason,” I marveled. “I can smell again!” “That one is called ‘Welcome Fragrance,’” Jason said, nodding with serene expertise. He meant the button. “Welcome fragrance,” I murmured, happily welcoming fragrance. This new body even came with *poetry.* ## An accidental paradigm shift **I didn’t start Thursday intending to get a whole new body — I was just bringing my old clunker to a new shop for some badly needed troubleshooting.** For weeks I’d been feeling *almost* sick — stuffy nose, dry cough, mild aches, low energy, fuzzy brain — without ever progressing to symptoms dramatic enough to make my boss, who can be kind of an asshole sometimes, let me take a sick day. Wednesday, finally, my boss agreed to gibe me Thursday morning off — to “take care of the bronchitis, or whatever it is,” as he put it supportively, “that’s making you so mopey and forgetful.” #### A word about “my boss” I am self-employed. In this Year of Living Plurally, the committee of voices in my head who supervise my business factory have organized themselves into the composite CEO of Ash Chudgar, the parent company of Chudgar Consulting and Partsland, LLC. More on **that* experiment, and [the business legend who inspired it](https://bojackhorseman.fandom.com/wiki/Vincent%5FAdultman?ref=chudgar.com), in another newsletter. But how? I knew what would happen if I went to the doctor’s office or the urgent care. Probably a virus, they’d say, swipe my HSA card and send me home — or else refer me to some expensive specialist in a faraway suburban office park, who would do the same series of things in the same order. In the best case, modern medicine would guess my illness might be bacterial and give me antibiotics, which (if they guessed right) would truly might make me feel better fast, though at the cost of decimating my poor gut bacteria and giving me a week of the runs. All of that rigmarole would be expensive and time-consuming, and for what? My body would probably stay sick, and my boss would definitely stay mad. Then I remembered something a client had told me — acupuncture, they’d said, had changed their life. *Why not try that?* Many parts of me found the whole idea rather alarming — needles, woo-woo lore, showing a stranger our body, what if it hurts, etc. But this grinding semi-illness was so uncomfortable, and our work was suffering so markedly, that we were willing to try anything. *What the hell,* we decided collectively. After a half-hour of googling around, we booked an appointment with the gentlest-seeming acupuncturist in the neighborhood who had a Thursday morning opening. In my mind, going in, I was just going to see a different kind of healthcare provider — a very specialized practitioner, perhaps, but an ordinary medical body-mechanic no more exotic than a oral surgeon or an osteopath. Instead, the acupuncturist diagnosed and treated a body I did not know I had, a new-to-me body I now get to have for my very own. ## What it was like to change bodies **I pride myself on paying careful attention to what people tell me, particularly in medical matters.** (The Professor, the part of me who runs my intellectual side, enjoys fancy medical terminology.) But Jason’s patient explanations for what ailed me might as well have been Chinese, which not a few technical terms literally were. Nothing he said during the appointment applied to the bronchitis-having body I had hauled into the clinic — the same patient’s body that doctors and nurses had been diagnosing, repairing, and medicating on my behalf for 44 years. Over the course of 90 minutes, that old body dissolved and this new one took its place — transubstantiated at a level too deep to be visible, like water into blood at Mass. There was no talk of viruses or bacteria. No diseases were named; there was no scolding. Jason asked me many questions in words, to which I replied in words; numbers — weight, blood pressure, triglycerides — were conspicuously absent. And the questions he asked were so strange and unexpected I had to answer them honestly, because I simply did not know what a healthy and responsible person, a good patient, was *supposed* to say. Do I prefer liquids hot, lukewarm, or cold? At what times of day do I sweat? When I drink water, do I sip or guzzle? What is the general character of my dreams? So far as I can remember, this is how he introduced my new body to me, in the context of its current symptoms: - A warm and drying wind had invaded my system some weeks ago. - This invasion exacerbated the desiccating influences of certain lifestyle factors (smoking, drinking, and fasting most of the day), which caused chronic deficiencies of *yin* and blood. - These factors were evident on the surface of my new tongue, which is apparently a sort of information display. So are these wrists, where the texture of the veins (“slippery” on the left and “wiry” on the right) encodes further data. - The needles, meanwhile, were drawing drawing *qi* to specific surface buttons (Jason called them “points”) wired into the parts of my body that were suffering from the warm and windy invasion. He wiggled them to draw the *qi* to the buttons, which I could feel vividly and unmistakably, like tiny electric shocks. - The *qi,* in its turn, would urge *yin* and blood to the places in my new body where they were deficient. Herbs, which Jason carefully chose by paging through a printed pharmacopeia, would support the *yin* and blood by moisten my insides to drive out the drying wind. “Once we’ve knocked out this invasion,” Jason said briskly, “we’ll tackle the lifestyle stuff. And your back pain.” He sent me my way with two bottles of herbs in capsules, a post-it note of instructions about how to take them, and a follow-up appointment next week. I floated out of the little clinic in my brand-new body, tingling with hitherto unsuspected *qi.* ## Why I like this body better Ever since, I’ve been marveling at the sheer novelty of the body I have now. Unlike my old body, which was basically a dissociated potato I did my best to ignore, this new acupuncture body has a nervous system for *days.* Even now, as the vividness of the needles has dissipated, I can feel my nerves buzzing with pleasant electricity. My new body also has bones, a whole skeleton of cleverly interarticulated bones, much sturdier than the gelatinous blob I felt myself to be till Thursday. My new sinuses are perceptibly damp and happier, thanks not least to the dramatic effects of the herbs — which include, among other flora, both plum and chrysanthemum blossoms. For this body, *flowers* are medicine. My coughs are now productive, my energy is high. It doesn’t “have bronchitis,” like the passive red gel in a petri dish: no, it is skillfully parrying an invasion of drying wind with the subtle forces of *yin* and blood. Sometimes this new body does not even *want* a cigarette. Our new body is performing so well that I’ve got permission to bring it in to Jason’s shop for service *every week* for the foreseeable future — a startling new development in this Year Of Living Plurally. # Some bodies to try on this week **As I discovered this week, it can be delightfully liberating to try a new body on to see how it feels and what it does.** You can always go back to the body you have now if it doesn’t work out. - If you like your body and are very attuned to it already, you might enjoy challenging yourself by conceptualizing your embodiment in a helpfully disorienting new way. What could you feel or do if you had a different sort of body? - If you are uncomfortable with your body and feel safer when you’re dissociated from it, as I always have been, changing bodies can literally save your life. I think that’s true not only for trans people, but for everybody whose physical being is at odds with the truth of their soul. You can interpret “new body” as metaphorically or as literally as you want. You can call it therapeutic make-believe, or a thought experiment about embodiment. You can also choose to believe that, since your brain is a material body-part, dramatically altering your thinking makes the body doing the thinking something ontologically different. I’m inclined to take it literally, perhaps because my Catholic upbringing makes the idea of transubstantiation comfortable and appealing. You don’t have to, though. **Here are some ideas for bodies to start with — feel free to make up your own!** ## 1\. 🧸 Mascot Body, to be kinder to yourself In Spanish a pet is called *una mascota,* which derives from the same semantic lineage as our English word *mascot* — the fuzzy human-sized emblem who embodies the spirit of a community, like the Philly Phanatic or Goldie the Gopher. Mascots are adorable by nature, so Mascot Body can help you treat your body with greater affection and kindness. My internal family has done just that for a few months now, and it’s been very effective. Buddy, the mascot of our body, is a cheerful golden retriever, now grizzled in the muzzle but as puppyish as ever, who smokes Marlboro menthols and is hungry *all the time*. It’s been a very effective practice. Now, instead of apologizing to the coffee table if I stub my toe on it, I apologize to Buddy and *then* to the table. **If your body were a lovable and charismatic non-human creature, the kind of mascot little kids want to run up and hug and have a plushy of, what would it be?** ## 2\. 🏔️ Landform Body, to be more chill around bugs 🐜 I’ve become much more interested in insects and spiders in recent years, though some of the younger parts of me still find stinging insects quite scary. I have learned to make my inner little ones feel more comfortable around bugs by imagining an object that is as much bigger than I am than I am bigger than the bug — a large hill or small mountain, for a small spider. That, in turn, is the scale of the body we bring to our encounters with the spider, who now seems tiny and precious. Landform Body is so massy and serene that we have even allowed spiders to walk on our hands! **When you are being bothered by a bug, make your body as big as it is *to the bug* and see how that feels.** ## 3\. ⛔️ Wrong Body, to learn about power As a light-skinned person who looks cis and walks in an unremarkable way, I can pad around my neighborhood without attracting any particular bodily attention. That alone is a potent kind of power. The less I leave my neighborhood, the less my body is a problem, the more this kind of body can seem like the *right* of body, the normal and normative body, less a superpower than an entitlement. I only know better because, at various times and situations, I have had very much the Wrong Body — the body that exists as a problem for other people. I’ve been a flabby and effeminate little-boy body, an smelly and effeminate tween body, a white-looking body on otherwise all-Black buses and trains, an ethnically ambiguous body at an Indian family wedding. That is how I know the Wrong Body is *very uncomfortable,* and it requires enormous emotional and cognitive resources to pilot through the world. And my Wrong Body isn’t even all that wrong, given the places I take it! Other kinds of bodies have it far worse in this part of the world: trans bodies, bodies of color generally, Black and Native bodies particularly, visibly disabled bodies, fat bodies, bodies who have to sleep outdoors. **It’s important for everybody to be a Wrong Body sometimes, so we don’t start thinking that our own body is the only right kind.** To be clear, I don’t think you should go around *trying* make your body a problem for other people! Gosh no. But whenever you find yourself existing as the Wrong Body, *particularly* if that doesn’t happen often, it’s a good idea to remember what that feels like. ## 4\. 👻 Ghost Body, to less problematic From our human perspective, plants don’t seem to move at all, but on their own terms, they move quite rapidly. A time-lapse video of a wisteria vine we saw on TV once showed it whipping a tendril around like a lariat, seizing a fencepost and hauling itself up toward the sun. A movement you or I would execute in half a second takes a wisteria plant, like, half an hour — but the embodied volition is plainly the same. Ever since we saw the wisteria show, when I sometimes imagine my body from the point of view of a houseplant or outdoor plan that I encounter — as an imperceptibly brief fluctuation in temperature and pressure, far too fast to be noticed. Ghost Body, my name for this sort of experience, is particularly soothing when I am experiencing another kind of body as painful, ugly, or otherwise hard to tolerate. **When your body feels too awkward or uncomfortable to bear, try being Ghost Body, the body you are to plants: a sudden sense of moisture at the roots, a flicker of movement and chemicals in the air.** --- ### If you try out any of these bodies, or another new one of your own, I would love to know how it goes. Just hit reply and write me back! My new body loves getting email from friends. (So did my old body, TBH.) Talk to you next week! I will have seen Jason again by then, so who knows what body I’ll be writing to you with next. All our best to all of you, Ash ### A poem about hands URL: https://www.chudgar.com/something-specific/ Last updated: 2024-01-15T18:35:02.000Z # Something Specific *Written in an* [*Internal Community Writing Workshop*](https://www.chudgar.com/join-the-internal-community-writing-workshop) *in November 2023\. The soft prompt for the week was to* “*write about something specific.*” --- Dry, typically cracked in the creases, winter months are brutal. Feels like low-grit sandpaper, Skinny and long accompanied by bulging joints. Once proudly playing Hearing its routine crack, always a relief. Moving slowly with delicate touch upon its neighbors; If brave, tastes dirt, last meal remnants or unwashed soap — Found scratching, itching, creating, wiping away, twisting Lots of twisting. Almost always cold at its touch. A carrier to pieces that resemble history Maintains grasp when feeling, Relaxes open when at peace. Prays when feeling lost, claps when needing energy — Once yearned to be a mechanic, a gardener, anything that would show its work. When pressed together and holding each other, my mom is near, And perhaps her mom is near, it’s my belief. We all have the same ones. Generations of servers, And welcomers. ### That tinkling you hear is the sound of breaking streaks URL: https://www.chudgar.com/that-tinkling-you-hear-is-the-sound-of-breaking-streaks/ Last updated: 2025-12-06T20:42:27.000Z ### Hello again, and welcome to the frigid third week of so-called 2024! I told you I’d write less this week, and I really meant to, but instead I wrote even more. You can [skip to the plural practices to try (there are six!)](#plural-practices) if you’re in a hurry. --- # 🦡💔 The tiny melancholy of the broken chain **This past Monday, I opened my meditation app to discover a bleak gray 0 overlaid on my name.** I’d been so absorbed in writing to you the day before that I’d gone and broken a months-long meditation streak. Several of the voices in my head uttered simultaneous exclamations of despair at this awful news, ranging in style from the Professor’s elaborate profanity to the little Badger’s tremulous “Oh, bother!” “Whoops,” I chuckled lightly. “Oh well, no big deal.” “Well not to *you,* perhaps,” the Badger hotly replied. He collapsed to the floor in a despairing heap, lower lip a-tremble. “But to *some* of us — ! Oh, now we’ve lost everything, and we’ll have to start all over again, from the very beginning. As though we’d never meditated at all!” The Professor scooped the Badger up and cuddled him before he could start crying in earnest. “I know how you feel, little one,” he murmured, gently patting his back. He looked at me sadly. “It doesn’t *actually* matter, of course. And it’s not very meditative to be upset about it. But still, what a stupid waste.” I have been meditating more or less every day for eight years now; meditation is very much a part of daily life in my inner world, and nothing about that had changed. Nothing at all has been wasted or lost; nothing has even changed. But for Badger and the Professor — honestly, for the majority of who I am, my body included — the tiny zero in the meditation app felt like the loss of something wonderful, something we had worked hard to bring into being and sustain in life. All this sadness over an app! A make-believe ending, a tiny death — but it felt all the more mournful because it was too trivial to be mourned at all. “I’m sorry I made light of it, you guys,” I said. “I know these things are very important to some of us.” The Badger nodded solemnly against the Professor’s shoulder. “They are very important, *period,*” he sniffled. Sometimes it really does feel that way, like right now. Two weeks into the new Gregorian year, you can practically hear the melancholy tinkle of streaks breaking all over the world. # 🗓️🪥 The awesome power of the streak ![A mosaic of screenshots from apps, showing a variety of daily "streaks," ranging from 6 (daily meditation) to 1,483 days (Readwise reviews).](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/01/2024-01-14-Ash-s-streaks.png) A *streak*, as I am thinking about it, is an unbroken run of consistency. Some of them are quite out of our control, like winning streaks; they last only as long as they last, which is why they are so suspenseful to follow. But I am thinking here about the streak people start and sustain on purpose — often to coincide with the “fresh start moments” that I wrote to you about last week. - Streaks of commitment to commonly aspired-to practices or states of being often become highly transmissible as memes: Whole 30, 75hard, Dry January, NaNoWriMo, Movember. - If a particular public streak is popular enough for long enough, it can crystallize into the durable material of culture itself, like Ramadan or Lent. - Other streaks are purely individual but openly talked of, like a public commitment to quit smoking or booze, or an Insta-documented daily streak of workouts, lewks, extreme water-drinking, etc. - Then there are all our many private internal streaks people never talk about to another living soul: the white-knuckled *resisting-my-shameful-secret-addiction* streak, the *not-taking-my-own-life-today* streak, the *daily-rosary-so-God-will-forgive-me* streak. **Streaks are powerful because they let us change our behavior, often durably, in ways that parts of us really do not want to.** You only enter into a streak when you need to overcome some real internal controversy. When I started meditating in earnest some years ago, many parts of me were frankly terrified to sit in silence for more than a few seconds at a time. It was only the coercion of an app-monitored streak of days that made it bearable at the start. #### 🪥 How I learned to brush my teeth No part of me objects to daily toothbrushing, by contrast, so there is no need to visualize an unbroken chain of brushings. But toothbrushing is only uncontroversial among my “internal family” today because, if decades-old memory serves, my mother had me track every time I brushed my teeth for three straight weeks. Though she didn’t call them “streaks,” my mother knew what they were and made much use of them. She believed that 21 days of daily practice could make any practice a habit, which is true if you think it is, and she showed me how to track my progress toward toothbrushing — and many other forms of good behavior, like non-thumbsucking or sleeping alone all night — on the monthly At-a-Glance calendar in our kitchen. No part of small Ash ever wanted to cultivate such habits, of course. But the overwhelming consensus of voices in my little head wanted nothing more than to please my mother, so I bravely made my Xs on the calendar. I always earned some kind of reward when I succeeded, as I recall, but I can’t remember any of them. The real prize was always the streak itself: a material realization of 21 virtues in three neat rows, pure and perfect and unchanging. The messy diversity of my unpredictable childhood behavior, disciplined into order and beauty! Once Xs start joining arms across the boxes of the days, their orderly continuity starts to seem as beautiful as a perfect six-pointed snowflake or a bubble iridescent in the sun, self-evidently precious. **A streak turns an internally controversial practice into a frail and beautiful treasure, worth protecting at all costs. And when it breaks, the loss of it can feel, to certain parts of us, like the death of an innocent from sheer negligence.** Because of their immense emotional power, streaks of consistent behavior can be encouraging, empowering, even lifesaving. As my mother knew, a well-timed streak can turn a loathed chore into a virtually effortless habit that lasts your whole life long. But even the best-intentioned streaks can drown out important inner warnings, spiral into anguished obsession, and drive up the emotional cost of failure so high that you can’t afford to try. ### That’s why it is a good idea to choose your streaks very carefully, and to keep a compassionate eye on them to make sure they are making things better for all of who you are, on the whole, rather than worse. Here are no fewer than six (6) ideas about how you might do just that. --- # Plural practices for tracking your evolution ## 1\. 🌞 Try “one day at a time” Streaks are so unpredictable that you really shouldn’t bet your life on one. **When doing things differently *really* counts, try doing the new thing one day at a time.** That’s how I once stayed sober for more than *four thousand* days in a row; which, what! Yet it happened. I learned about this practice at my very first A.A. meeting, where I was told explicitly that the best I could hope for was “a daily reprieve” from the misery of alcoholism. Even that cold comfort was better than none at all, so I “kept coming back,” day after day, for more than a decade of days. The beautiful ceremony of sobriety medallions invariably comes with a warning: the only meaningful unit of sobriety is the solar day. An old-timer, rising creakily to her feet to receive a medallion for thirty-something years from their even older sponsor, will seldom fail to say that they *could* very well start drinking again tomorrow, and resolve to “keep coming back” one day at a time. So: if there’s a goal that’s *really* important to you, track *one day at a time*. Every morning, when you wake up, resolve to keep it at it *just for today.* ## 2\. 💬 Let the people speak Streaks are so powerful and so dangerous because they turn a diversity of opinions about what you might do into the appearance of tidy sameness, which can hide all manner of internal dissent. Deliberate attempts to sustain new behaviors *always* fail when they encounter sufficient opposition from within. One of the most viral meme-streaks circulating at present is a cartoonishly on-the-nose provocation to inner discord, which its inventor describes as a “Tactical Guide to Winning the War with Yourself.” **Whether you are midway through a streak or contemplating starting one, it’s never a bad idea to take stock of *all* the ways you feel about it.** This simple practice can strengthen your commitment to a widely shared internal goal, uncover the concerns that underlie “resistance,” or suggest a change of course. No matter how the conversation goes, the choice you make at the end of it will be easier to sustain over time because it has democratic legitimacy. Here are two ways to go about it: ### 2A. 🗳️ Deliberative democracy If you have good relationships with various parts of yourself, invite them to join you for a meeting to discuss the streak. **Everyone should have the chance to weigh in without interruption, in whatever form they find most expressive. Once everyone has had a say, call a vote.** You can make your own rules for your inner democracy — you might require total consensus, or a two-thirds majority, or whatever other form of agreement feels fair and legitimate to everybody inside. This is how my inner community decided, after *months* of deliberation, that it was time for our eleven-year streak of sobriety to come to a gentle end. ### 2B. 📞 Opinion polling Even if you don’t experience various parts of your personality in an individualized sort of way, you can still gauge the level of inner support for a planned or current streak: **Challenge yourself to list *as many sincere opinions about it as possible,* no matter how silly they might seem to you.** This practice offsets the persuasive power your most reasonable-sounding or culturally prestigious motivations by asking for sincerity rather than practicality. Lowering the bar for participation in debate can lead to remarkable results. A recent poll about my three-days-a-week workout streak, for example, revealed a startling groundswell of popular opposition to the practice. I did not do my exercises today, and I’m not sorry either. The people have spoken. ## 3\. 💧🐇 Try a different year Gregorian years are convenient and intuitive ways to build habits or track progress because other people agree about what 2024 means. It’s socially meaningful stick to something consistently for a whole year, even if you never tell anybody about it. If you did, they’d be impressed. But you can track your evolution at the annual scale in all sorts of different humanly meaningful ways. The internet tells me today is not only January 14, 2024, but also - the fourth of Shevat in the Jewish year 5784, and - December 5, 2023, in the Chinese year of the water rabbit. **If there is a non-Gregorian way of measuring years that you find personally meaningful, you can try using that to understand your progress in a way that’s helpfully offset from ordinary workaday time.** If you adopt a calendar you haven’t inherited in some way, you might want to consult folks who did inherit it about how to work with it respectfully. ## 4\. 🌜Measure time with your senses Nobody *feels* the Gregorian calendar, but most people can look up at the moon as it changes night by night, and many of us can also perceive their own monthly cycles directly. Measuring time according to these categories can be a helpful alternative. ### 4A. 🌚 **Track things by the moon** My friend Sarah has a practice of starting new projects when the moon is full, and planning time for quiet and reflection for the new moon. Those dates that slide dramatically hither and thither across Gregorian months, which has the fascinating effect of decoupling her schedule from other people’s cycles of monthly and yearly urgency. **If the moon makes sense to you, give lunar scheduling a try.** ### 4B. 🩸 **Measure time by your own cycle.** When I told my colleagues at the [Sweet Water Alliance](https://www.oshuncenter.com/alliance?ref=chudgar.com) about Sarah’s lunar-scheduling thing, they schooled me about what menstrual time — a vivid lived reality for half of *all human beings,* about which I, a 44-year-old queer man with a graduate degree and therapeutic training, knew *literally nothing.* Many Alliance folks are birth workers, and most of them have wombs or used to, so they are exceptionally skilled at sensing time and measuring progress one human menstrual cycle at a time. **If you have a more-or-less monthly cycle of your own, you can use it as the unit of a streak, a scheduling template, or a social calendar.** Doing this, they tell me, can help you come to a more compassionate awareness of the diversity of your own experience — and, sometimes, tap into undiscovered inner sources of inner wisdom and power. ## 5\. ⛰️ Zoom out to larger timescales > **I like to press the proverbial Google Earth button from time to time to instantly change my perspective when shit done got too heavy.** — Mama Ru Your life looks quite different when you zoom out, often in interesting ways — the way the town where you live looks eerily different when you look down on it from an airplane. **For new perspectives on your own evolution, try tracking it on larger timescales.** For example, try: - **By decade.** Things look different when you look back on your life over decades rather than single years. [This graph of where I’ve lived over time](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vT-p4tPw8G2xWBAkiN0EToX8zOWm8q76Gdd4cjwn%5Ft6Ufhs1KmNwcTJJHrUI2VhE%5Fv20Q6JbxGBvHhE/pubhtml?gid=672940048&single=true&ref=chudgar.com) has helped me come to more inner comfort with the idea that my husband and I — who are getting queerer and older by the day — might decide to leave the United States at some point. - **In geologic time.** When you *really* need to recalibrate your sense of who you are and what matters, try conceptualizing your behavior or progress on the timescale of the planet. Interactive visualizations [like this one](https://media.hhmi.org/biointeractive/earthviewer%5Fweb/earthviewer.html?ref=chudgar.com) can help. ### 5\. 🦠 Zoom in to smaller timescales Okay, just one last practice for this week: sometimes, the best scale to measure your evolution is moment by moment. **When the pressure to change starts feeling overwhelming, try zooming in to the smallest unit of time you can by tuning in to your moment-by-moment experience.** This doesn’t come naturally to me at all, and I seem able to do it best when I am very relaxed *or* very anxious. This simple ten-minute meditation by Bhanu Joy Harrison has helped me achieve wonderful “streaks” of deliberate interoception that last for seconds or even minutes at a time: [![Screenshot from Insight Timer over an aerial view of a forest changing color in fall.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/01/Bhanu-Joy-Harrison--Tracking-Sensations.png)](https://insig.ht/y41zPcmBmGb?ref=chudgar.com) ### That’s all for me today, friends! If you’ve been tickled, vexed, inspired or amused by this newsletter in any way, just hit reply and let me know. Also, if you have any ideas about how to write shorter newsletters, please send them my way. My system will be grateful. Your plural pal, Ash ### Hello Lavender reader! URL: https://www.chudgar.com/lavender/ Last updated: 2024-01-14T23:50:41.000Z ![A photo of a bald white man with a beard holding up a copy of Lavender magazine.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/01/IMG_1194.jpg) Look, I’m in a magazine! ## When LGBTQ+ folks like us were growing up, most of us learned to hide, deny, or even hate important parts of who we are. Learning to love *every* aspect of your complicated, amazing queer self — even the parts who cause you trouble — will transform your life for the better. That transformation happened for me, and it can happen for you too. As an Internal Family Systems practitioner, I support other queer folks with kind hearts and complicated brains as they explore the complexity of their inner worlds. In our one-on-one coaching sessions, in person at my office in Northeast Minneapolis or online anywhere, I’ll help you explore your own mind and memories to find healing and liberation for *all* of who you are. Don’t take my word for it, though — I offer an hour-long, totally confidential, zero-pressure first coaching session for every new client, so you can find out for yourself what it’s like to work together. **Here are a few reasons to book your free first session today:** - ✊ This isn’t endless talk therapy, but practical coaching for healing and liberation - 🌈 I’m proudly queer, biracial, and neurodivergent - ❤️‍🩹 Solidarity with fellow survivors of trauma and abuse is dear to my heart - 💵 [Affordable rates on a sliding scale](https://www.chudgar.com/options-for-coaching), and financial help is available - 🫵 I believe that *you personally* deserve to love *all* of who you are # Book your free first session right here, and thanks for visiting! ### New year, same you! 🎉 Some plural anti-resolutions for a mellower start to so-called 2024 URL: https://www.chudgar.com/new-year-same-you-some-plural-anti-resolutions-for-a-mellower-start-to-so-called-2024/ Last updated: 2024-01-13T16:50:53.000Z ### Welcome to the very first installment in our Year of Living Plurally, friends! Because I am nervous, this first newsletter is *much* too long, because anxiety makes me chatty. I promise greater brevity next week. Anyway, see what you think, and write back if you are so inclined. If you are short on time, [here ares the plural practices to try](#plural-practices), and [here is the part where we explain about the snow picture](#rabbits-fence). — Ash --- # “The perfect time to start fresh” 👀 **On Tuesday, the first official workday of the shiny new year, I spent the whole morning looking for apps.** Just a glimpse of a headline about “getting organized in 2024” — my feed has teemed with resolution-themed articles this week — reminded Johnny, the part of me who handles business operations, that our administrative infrastructure is *tragically* sub-optimal. “It’s been a problem been for years, Ash,” he observed. (Johnny is very businesslike for a boy of just sixteen.) “It’s the the perfect time to start fresh with better systems. We’ve been wanting to quit Google stuff for ages, so why not now? Data sovereignty everywhere, open-source everything, no more proprietary formats. And also, while we’re at it” — he consulted his notebook — “I need to figure out automatic time-tracking this year too, because everybody *always* forgets about it, and then I can’t tell where our time goes.” He’s right, we do forget. And with nary a murmur of objection from anyone else in my head, Johnny plunged us headlong into an urgent quest for the perfect combination of productivity software — a quest he has undertaken, with equal urgency, *at least* quarterly for the past decade (and sometimes at the beginning of the month, too). He didn’t succeed on Tuesday, either, poor kid. This time he gave up by noon. # The unpleasantly powerful “fresh start effect” **I don’t blame Johnny for his new-year urgency. Other parts of me felt it too, in their own ways, and I bet parts of you can relate.** As it turns out, lots of people feel intense pressure to be a new person in the new year. By a trick of the mind called the “fresh start effect,” people these days seem conditioned to respond to landmarks on the calendar by resolving to *be better*. In a [now famous paper](https://magazine.wharton.upenn.edu/digital/katherine-milkmans-fresh-start-study-becomes-perennial-media-favorite/?ref=chudgar.com) from 2014, Katherine Milkman and colleagues found dramatic, predictable spikes in evidence of what they considered “aspirational behavior,” like googling the word *diet*. (One might [question the wisdom of that particular aspiration](https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/back-page-diet-culture?ref=chudgar.com), though the authors of this paper do not.) Their analysis suggested that “naturally occurring time markers” — new weeks or months or years, birthdays and anniversaries (which aren’t all that “naturally occurring,” actually) — make people feel temporarily “disconnected from their past imperfections” and therefore capable, however briefly, of transcending them. “We postulate,” the paper concludes cheerfully, that “fresh start moments encourage people to pursue their aspirations.” ([Here's the PDF if you would like it.](https://faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Dai%5FFresh%5FStart%5F2014%5FMgmt%5FSci.pdf?ref=chudgar.com)) Yes, yes they certainly do — which makes calendar-flipping moments into narrow windows of urgent make-or-break opportunity for the members of our communities, at various scales, who are dedicated to making us *better* — personal trainers, community organizers, [manfluencers](https://nextluxury.com/mens-lifestyle-advice/new-years-resolution-ideas-for-men/?ref=chudgar.com), public-health agencies, [listicleurs](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%28best+OR+worst%29+resolutions+for+2024&ia=web&ref=chudgar.com), nonprofits, declutterers. (*Listicleur* is a word I made up for a creator of listicles.) I myself am no exception. A [wee ad](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vSna9340wgT0SguCcQQdTUTi6NQ71PFpiDP%5Fv1rkZ92HePGkpB3PJ9LSYLneS%5FO4CPt2KnE3A3hNkcd/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000&slide=id.g2a9a11733ee%5F0%5F50&ref=chudgar.com) for my coaching practice, just 2⅓ inches square, will appear any day now in the annual “Health and Fitness” issue of [*Lavender*](https://lavendermagazine.com/?ref=chudgar.com). (Grab your free copy at your supermarket or co-op, Minnesotans! Look by the carts and baskets.) For obvious reasons, the “fresh start effect” is a catnip, or kryptonite, for the parts of us who strongly believe we can and must improve. # ❄️ The misery of managers in January **It was Johnny, naturally, who came up with the idea to advertise around the turn of the year.** He is the part of me who most closely resembles a reader of *Management Science,* the journal in which the famous “fresh start” paper appeared. (Sometimes other parts of me call him “[Alex P. Keaton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex%5FP.%5FKeaton?ref=chudgar.com)” as a joke, but he honestly doesn’t mind. He admires Alex’s clarity of purpose.) The Internal Family Systems model calls such parts of our personalities “managers,” a low-key shady term I have always bristled at. Nobody likes being “managed”; nobody dreams of being “in management” when they grow up. But the humorless businessine mealiness of *manager* can feel uncomfortably apt during this first week of the year, when the “fresh-start effect” makes our most cherished self-improvement projects seem briefly achievable. Every new year, every birthday, managers like Johnny glimpse the possibility of perfection. Capital, who feeds on human striving, is happy to [egg them on](https://www.peakperformers.org/new-year-resolutions-workplace-better-2024/?ref=chudgar.com). At times like this, with the best intentions in the world, our managers can seize the reins of our lives in ways that make them, and us, feeling much worse in February than we did in December. “It’s as though I’ve got this *one chance,*” Johnny told me, later in the week. “I keep track of everything, Ash! I see what went wrong last year, and I *know* we can do better this year. But the rest of you” — he gestured broadly around my inner world with a look of — “won’t let me do what needs to be done!” I patted him gently on the back. “I know, kiddo,” I said. “The good news is, you don’t have to go it alone.” Johnny brightened, then blushed. “That’s right,” he murmured. “I keep forgetting.” ### From our system to yours, here are some plural ideas to help your inner managers ride out resolution season with a little more ease and comfort. # Plural practices to try for a less mellower start to so-called 2024 ## 🌺 1\. Let a million resolutions bloom At every scale, managers’ improvement projects fail when labor won’t cooperate. Most organizations approach this problem by trying to make workers cooperate in various coercive ways, which work well enough [until, at length, they don’t](https://theweek.com/business/why-2023-has-been-the-year-of-strikes-and-labor-movements?ref=chudgar.com). To avoid internal labor unrest as 2024 begins, you can **invite every member of your inner community to express their hopes for the year** — not just the parts of you whose ambitions square with the ambient culture, but *every* part of who you are. This pleasant exercise will help the managerial parts of your personality step back from their own urgent priorities and admire the opulent profusion of visions for the future that coexist within you! Flattening the hierarchy of your dreams like this — just making a list — can reveal joyful new opportunities for solidarity. 1. **First, ask your responsible managers to suggest new year’s resolutions.** They will be all too happy to do so, and they will have plenty of data to bolster their case. Johnny, for example, wants 2024 to be the year I quit smoking, pay quarterly estimated taxes, consolidate high-interest debt, double my coaching income, eat more fiber, etc. (And the productivity-software and time-tracking things, too.) 2. **Then, invite all the *other* inhabitants of your inner world to add new year’s resolutions of their own.** Your managers will roll their eyes at such folly, of course, but the exercise is silly enough that they’ll let you get away with it. I, for example, have other parts who want me to resolve to: - hide in a tiny hole underground all year - cultivate intentional queer community - read pleasant fiction - (redacted) my husband’s (redacted) until we (redacted) - drink more water - wear sparkly jewelry and colorful makeup - take a silent retreat in the wilderness - send out a weekly newsletter - strike fear in the hearts of evildoers - take piano lessons 1. **Finally, look for consensus.** Learning about the aspirations of *every* member of your inner community, not just those whose aspirations appear most frequently in early-January listicles, often demonstrates the futility of managerial aspirations. (If a managerial part of you wants to go to the gym every day while your body and inner children desperately need to sleep as much as possible, you will simply not go to the gym for long.) More importantly, seeing the whole vast diversity of your hopes and dreams can reveal hitherto unsuspected opportunities for joyful shared endeavor. That is how the various parts of my personality discovered that Johnny’s newsletter idea actually appealed to *all* the members of my inner family. We have also decided to invest small amounts of spending money in drug-store makeup and thrift-store fripperies. ## 2\. F\*ck the fence: creating your own calendar 🐇 The [Gregorian year](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian%5Fcalendar?ref=chudgar.com) is a made-up thing. So-called 2024 — a social convention that denotes, despite [noble efforts to obfuscate its weirdness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common%5FEra?ref=chudgar.com), 2,024 solar cycles since the putative birth of the Christian savior in a small now war-torn town — is nothing but a vaporous social convention with a [comically kludgy history](https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/humanitys-calendar-failed/?ref=chudgar.com), untethered to any material reality beyond that of human convenience in an accidentally christocentric world. **To a rabbit, a bacterium, your body or mine, there is no meaningful difference between December 31 and January 1, or between your birthday and the day before.** In every literal sense, the cells and atoms and vast microbial communities of your body do not care about years or months or weeks or anniversaries at all. The managerial parts of who you are, practical and literal as they tend to be, are likely to take such considerations seriously. The sheer arbitrariness of calendar years can help them detach from the urgency of the moment to think of time in different and more healing and liberating ways. For example: ### 🐾 2A. Follow your pawprints back **This January, try making retroactive resolutions to honor your ongoing development.** Here’s a grand example: I wrote a novel in 2022\. I did not set out to do that, but it kind of happened. At the end of that year, Johnny observed ruefully, “We should have resolved to write a novel this year!” Then somebody else had a delightful thought: *What if we pretend that we had?* And all of a sudden, without any particular resolution at all, 2022 turned out to have been became a year of triumphant achievement. Less impressive retrospective resolutions can be just as interesting — even resolutions our managers would not really have made. For example, I realized this past October that I have drunk alcohol or smoked weed *every day* since I left A.A. in 2019\. Literally every day. This is not the kind of resolution a person’s managerial parts would make on purpose, but it’s helpful information all the same. ### 🤔 2B. Define your own fresh starts Human conventions are just one way to divide up time. Your system has its own “naturally arising time markers,” unique to your experience — and they can help you understand your own growth in ways that make indigenous sense within you. Rather than setting goals for the first of the year, for example, you could reflect on your progress at certain moments that mean something *inside of you* (whether or not such moments occur at predictable calendar times). You might wonder, for example: **How have I changed since the last time …** - I noticed wood smoke in the air - the first crocus, jogger, housefly, etc. showed up in the springtime - I thought of somebody or other - this song showed up in a playlist - the lilacs bloomed ## 3\. “Discerning impermanent nature” Perhaps the most powerful source of consolation for the parts of ourselves who feel pressure to *be better* is the fundamental fact of constant change. In one way, you are exactly the same you from one year to another. New year, same you. But in another and just as meaningful way, the very idea of “you” is as much a fairy tale as the months of the calendar. The reality of constant change, as unsettling as it may seem, often helps the anxious managerial parts of yourself mellow out at “fresh start” times like this. When the weight of a new year’s expectations gets too heavy for them to bear, you can remind your managers that the “new you” has already arrived — and arrives again and again, every moment, as long as life endures. **In this lovely guided meditation, my favorite teacher** [**Michael Lobsang Tenpa**](https://lobsangtenpa.com/?ref=chudgar.com) **tenderly coaches our skeptical manager parts to be “little scientists,” compassionately observing the ever-changing field of our bodily experiences.** It has helped us a lot when we feel overwhelmed by the obligation to be a “new me.” It’s less than 14 minutes long, with a little bell to begin and end: [![Screenshot of Michael Lobsang Tenpa’s meditation “Mindfulness of the Body: Discerning Impermanent Nature”](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/01/Discerning-Impermanent-Nature-meditation-screen.png)](https://insighttimer.com/brotherlobsang/guided-meditations/mindfulness-of-the-body-discerning-impermanent-nature?ref=chudgar.com) --- ### That’s all for today, my friends. I have gone on far too long — 2,000 words, yikes — and I *promise* to be briefer next week. From my internal family to yours, best wishes for a mellow start to so-called 2024\. Your plural pal, Ash ### From Shame to Liberation URL: https://www.chudgar.com/from-shame-to-liberation/ Last updated: 2024-02-12T14:32:33.000Z ### No matter how good your intentions, deep feelings of shame can prevent you from living your values and expressing your full potential. In this group for healing in community, you’ll explore your feelings of shame in a warm and supportive group of other folks who want to get free together. ## Where and when? - **🖥️ Virtually, over Zoom** - **🪩 Friday evenings, 5:30 – 7:00 PM Central** - **🌷 April 5 – June 28, 2024** ## How much? Choose your own contribution using this scale: - If you can pay for what you need and some luxuries besides, contribute **$70 per session ($840 in all)** - If you can usually pay for what you need, contribute **$50 per session ($600 in all)** - If you sometimes have trouble paying for what you need, contribute **$30 per session ($360 in all)** You’ll pay before the group begins, and we can arrange a payment plan if you need to. ## Who’s this group for? **If you feel deep down that you’re a bad person, this might be a good group for you.** Our community will likely include people … - whose families shamed them for being themselves - who feel shame from internalized marginalization - who feel shame from experiences of privilege - whose shame keeps them isolated - who are struggling with perfectionism Shame sometimes operates by asserting oppressive ideas about different identities. Our group will be on alert for shaming cultural messages that arise among us, so we can address them together. ## How we’ll heal and get free together **By working with our internal shame in community, we aim to help each other:** - Understand and heal the parts of ourselves that are keeping us stuck in shame - Act more often in alignment with our values, without getting paralyzed *or* pushed into unsustainable action - Build resilience to the discomfort that comes from learning about the systems that cause harm and our role in them - Decrease our dependence on external guidance and affirmation - Increase our ability to connect and be vulnerable with others By healing from shame individually, we’ll help each other get free in community. And the more *we* heal from shame, the better we can counter the shaming messages of oppression we encounter in the world outside us. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/02/Screenshot-2024-02-02-at-3.52.34-PM.png) ## Meet facilitators Augustin and Ash Getting to know ourselves through the Internal Family Systems model let us both understand our feelings of shame, help the wounded parts of us heal, and live and work in ways that truly align with our values. ****Augustin**, a therapist, identifies as white, queer, trans, and disabled. ****Ash**, a coach, identifies as a light-skinned biracial person, queer, and cis. We both stand in solidarity with our clients as they navigate their own journeys from shame to liberation. That’s just what this workshop is for. [Click here to get in touch](#intake) ## What will group meetings be like? **We’ll be a small group — no more than 11 people in all, including the facilitators, and each meeting will last 90 minutes.** Here’s how each session will go: 1. **Grounding meditation.** To start, Ash and Augustin will lead the group in a simple exercise to get us all grounded. 2. **A round of check-ins.** Everybody will check in briefly, in response to a question we’ll pose. 3. **Exploration practice.** Augustin and Ash will introduce a simple practice for exploring our own inner worlds, and then invite everybody to do it for themselves (in groups, pairs, or individually). 4. **Group Discussion.** After we all practice, we’ll regroup in a circle to share what we’ve learned from it. 5. **Homework.** Ash and Augustin will introduce a “homework” practice to try during the coming week and answer any questions that come up. 6. **Closing.** We’ll bid each other farewell until next time. # Interested? Let’s talk! Because we’ll be talking about heavy stuff in a small group, we’re going to talk to folks beforehand so we can assemble a community that sets all of us up for healing and liberation. **Just fill out [this little form](https://forms.gle/ETYzXEUCSApg33rh7?ref=chudgar.com), and Ash or Augustin will be in touch to schedule a 15-minute chat.** ### Join me in a Year of Living Plurally URL: https://www.chudgar.com/invitation-to-a-year-of-living-plurally/ Last updated: 2024-01-02T16:05:08.000Z ## Cheers to you and yours as the new year begins! 🥂 ### Ash Chudgar here (if it’s been a while, you might know me as Neil). I’m writing on this New Year’s Eve to invite you to participate in a little experiment I think you will enjoy. I am calling it a **“Year of Living Plurally”**: a year-long practice of curiosity about the many forms of diversity, multiplicity, and community we encounter in our daily lives. - 💥 **As 2023 ends, it’s painfully clear that the radical individualism of late modern life is a disaster for pretty much everybody.** Alternative ways of life can be difficult to imagine, let alone work toward. - 🤔 **That’s why I am obsessed with *plurality*.** In recent years, experiences I’ve had — learning about justice movements, helping with organizing campaigns, becoming an [Internal Family Systems practitioner](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching), discovering the vastness of neurodiversity, and more — have led me to think that “living plurally” might be a healing and liberating way of life. - 💡**My working hypothesis for 2024:** By deliberately paying attention to plurality whenever I can all year long, and sharing what I encounter with you, we might be able to imagine new forms of healing and liberation for ourselves and our communities. ## Let’s be plural together **If that sounds interesting, I invite you to** [**join me**](https://www.chudgar.com/#/portal) **in your own Year of Living plurally.** Every week or so this year, I will send you a newsletter to share some observations about the multiplicity I encounter in myself, my day-to-day life, and our cultural environment. - 🎁 **I will give you stuff to try.** Each newsletter will include a little invitation for you — a practice to try out, a question to ponder, an article to read, a writing prompt, something to try if you want to. - 🗣️ **Write back whenever the spirit moves you.** If my hunch about this topic is right, folks will sometimes be moved to write back — and if you do, I’ll incorporate what you write to me in a future newsletter (with your permission, of course). Argue! Agree! Ask for advice or offer it! Tell me what you want me to write about next! The more you share about your own Year of Living Plurally, the more plural our shared experience will be, and the more we’ll learn together. ## Content ~~warning~~ appetizer The kinds of thinking I am going to do this Year of Living Plurally may or may not be what you want landing in your inbox. To help you decide if you want to [subscribe](https://www.chudgar.com/#/portal), here is a little sampling of the **topics I am planning to write about:** - [**Partswork!**](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/partswork/) Practical tips and theoretical reflections about caring for the diverse community in your own head, drawn from my own inner exploration and my work as an IFS practitioner. (Members of my own internal family will undoubtedly contribute) - **Fandoms** and other joy-centered communities, and why I am so sad that Twitter is ruined - **Piles of money**: How do they grow? What do they want? Some helpfully weird ways of thinking plurally about capital - **Timely LGBTQ+ questions,** like: Why does the existence of sexual and gender diversity make right-wing people so violently unhappy these days? Why is there so much white supremacy in gay porn? How can watching *Drag Race* change your life? - **“Fellowships of common suffering.”** I spent many years in Alcoholics Anonymous, which has made me think a lot about how people heal (and get hurt) in communities - **Being a good community.** To be human is to be a community: a vast environment of teeming microbes, a quarrelsome mental committee, a collection of genetic influences. What might it mean to care for the communities inside us? ## If all this sounds interesting, [click here to subscribe](https://www.chudgar.com/#/portal). You can unsubscribe any time, and I promise not to be cross if you do. That’s enough from Ash on New Year’s Eve! My husband made a fire in the fireplace and we’ve got champagne in the fridge. Wherever this evening finds you, I wish you and everyone you love a year of healing and liberation, inside and out. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/12/2023-09-23-Ash-portrait-no-background-1.png) ## All my best, Ash ## Subscribe to a Year of Living Plurally A year-long practice of curiosity about the many forms of diversity, multiplicity, and community we encounter in our daily lives. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. ### Happy 2024! ✨🪩✨ Welcome to a Year of Living Plurally URL: https://www.chudgar.com/ringing-in-a-year-of-living-plurally/ Last updated: 2023-12-31T23:27:34.000Z ## Cheers to you and yours as the new year begins! 🥂 Ash Chudgar here. At some point in past few years, you subscribed to my email newsletter — a newsletter that has never existed until this very day! I’m writing, finally, to welcome you to a little experiment I think you will enjoy. I am calling it a **“Year of Living Plurally”**: a year-long practice of curiosity about the many forms of diversity, multiplicity, and community we encounter in our daily lives. Here’s the idea: - 💥 **As 2023 ends, it’s painfully clear that the radical individualism of late modern life is a disaster for pretty much everybody.** Alternative ways of life can be difficult to imagine, let alone work toward. - 🤔 **That’s why I am obsessed with *plurality*.** In recent years, experiences I’ve had — learning about justice movements, helping with organizing campaigns, becoming an [Internal Family Systems practitioner](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching), discovering the vastness of neurodiversity, and more — have led me to think that “living plurally” might be a healing and liberating way of life. - 💡**My working hypothesis for 2024:** By deliberately paying attention to plurality whenever I can all year long, and sharing what I encounter with you, we might be able to imagine new forms of healing and liberation for ourselves and our communities. ## Let’s be plural together **As a newsletter subscriber, you**’**re part of the experiment!** Every week or so this year, I will send you a newsletter to share some observations about the multiplicity I encounter in myself, my day-to-day life, and our cultural environment. - 🎁 **I will give you stuff to try.** Each newsletter will include a little invitation for you — a practice to try out, a question to ponder, an article to read, a writing prompt, something to try if you want to. - 🗣️ **Write back whenever the spirit moves you.** If my hunch about this topic is right, folks will sometimes be moved to write back — and if you do, I’ll incorporate what you write to me in a future newsletter (with your permission, of course). Argue! Agree! Ask for advice or offer it! Tell me what you want me to write about next! The more you share about your own Year of Living Plurally, the more plural our shared experience will be, and the more we’ll learn together. ## Content ~~warning~~ appetizer The kinds of thinking I am going to do this Year of Living Plurally may or may not be what you want landing in your inbox. By way of warning or enticement, here is a little sampling of the **topics I am planning to write about:** - [**Partswork!**](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/partswork/) Practical tips and theoretical reflections about caring for the diverse community in your own head, drawn from my own inner exploration and my work as an IFS practitioner. (Members of my own internal family will undoubtedly contribute) - **Fandoms** and other joy-centered communities, and why I am so sad that Twitter is ruined - **Piles of money**: How do they grow? What do they want? Some helpfully weird ways of thinking plurally about capital - **Timely LGBTQ+ questions,** like: Why does the existence of sexual and gender diversity make right-wing people so violently unhappy these days? Why is there so much white supremacy in gay porn? How can watching *Drag Race* change your life? - **“Fellowships of common suffering.”** I spent many years in Alcoholics Anonymous, which has made me think a lot about how people heal (and get hurt) in communities - **Being a good community.** To be human is to be a community: a vast environment of teeming microbes, a quarrelsome mental committee, a collection of genetic influences. What might it mean to care for the communities inside us? ## If all this sounds interesting, stay tuned — so much more to come! You can unsubscribe any time, and I promise not to be cross if you do. 😘 That’s enough from Ash on New Year’s Eve! My husband made a fire in the fireplace and we’ve got champagne in the fridge. Wherever this evening finds you, I wish you and everyone you love a year of healing and liberation, inside and out. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/12/2023-09-23-Ash-portrait-no-background.png) ## Cheers! Ash ### Using Internal Family Systems in nonprofit work — or, DEI from the inside out URL: https://www.chudgar.com/ifs-for-nonprofits/ Last updated: 2024-01-03T16:05:27.000Z ### This week I got to talk with a bunch of extremely excellent people about two of the things I love most: [nonprofit communications](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/nonprofits/) and the Internal Family Systems model. I’d been anticipating this conversation for months — but it was only a couple weeks ago that I learned my friends at the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits were promoting [my IFS workshop](https://www.minnesotanonprofits.org/events/event-detail/2023/11/14/default-calendar/a-model-for-healing-internal-family-systems-and-your-nonprofit?ref=chudgar.com) as part of their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion series. At first I was perplexed, because I don’t think of myself myself as somebody with any expertise in those areas. For me, the lived experience of being *personally* “diverse” — neurodivergent, biracial, queer, and so forth — has led me away from the DEI framework rather than closer to it. The more I considered the idea, though, the more I realized the healing insights the IFS model has to offer — the internal communication skills I use with my clients and within myself — can help nonprofit folks think about diversity, equity, and inclusion in liberating new ways. ## “So thought-provoking” Here’s what some folks had to say afterward: > Ash was awesome, and I could listen to him talk all day. I loved his genuine enthusiasm; curiosity and excitement about how we interacted with the content; and warm, welcoming personality! > Thank you to the presenter for their vulnerability in this session as well — it was very engaging and made the experience feel intimate and meaningful. > The session was so thought-provoking — I appreciate having some space to think about “problems in a system” in a very different way. And defining the practice of inclusion in a different way. I am grateful for that. Here are the slides — see what you think! ### How one school district meets harm with repair URL: https://www.chudgar.com/osseo-harm-repair/ Last updated: 2024-02-12T20:38:12.000Z ## Getting ahead of harm At [Osseo Area Schools](https://www.district279.org/?ref=chudgar.com), a sprawling district serving more than 20,000 students across a widely diverse swath of suburban Minneapolis, incidents of hateful harassment have been increasing — just as they have been [nationwide](https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2021-12-06/hate-on-the-rise-in-u-s-schools-gao?ref=chudgar.com). With strong leadership from their school board and [emphatically inclusive values](https://www.district279.org/info-center/strategic-plan?ref=chudgar.com), OAS Assistant Superintendent Bryan E. Bass and his team could ask a courageous question: **“How far ahead of harm can we get?”** With Dr. Bass’s leadership, OAS leaders took action to answer that question. [Paula Forbes](https://www.paulaforbes.com/?ref=chudgar.com)’s annual conference on [creating racial harm protocols](https://www.paulaforbes.com/racial-harm-workshop?ref=chudgar.com) showed Bryan and his team how to assemble a working group to create one of their own. At Forbes’s suggestion, the OAS working group decided to adapt [Learning for Justice’s nine-step framework for responding to hate in schools](https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/publications/responding-to-hate-and-bias-at-school?ref=chudgar.com) to the needs of the diverse communities their schools serve. The framework was a good start — but how could OAS leaders turn those nine steps into a district-wide *practice* of responding to acts of harm with repair, every time it happens, across 35 schools from kindergarten to senior high? That’s what the OAS working group hired me to help them do. ## What we did - Together, the working group and I adapted the nine-step response framework into a clear, simple response handbook, custom-designed for Osseo Area Schools and their communities. - Using a feedback presentation I created, OAS leaders workshopped the draft with teachers, staff members, and students — who gave thoughtful, deeply personal, and sometimes very challenging feedback to improve our work. - After we incorporated the wisdom of those communities, OAS administrators began using the final Identity-Based Harm Response Handbook — and an associated printable checklist — in the spring of 2022. ## How we did it ### From values to language Initially convened to create a “racial harm protocol,” the working group and I quickly realized that we’d need to broaden our conception of harm beyond racism. The district’s stated value of *intrinsic value* helped us find the language we needed: what we decided to call **identity-based harm**. Here’s how the final handbook begins: > **Here at Osseo Area Schools, we believe in the *intrinsic value* of every person.** In our strategic plan, we [affirm](https://www.district279.org/info-center/strategic-plan?ref=chudgar.com) “that each scholar, staff member and family is valued and respected for their perspective, experience and contributions.” Whenever the intrinsic value of any member of our community is called into question by harmful actions that targets *who they are*, it is our responsibility as educational leaders to respond quickly — with justice, compassion, and healing. By defining identity-based harm in this way, OAS leaders reaffirm their district-wide commitment *intrinsic value* of every person. ### A clear process for challenging moments When identity-based harm happens, educators need to respond quickly and calmly — even if they themselves are deeply shaken by what happened. To that end, we streamlined the nine-step Learning for Justice protocol into three simple phases: 1. **Take action immediately** 2. **Partner with community** 3. **Repair relationships** That three-phase structure has already helped OAS educators respond to harm more quickly and reliably than before. ### Learning from experience “We do a great job at the first two phases,” Dr. Bass told me. “The last one, in terms of the ongoing restorative repair work. We do it up front, but our challenge is to sustain it.” Sustaining the work of community repair is the work Dr. Bass’s team will focus on in the year ahead — and they know there’s an opportunity to improve because learning from experience is an integral part of the process we designed. In response to feedback from educators, we supplemented the response handbook with a printable checklist, which educators and administrators work from at every phase of their response. ## What’s next Now that the 2023–24 school year has begun, Osseo Area Schools leaders are sharing the new harm-response protocol with principals, teachers, and students. “We’re creating a video that we’re rolling out to principals to use in staff meetings with teachers, who will then talk about the protocol in homeroom,” Bass told me. “We’re encouraging kids to recognize and report harm based on race, culture, or identity, knowing that we’ll support them.” These early efforts are just the beginning. Osseo Area Schools leaders envision the new identity-based harm protocol as a model for other school communities to implement. “It’s really important from our perspective to understand and study this, and try to replicate it,” said Dr. Bass. To that end, Hennepin County, where OAS is based, gave the education researchers at [Brooklyn Bridge Alliance for Youth](https://www.brooklynsallianceforyouth.org/quality?ref=chudgar.com) a grant to measure the effects of implementing this new approach to meeting hatred with repair. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/09/Bryan-Bass.jpg) ## “Honors the deep listening” ****Ash was not only sensitive to the content, but captured it in a way that honors the deep listening we did in our communities.** He used writing conventions to articulate our positionality so fluidly, deeply aligned and consistent with our values. If you want someone to help with writing, Ash is outstanding. ****— Bryan E. Bass, Ed.D.** Assistant Superintendent of Equity & Achievement, Osseo Area Schools ### Fall 2023 Inner Community Writing Workshops URL: https://www.chudgar.com/fall-2023-icww/ Last updated: 2023-12-03T17:26:04.000Z # Our goals These Workshops let us use writing to explore our inner multiplicity. We have three goals: - **🙌 To support each other’s writing practice**, - **🛠️ To develop our craft**, and - **❤️‍🔥 To pursue healing and liberation in community.** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/11/claret-to-ocher.png) ## Quick links ****👋** [****Weekly Workshops**](#workshops)****.** Times, Zoom link, folders, format ****📝** [****Writing for the week**](#writing)****.** Some gentle guidelines for your practice ****💬** [****Preparing for your Workshop**](#prep)****.** How to read other folks’ writing ****💡**[****Soft prompts**](#schedule)****.** A new suggestion for your writing every week # 👋 Weekly Workshops ## Times, Zoom link, and writing folders We meet every week over Zoom ([here’s the link](https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2578069543?ref=chudgar.com)) in two Workshops: - **Thursdays** at 12pm Central (10am Pacific), with writing shared on Mondays in [this folder](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13dqZ3zin4PYWkoI9RZJYYT01ZIQ8kZD6?usp=sharing&ref=chudgar.com). - **Sundays** at 10am Central (8am Pacific), with writing shared on Thursdays in [this folder](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CWmYezLi2mZxBlT3NtlpCWxMQLovHBJS?usp=sharing&ref=chudgar.com). ## Workshop format In our hour together, each of us will answer these three questions: 1. **What was it like for your systems to write and share what you did this week?** We’ll all answer that question, one after the other, passing to the next person. The order in which we speak this time is the order we’ll keep for the next question. 2. For each person’s writing, in the same order: **What *one to three* specific features of this writing interested your system?** These are the features you noticed [as you prepared](#prep). 3. As we wrap up: **What does your inner world want or need from your writing in the coming week?** This final question sets us up for the writing we’ll do next. # 📝 Writing for the week Every week, I’ll give a “soft prompt” for our weekly writing [right here](#schedule). Your system will decide how to interpret the prompt in language. Here are some guidelines: - **The deadline for sharing is soft.** The intention here to give all of us *two full days* to read and interact with everybody else’s writing. If you aren’t able to share your work by the appointed time, feel free to share it anyway, any time you like before we meet. Those of us who have a chance to read and comment on late-arriving work are certainly welcome to do so (and likely will), but we may not devote any Workshop time to discussing writing that came in after the deadline. - Limit your weekly writing to **1,000 words or less**. (We may sometimes agree informally to some other limitation on a given week, but this is the general rule.) - There’s no need for content warnings, but you can certainly **give some direction** at the top of your writing if there’s anything other participants’ systems should know. (“Might be scary, so maybe don’t read before bed,” for example.) - You can **share your writing** to your group’s folder in three ways: put a Google Doc in the folder, drag a Word document into the folder, or email it to me and I’ll share it for you. # 💬 Preparing for your Workshop Before our weekly Workshop meeting, we all read, interact with, and reflect on each other’s writing, with the healing and liberation of all systems in mind. Some gentle guidance: - Read in whatever way is **most comfortable** for your system, printed out or on the screen. (To print a Google Doc, just open it up and then select File > Print.) - If you read on screen, feel free to **comment directly** on someone’s writing. (To comment in Google Docs, highlight the text that interests you: you’ll see a little prompt to add a comment on the right. You can also highlight text, then select Insert > Comment.) - As you read and ponder, remember: this group is about exploration, not critique or “improvement.” A rule of thumb: **focus on how your system reacts to the writing *as it is***, rather than offering suggestions for how the writing could be different. - Let your system’s reactions help you **identify *one to three specific features* of each person’s writing** that you’d like to tell them about when we meet. - Those can be anything: a specific word or phrase, a notable stylistic choice, an interesting metaphor, a moment of recognition, a new question you have now that you didn’t know how to ask before. - You might like to jot those things down as you go (whatever “jotting” means to you) so you can remember your initial reactions clearly during the Workshop. # 💡Soft prompts We’ll decide on weekly prompts as we go, and I’ll update this schedule accordingly. #### Week 1: Introductions Thursday, November 2 / Sunday, November 5 Soft prompt: ****Introduce your inner world to the rest of us**, whatever that means to you. - ****Thursday group**, please share your writing on Monday, October 30 - ****Sunday group**, please share your writing on Thursday, November 2 #### Week 2: What was missing Workshops Thursday, November 9 / Sunday, November 12 Soft prompt: Re-read your introduction from last week, asking: What **isn’t* included here? Who’s part of my inner world, but didn’t get introduced? What truths remained unspoken? What presences were absent? ****This week, write what was missing.** - ****Thursday group**, please share your writing on Monday, November 6 - ****Sunday group**, please share your writing on Thursday, November 9 #### Week 3: Giving your system whatever it needs Workshops Thursday, November 16 / Sunday, November 19 Soft prompt: After two weeks’ attention to your inner world in writing, the various inhabitants of your internal community may have opinions about what your writing can or should accomplish for them. ****This week, use your writing to give your system whatever it needs.** - ****Thursday group**, please share your writing on Monday, November 13 - ****Sunday group**, please share your writing on Thursday, November 16 #### Week 4: Writing “about” something particular Because of Thanksgiving, the Thursday group will miss a week. Our next meetings are Sunday, November 26 / Thursday, November 30 Soft prompt: Sometimes we just write whatever arises. Other times, our inner worlds want to write **about* something in particular. ****This week, write** ***about** **something.** Define “about” and “something” however you like. - ****Sunday group**, please share your writing on Thursday, November 23 - ****Thursday group**, pleas share your writing on Monday, November 27 #### Week 5: Granting permission, removing limits Workshops Sunday, December 3 / Thursday, December 7 Soft prompt: Like the world outside us, our inner worlds have rules and limits. Some of them serve important or even essential functions. Others may have outlived their usefulness; others may serve no apparent purpose. ****This week, write in a way that grants permission to break a rule or removes a limit.** - ****Sunday group**, please share your writing on Thursday, November 30 - ****Thursday group**, please share your writing on Monday, December 4 #### Week 6: Closing by letting go Workshops Sunday, December 10 / Thursday, December 14 Soft prompt: As a group, we’ve held on to each other for the past six weeks; this week, we will let each other go. The inhabitants of our inner worlds sometimes need to let go, too — of burdens, beliefs, ideas, containers, dreams, practices, people. ****For our last meeting as a group, write in a way that lets something go.** - ****Sunday group**, please share your writing on Thursday, December 7 - ****Thursday group**, please share your writing on Monday, December 11 ### Any questions? Just get in touch with Ash. And thank you very much for being part of this experiment in writing community! ### An 8-week Intro to IFS Self-Therapy in Minneapolis, starting this month URL: https://www.chudgar.com/robertas-mpls-intro-to-ifs/ Last updated: 2024-06-19T19:52:57.000Z Unlike many other therapeutic methods, Internal Family Systems is easy for anyone to learn and simple to practice — even without professional guidance. I started my own journey into IFS by reading [a book called *Self-Therapy*](https://www.chudgar.com/the-best-introduction-to-ifs/), and many other people learn the of the model on their own through books, blog posts, meditations, and videos. **For folks in or near the Twin Cities, now there’s an even better way to learn how to use IFS on your own.** This fall, on Wednesday evenings from Sept. 27 through November 15, therapist and teacher Roberta Cullen is offering an eight-week introductory course through Minneapolis Community Education. It’s open to any adult, not just Minneapolis residents, and the price is extraordinarily reasonable: the suggested price is $75 for *the whole series* — a heck of a bargain — and sliding-scale rates go from $65 to $89\. “The advantages to offering this class through [Minneapolis Community Education](https://minneapolis.ce.eleyo.com/?ref=chudgar.com),” Roberta says, “is that it’s relatively low cost and can reach people who otherwise may not have heard of, or have access to learning IFS.” ## Who’s it for? Roberta says: > **This class is for anyone (including friends, colleagues, clients or prospective clients on your wait lists) interested in working with their own mental health using parts work.** I’ve taught this IFS Intro class twice before with a goal of serving adults or older teens, who are interested in learning to work with their own mental health. Participants have been very enthusiastic in their participation, very appreciative of working together, and often surprised as well as encouraged, as they learn about their parts and how to work with them. > **Therapists and care providers who have taken the course shared that they loved setting aside their professional roles, and having the time to work with their own individual systems in a non-training setting.** (No CEs are prearranged but I’m happy to provide a letter at the end of the course, should you want to submit to your own board for CEs.) Details and the registration link are below. --- # Internal Family Systems I: Intro to Self-Led Therapy Using IFS IFS has gained lots of popularity as a non-shaming, evidence-based, effective model of working with your own mental health. Our inner lives contain valuable untapped qualities, and our core Self knows how to heal. IFS works in both areas to draw on our own innate healing abilities. Basic IFS concepts and techniques are taught through lecture and practice in a welcoming environment. **🗓️ When:** Wednesday evenings from 6:30 to 8:15, September 27 through November 15 - **📍Where:** [Roosevelt High](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Roosevelt+High+School/@44.92959,-93.2300461,15z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x87f62845b5c5c4f9:0xac99b25b50ff55a1!8m2!3d44.92959!4d-93.2300461!16s%2Fm%2F0284hww?entry=ttu&ref=chudgar.com) in South Minneapolis, 4029 South 28th Avenue - **👋 For whom:** Any adult over 18\. You do not need to be a resident of Minneapolis to register and attend this course - **💰 How much:** Sliding scale, from $65 to $89; suggested fee is $75 [Learn more and sign up](https://minneapolis.ce.eleyo.com/course/48460/adult-enrichment-fall-2023/internal-family-systems-intro-to-self-led-therapy-using-ifs-roosevelt?ref=chudgar.com) #### About Roberta Roberta Cullen is a therapist, teacher, performer, creator, and researcher. She has been fully licensed as a mental health therapist in MN since 2017\. Roberta began working with Internal Family Systems in 2012\. She attended numerous trainings, some with the founder, Dr. Richard Schwartz. She has also assisted with IFS professional training in MN. In addition, Roberta has a strong interest in how trauma is stored in the body, and has trained with [Susan McConnell](https://www.embodiedself.net/about-susan?ref=chudgar.com), IFS Master Trainer and leader in Somatic IFS at [Susan’s annual retreat in Costa Rica](https://www.embodiedself.net/copy-of-costa-rica-retreats-2023?ref=chudgar.com). “Offline,” Roberta enjoys reading, fishing, hiking, music, performing arts, recreational bicycling, and creating and experiencing art. ### How I got consent to write about consent URL: https://www.chudgar.com/how-i-got-consent-to-write-about-consent/ Last updated: 2023-09-16T23:40:17.000Z ### Way back in January, [Helen Lees](https://partsandself.org/author/helen%5Fadmin/?ref=chudgar.com), the editor of the Internal Family Systems Institute’s online journal *Parts & Self*, wrote me this in an email: ### > *I notice from your site you mention [consent](https://www.chudgar.com/wellbeing/). I’m big on that and mentioned it to Dick \[Schwartz\] in [the Curiosity Conversation I did with him last year](https://partsandself.org/curiosity-conversation-dick-schwartz/?ref=chudgar.com#:~:text=What%20you%E2%80%99re%20talking%20about%20with%20IFS%20is%20a%20revolution%20at%20the%20level%20of%20consent%E2%80%94that%20people%20can%20flourish%20and%20emerge%20as%20the%20person%20they%20were%20meant%20to%20be). In fact I’m always mentioning it. Do you have a piece of writing in you about that and IFS that you would like to share with the community?* The part of me who loves thinking and writing in public (who were also intensely flattered to be mentioned in the same sentence as the founder of the Internal Family Systems model) emailed back immediately and with gusto: “I would *love* to write something up about consent in IFS!” Wonderful, Helen replied — she’d be on the lookout for a draft. Then, when I sat down to write the actual article, I realized I had a problem on my hands: several parts of me were not at all keen on the idea. --- **“Man, I love you, but you’re like the *opposite* of an expert about consent,”** warned Digby, the part of me who used to manage my sex life. “My assumption was always that, once you get yourself into sex, you gotta see it through, no matter what. And that’s what I always made us do, for decades! Even when it was really uncomfortable or scary. Or dangerous.” He produced vivid memories of several such occasions, which made me shudder. “But Digby, that’s precisely what makes our perspective so important!” countered the Professor, the part of me who wanted to write the article. “You never knew you *could* consent to sex, because you first learned about how it works from being molested when we were little. We all did. Like a zillion other people! And we had to do a lot of healing in order to wrap our mind around the concept at all. That’s why it’s so important to us now, and why I want us to write about it.” Digby nodded thoughtfully. “You know, I can dig that,” he said. “Makes sense.” But the youngest part of me, the one who spent decades in exile with the shame of the abuse we went through, was not persuaded. He crawled up into my lap to whisper into my ear. “I don’t like talking about — this sort of unpleasantness,” he said. He’s taken the form of a baby badger these days, so his whiskers tickled my ear when he did. “Talking about what unpleasantness, Badger?” I asked softly. It took him a little while to find the words. “About what we were — forced to do,” he whispered. “When we were small.” I hugged him and gave him a little kiss on his furry head. “First of all,” I said firmly, “writing an article like this something our grown-up parts can handle on their own, so you won’t have to think about what it’s about if you don’t want to. And second of all, I’ll make sure we don’t write *anything* that makes you uncomfortable, even a little bit.” His eyes narrowed, and he looked from me to the Professor and back again. “Really?” “Really,” I said firmly. I directed a pointed look toward the Professor, hoping he’d back me up. He got my drift. “That’s right, Badge,” the Professor agreed. “I’ll handle all the writing, so you won’t have to think about it. And I won’t write about anything that happened to *us specifically* at all. How’s that?” The little badger crossed his tiny arms across his chest. “Just the same,” he said stubbornly, “I would still prefer we didn’t.” The Professor threw up his arms in exasperation. “Well, sorry, kiddo,” he snapped, “but I’ve already agreed to write the piece, so.” At this point Digby started laughing. “Oh man!” he chuckled kindly. “Do you *hear* yourself? This little guy is telling us very clearly it’s not okay with him if we to do this thing. And you’re like, ‘Sorry, already agreed, so we gotta do it no matter what’!” The Professor looked annoyed. “So?” I thought I should intervene. “So,” I said gently, “sex isn’t the *only* area where consent matters. In fact, it matters all over the place. Including among ourselves, when we’re deciding what to write about in public.” “Ah,” said the Professor. He fell silent for a bit — then grumbled, “but still, I *did* agree to write the damn thing.” “I know, I know,” I replied. The Professor has always been a man of his word. “And I too want us to think about how consent has been at work — both in a general way, and in our system particularly. But I also know we’ll need the Badger to agree before we can write about it in public.” The Professor sighed. “Oh, all right,” he said. “That does make conceptual sense.” He looked back at the Badger, still curled up in my lap. “But how long will it take me to convince you, little one?” The Badger gave him a look of triumph, or challenge. “I suppose we’ll see,” he said. --- **Eight months, many drafts, and many *many* inner conversations later, we finally sent Helen the article the Professor had promised her — with unanimous consent from *every* part of me.** Let us know if you find it helpful! ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/09/AdobeStock_355315028_Editorial_Use_Only-scaled-1.jpeg) ## Consent in IFS Practice ### “In a harmonious internal system, every Part of who we are is a full member of the community of our Self, whose consent **matters*. ****Our inner world, like a true democracy, derives its power and stability from the full consent of all its constituents.”** [Read the article in PARTS & SELF](https://partsandself.org/consent-in-ifs-practice/?ref=chudgar.com) ### Four questions from the Inclusive Therapists community URL: https://www.chudgar.com/four-questions-from-the-inclusive-therapists-commmunity/ Last updated: 2024-06-19T19:52:20.000Z ### Inclusive Therapists is a [liberation movement](https://www.inclusivetherapists.com/about?ref=chudgar.com) in the form of an [online coaching and therapy directory](https://www.inclusivetherapists.com/get-matched?ref=chudgar.com). When my friend and colleague [Augustin Kendall](https://www.inclusivetherapists.com/minnesota/minneapolis/augustin-kendall?ref=chudgar.com) set up a profile there, just a few minutes of poking around showed me a community of clinicians and practitioners I very much wanted to belong to. He encouraged me to apply for membership, though he warned me cryptically that the process might be a bit intense. That turned out to be an understatement. The process wasn’t at all contemplated: after describing my scope of practice as a coach and uploading my credentials, I just had to provide written answers to four open-ended questions. But the questions were humdingers. Answering them made me think in new ways about the land I live on and the body I live in, my identities in the social and material world, my moral values and my justifications for them, and the deep, unstated stories about harm and healing that underwrite my work. It took me months of inquiry and fitful writing to answer all the questions, then less than a day for the zippy Inclusive Therapists team to approve my application. As a proud [new member of the Inclusive Therapists community](https://www.inclusivetherapists.com/minnesota/minneapolis/ash-chudgar?ref=chudgar.com), I want to share the inquiries the four application questions provoked in me: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/09/Screenshot-2023-09-04-at-1.38.59-PM-1.png) ## 1\. Social justice Kindly share your identity / positionality in connection to your journey in social justice or liberation-oriented practice. [Community safety from the inside out](https://www.chudgar.com/community-safety-from-the-inside-out/) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/09/1984-Chudgar-family-portrait-1.jpeg) ## 2\. Racial justice How do you integrate racial justice values personally and professionally? [What I’ve been learning about racism](https://www.chudgar.com/what-ive-been-learning-about-racism/) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/09/2023-08-22-Pride-flag.GIF) ## 3\. Gender and sexuality justice How do you integrate gender and sexuality justice values personally and professionally? [Queerness and liberation](https://www.chudgar.com/queerness-and-liberation) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/09/2017-12-13-x-ray-1.png) ## 4\. Disability and healing justice How do you integrate disability and healing justice values personally and professionally? [How I am learning to be embodied](https://www.chudgar.com/some-things-ive-learned-about-embodiment/) ### How I am learning to be embodied URL: https://www.chudgar.com/some-things-ive-learned-about-embodiment/ Last updated: 2023-12-19T18:30:05.000Z The most important wisdom I’ve learned from the intellectual lineage of Disability Justice is that we are not disabled by “nature,” but by disabling social systems. I learned that from Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s [*Care Work*](https://brownstargirl.org/care-work-dreaming-disability-justice/?ref=chudgar.com), which also taught me that being disabled by the world we live in makes us develop “a set of innovative, virtuosic skills” — as does surviving trauma, being minoritized, living in poverty or precarity, and every kind of counter-cultural embodiment. These radical political insights are changing everything for me — not just how I see the world, but how I understand myself as an embodied person and as a coach to my clients, who are all embodied too. When I first encountered Disability Justice in 2021, I understood myself to have all the abled privilege in the world: I’m a thin-bodied light-skinned cis man from a middle-class background, not disabled in any way. But as I’ve learned more from disabled thinkers about how power and oppression interact with our embodied minds, I’ve started to ask myself potent new questions: - Do I eat very little because I prefer that, or because my thin body is still haunted by the memory of the fat child I used to be? - Is my unwillingness to campaign door-to-door political laziness, or is it okay to acknowledge that chronic back pain makes canvassing excruciating? - Am I exceptionally clumsy and injury-prone because I’m careless, or because parts of myself still blame my body for not resisting sexual abuse? - If I’d been born a generation later, as [Devon Price’s work](https://www.worldcat.org/title/1260240370?ref=chudgar.com) suggests, would my weird hyperverbal “giftedness” have been diagnosed as Autism instead? - What might be possible if, in [Nick Walker’s words](https://neuroqueer.com/neuroqueer-an-introduction/?ref=chudgar.com), I were “to undo and subvert (my) own cultural conditioning and … ingrained habits of neuronormative and heteronormative performance, with the aim of reclaiming (my) capacity to give more full expression to (my) uniquely weird potentials and inclinations?” Have I perhaps been neuroqueer all along? Asking these questions has opened stunning new possibilities for joy, creativity, and solidarity, and I take great joy in sharing them with my clients — all of whom, in their own unique ways, are on journeys of embodied liberation of their own. #### How Inclusive Therapists made this post possible To joint the Inclusive Therapists community, I had to answer [four very deep questions about my coaching practice](https://www.chudgar.com/four-questions-from-the-inclusive-therapists-commmunity/). The first version of this post was my answer to one of them. Here are the rest: - [Kindly share your identity / positionality in connection to your journey in ****social justice** or liberation-oriented practice.](https://www.chudgar.com/community-safety-from-the-inside-out/) - [How do you integrate ****racial justice** values personally and professionally?](https://www.chudgar.com/what-ive-been-learning-about-racism/) - [How do you integrate ****gender and sexuality justice** values personally and professionally?](https://www.chudgar.com/queerness-and-liberation) ### Queerness and liberation URL: https://www.chudgar.com/queerness-and-liberation/ Last updated: 2023-09-20T21:04:08.000Z For people in our place and time, gender and sexuality are increasingly getting policed in ways precisely designed to harm many of us — to strip us of civil liberties, deny our dignity and agency, and condemn us to social or even biological death. But thanks to the courage and labor of our queer and feminist ancestors, gender and sexuality can also be places where we can find new forms of healing and solidarity. **My own ongoing liberation from traumatized sexual shame to queer joy feels like the central fact of my life these days.** It’s the the story of ongoing healing that I share with my coaching clients the most. Like at least [one child in ten](https://www.d2l.org/child-sexual-abuse/prevalence/?ref=chudgar.com), I was sexually abused when I was little, and like many queer people, I got bullied a lot in school for performing gender clumsily. When I was a teenager, gay male teachers at my high school seemed to offer understanding and guidance, but instead they seized the opportunity to have sex with an underage student — a shameful secret I knew could get them sent to prison, or worse. By the time I was an adult, I’d learned to perform cis masculinity well enough to keep my sexuality effectively secret in daily life, and I tightly confined my queerness to drunk and joyless encounters with strangers. It took eleven years of sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous, several therapists after that, a [Restorative Justice circle](https://hiddenwatercircle.org/our-approach?ref=chudgar.com), the steady love of a very patient man (now my husband), and years of healing in my inner community to reclaim gender and sexuality as valuable parts of my identity. Nowadays, halfway through my life, I’ve found a new chosen family of other queer and trans people. I’m experimenting with gender in ways I never could have imagined as a little boy. I’m even working my way into intentional [neuroqueerness](https://neuroqueer.com/neuroqueer-an-introduction/?ref=chudgar.com) (more on that in [here](https://www.chudgar.com/some-things-ive-learned-about-embodiment/)). As a coach, it is among my greatest joys and privileges to walk shoulder to shoulder with clients who are on journeys to sexual and gender liberation of their own — particularly now, when our very right to exist is under increasing attack. #### How Inclusive Therapists made this post possible To joint the Inclusive Therapists community, I had to answer [four very deep questions about my coaching practice](https://www.chudgar.com/four-questions-from-the-inclusive-therapists-commmunity/). The first version of this post was my answer to one of them. Here are the rest: - [Kindly share your identity / positionality in connection to your journey in ****social justice** or liberation-oriented practice.](https://www.chudgar.com/community-safety-from-the-inside-out/) - [How do you integrate ****racial justice** values personally and professionally?](https://www.chudgar.com/what-ive-been-learning-about-racism/) - [How do you integrate ****disability and healing justice** values personally and professionally?](https://www.chudgar.com/some-things-ive-learned-about-embodiment/) ### What I’ve been learning about racism URL: https://www.chudgar.com/what-ive-been-learning-about-racism/ Last updated: 2024-08-16T18:10:44.000Z **Because other people reliably experience me as a white person, that’s how I usually identify my race in the world.** (“Whiteness,” [as I see it](https://www.chudgar.com/how-i-learned-i-am-white), is nothing more than passing.) But I am also the light-skinned son of a white mother and a South Asian father, who got married just one year after interracial marriage was legalized across the United States. My father, like many first-generation immigrants in the 1960s, was as emphatically American as he could be, eating hamburgers and watching football games, and he discouraged questions about his Gujarati language and heritage. Though other white members of my family were appreciative of my father’s culture in many ways (at dinnertime especially), they also made fun of his accent, openly questioned Indian relatives’ hygiene and intelligence, and spoke approvingly and often of the British colonization of India. All this felt normal to me as a child in the 1980s. It wasn’t until I started learning about anti-Blackness in recent years that I came to understand that my bicultural upbringing, of which I’d always been very proud, had also trained me well in the ideology of white supremacy. That understanding remained mostly implicit, at the level of uneasy gut-feeling, until this question challenged me to make it explicit. **Wrestling with the complex legacies of racism in my own life helps orient my coaching practice toward liberation.** Reflecting on my father’s experiences of bigotry as a person of color in America — out in the world, in our family, and in his own self-understanding — helps me pay close attention to the specific forms of racialized harm that my clients of color experience. Reflecting on the ways I’ve had a much easier time in the world than my darker-skinned brother keeps me alert to the toxic effects of colorism. And reflecting on the ways I still benefit from white supremacy encourages me to become more skillful in unlearning the racism I’ve learned. #### How Inclusive Therapists made this post possible To joint the Inclusive Therapists community, I had to answer [four very deep questions about my coaching practice](https://www.chudgar.com/four-questions-from-the-inclusive-therapists-commmunity/). The first version of this post was my answer to one of them. Here are the rest: - [Kindly share your identity / positionality in connection to your journey in ****social justice** or liberation-oriented practice.](https://www.chudgar.com/community-safety-from-the-inside-out/) - [How do you integrate ****gender and sexuality justice** values personally and professionally?](https://www.chudgar.com/queerness-and-liberation) - [How do you integrate ****disability and healing justice** values personally and professionally?](https://www.chudgar.com/some-things-ive-learned-about-embodiment/) ### Community safety from the inside out URL: https://www.chudgar.com/community-safety-from-the-inside-out/ Last updated: 2025-06-10T17:17:47.000Z ## How I learned about the cops in my head > Yeah, the cops are in our heads and hearts … . We often reenact cop behavior among each other. — [Mariame Kaba](https://www.google.com/books/edition/We%5FDo%5FThis%5FTil%5FWe%5FFree%5FUs/ShMIEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=%22Yeah,%20the%20cops%20are%20in%20our%20heads%20and%20hearts%22&ref=chudgar.com) **Minneapolis, where I live and work, became a global emblem of oppression at the end of May 2020.** But that summer, even as the ashes of the Third Precinct station were still smoldering, local healers and activists were already organizing the rest of us to reduce the harms of our police violence and mass incarceration, empower poor and minoritized people to keep each other safe, and build lasting community power. By volunteering in some of those organizing efforts, I encountered radical ideas that I’d never contemplated before — ideas like prison and police abolition, restorative justice, and mutual aid — which led me into whole new lines of inquiry in the months that followed. What I was learning about identity, power, and oppression changed how I understood the world around me. It also focused my attention on the ways power and oppression seemed to be working within my own mind. When I started paying closer attention to the behavior of my familiar “inner critics,” I soon realized my consciousness was just as over-policed and under-protected as the city where I lived. That troubling discovery led me directly to a radically liberating model of human ecology called [Internal Family Systems (IFS)](https://www.chudgar.com/what-is-ifs/), which is the foundation of my coaching practice today. ## Human beings as internal communities **The IFS model invites us to think of our own inner lives as social systems.** As we experience our own awareness, most of us can readily identify several individual sub-personalities within us — inner children, inner protectors and critics, inner coaches and champions, that sort of thing. If you’ve ever found yourself feeling ambivalent, or accused yourself of hypocrisy, or given yourself a pep talk (or a scolding), you’ve had direct first-hand experience of your own “internal family.” All the parts of our inner world seem to be with us all our lives, normally and naturally, and their personalities and relationships with each other make each of us uniquely who we are. On this model, most people *naturally* have “multiple personalities” — not as a symptom of mental illness, but by our very nature. ## How our inner families protect us **Every member of our internal community shares one basic goal: to keep us feeling as safe and happy as possible.** IFS theory takes as an axiom that every part of every person fundamentally cares for that person’s wellbeing. My experience, within myself and for every one of my clients, agrees. Just as different people seem wired to protect themselves in different ways, so do different parts of the community *inside* us. These protective strategies take a few general forms: - 🚨🚒 Some parts of us react quickly and dramatically to protect us from overwhelming feelings. - 🗓️⏲️ Other members of our inner communities carefully supervise our lives to keep those feelings from arising in the first place. - 🫥🚫 And still other parts of us, most courageously of all, protect us from the very worst suffering in our lives — the unbearable feelings of shame, rage, horror, and grief that result from trauma and oppression — by absorbing all of it and disappearing from our conscious awareness altogether. The parts of ourselves who protect us are *not* pathological “defense mechanisms”: their work keeps us alive and sane all our lives. But like all protectors, they can and often do cause great suffering. As my wise colleague [Katie LaCelle](https://www.cressanallc.com/?ref=chudgar.com) likes to say, suffering is what happens “when protection becomes oppression.” ## When protection becomes oppression **By the time we’re grown-ups, many of us have inner communities defined by structural oppression.** Over the years, in a constant effort to stay safe, parts of ourselves end up shamed into silence, locked up behind bars, driven into exile, or otherwise excluded from full membership in the community of who we are. My internal community was just like that in the summer of 2020: a dark and violent place where children were never seen, armed patrols beat up on “undesirables” with impunity, and the very possibility of safety seemed to depend on the constant threat of violence. And that is the internal situation in which I encountered IFS. Unlike any other therapeutic method I’d ever encountered, this plural model of mind described what my inner life actually *felt* like — and it offered a clear and powerful theory of healing *as liberation*. ## Why we oppress some parts of ourselves **Individual trauma and structural oppression tend to take very similar forms, the way the veins in the leaves of a tree are fractal miniatures of its branches.** The protective strategies various parts of us adopt look like social oppression, and feel oppressive, because they are. Just like protective systems in the external world, protective parts of ourselves don’t act oppressively *just* because they’re cruel (though they certainly can be) — they truly believe that there is no other way to keep us safe. Our protective parts arrive at that belief from hard experience. Especially when we’re small, socially minoritized, economically impoverished, or otherwise extra-vulnerable to harm, letting some parts of ourselves oppress other parts is a matter of daily survival. (If you’re a Black or Indigenous person who’s been pulled over by the Minneapolis police, [for example](https://www.minnpost.com/fact-briefs/2023/06/does-a-department-of-justice-study-show-minneapolis-police-stopped-native-and-black-americans-at-more-than-6-times-the-rate-of-others/?ref=chudgar.com), silencing the parts of yourself who feel terror or rage might literally save your life.) Over time, many of us become so accustomed to the oppressive police state in our own minds that we simply can’t imagine being safe without it. But sometimes — often around midlife, it seems — our internal protective strategies start to fail. Protective parts of ourselves, exhausted by decades of thankless toil, sometimes break down, act out, or go on strike. Shameful parts who’ve been carefully hidden since childhood suddenly start rattling the bars of their cells, often at the most inopportune times. What used to work stops working. That moment in my life was when I discovered my internal family. Today, my clients find me at similar moments in theirs. ## How our inner communities can heal and get free **Though folks usually express their concerns in the language of mental-health symptoms, my working theory is that my clients are suffering because some parts of themselves are oppressing others.** So as a coach, I go along in solidarity with my clients, side by side, as they explore the social dynamics of their own internal communities. I keep them company as they learn about how the various parts of themselves interact, and I model how to treat every member of their “internal family” with patience, respect, and compassion. As we explore their internal world, here’s what usually happens: - **Learning about the past.** My clients and I discover the historical reasons why the parts of them adopted their current configuration. - **Honoring protectors.** We identify the [protective parts of them](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-4/) who are acting oppressively, [honor their positive intentions](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-6/) and years of service, and gradually work with them to find ways to secure the system’s safety *without* coercive internal policing. - **Liberating exiles and restoring justice.** Once those protectors are willing to take a chance on a different approach, my clients are ready to liberate the parts of themselves who’ve been kept out of sight, bear witness to the harms they’ve suffered, and arrange for restorative justice among all their internal inhabitants. - **True safety for all.** And then, once every part of who they are has been restored to full membership in the loving community of their selves, they can go forth to live their lives in safety, with joy and inner harmony. **I can describe this method of healing with confidence because I’ve experienced it in my own life.** Getting to know the protective parts of myself has not only decarcerated my inner world — it’s allowed those parts to take accountability for harms they’ve done to other parts of me and repair their relationships on a foundation of mutual respect and shared liberation. As a coach, I now get to accompany my clients as they help every part of who *they* are heal and get free in the community of themselves. ## Thinking into the work ahead **Practicing in this way helps liberate the work of healing emotional suffering from he oppressive structures of clinical mental healthcare**. This work makes internal healing and liberation available entirely outside the categories of mental illness, diagnosis, treatment and financing. Folks who have been poorly served, or actively traumatized, by mental healthcare in the past often seek out coaching as a liberating [alternative route](https://www.chudgar.com/differences-from-therapy/) to healing. (Coaching can also work very well as a complement to traditional mental healthcare for people who, like me, have diagnoses that benefit from medical treatment.) But as a coach who practices one-on-one, the support I have to offer is still so costly, even with a [sliding scale](https://www.chudgar.com/sliding-scale) and [barter options](https://www.chudgar.com/options-for-coaching/#support-for-less), that it’s effectively out of reach for most people — particularly those who, carrying heavy burdens of generational trauma and intersectional oppression, could use this kind of liberating internal work the most. For just that reason, like-minded IFS colleagues and affiliated [partsworkers](https://www.partsworker.com/?ref=chudgar.com), here in town and internationally, are starting to experiment with new ways to make the model’s healing power more accessible to more people for less money, and to organize other practitioners in support of the liberatory and anti-oppressive version of the model that many of us practice. #### How Inclusive Therapists made this post possible To joint the Inclusive Therapists community, I had to answer [four very deep questions about my coaching practice](https://www.chudgar.com/four-questions-from-the-inclusive-therapists-commmunity/). The first version of this post was my answer to one of them. Here are the rest: - [How do you integrate ****racial justice** values personally and professionally?](https://www.chudgar.com/what-ive-been-learning-about-racism/) - [How do you integrate ****gender and sexuality justice** values personally and professionally?](https://www.chudgar.com/queerness-and-liberation) - [How do you integrate ****disability and healing justice** values personally and professionally?](https://www.chudgar.com/some-things-ive-learned-about-embodiment/) ### “Systems fight death”: A conversation about culture, faith, and endings with deathcare worker Kelly Butler URL: https://www.chudgar.com/kelly-butler-deathcare-conversation/ Last updated: 2023-08-30T14:21:39.000Z > “Culturally, we have an appetite for *more*. Lots of the conversation is about how we keep what we have, rather than about how we gracefully, skillfully go into composting, hospice, the end of it. What does *less* look like?” — Kelly Butler ## What we don’t know about dying The mother of a dear friend of mine died last week, at 93\. She had started doing poorly the week before that, and the folks at her nursing home had summoned her three daughters to her bedside. They kept their mother company for a few quiet days, and they were in the next room when she passed. “Her appearance changed dramatically over the course of those days,” my friend told me, bemused and quiet. “It was hard to recognize her as the same person she’d always been.” I was startled. “Does that usually happen when people die? That they look different?” “Beats me,” said my friend, who’s in her late 60s. “I’ve never seen someone dying before.” Mere seconds of research on the internet reveals that [people really do change when they’re getting close to death](https://www.hospiceuk.org/information-and-support/death-and-dying-what-expect/last-few-days?ref=chudgar.com#content-menu-2158), in fact, and in predictable ways. This information must be widely known to people are near death all the time: nurses and physicians, firefighters and cops and EMTs, combat soldiers and medics, hospice workers and chaplains. In other parts of the world, where death is more frequent and closer at hand, ordinary people must know about the facts of death as well. But for me and my friend, middle-aged people in the United States in the early 2020s, how people’s appearance changes when they are dying is simply not something it’s ever occurred to us to wonder about. Even when we *do* wonder about death, our culture disapproves of asking questions about it. To wit: when I typed “assistance in dying” into my search bar today — I was trying to find out the name of Canada’s assisted-suicide program — Google instantly assured me that “Help is available. Speak with someone today,” pointed me to the 988 crisis helpline, and gave me handy scripts I could use to ask friends to provide the precise *opposite* of assistance in dying. (“I don’t want to die, but I don’t know how to live,” Google suggests texting to somebody.) As someone who grew up deeply Roman Catholic, I have always found this cultural resistance to death perplexing. Like all Catholics, I was taught early on that this life is a temporary “vale of tears,” and that death (if all goes well) will be a joyful return to our eternal home, where we will delight in the glory of God for ever and ever, amen. Unlike most Catholics (or so I have learned), I actually believed it. Still do, in fact — even though it’s been a long time since I’ve been Catholic or even Christian. The idea that death is not an end but a homecoming still feels right to me in a visceral way, just as it always has. I don’t talk about that belief too much, for obvious reasons; but it’s there, and as durable and inexplicable as only faith can be. A few weeks ago, I was listening in on a webinar when another participant, named only “Kelly” in the chat, introduced herself as someone in the field of “deathcare.” I’d never encountered that word before, but it snapped instantly into my mind with the satisfying click of a long-lost puzzle piece. With silent apologies to the organizer of the webinar for my distraction, I started Googling around to find her — which is how I ended up talking over Zoom with [Kelly Butler](https://www.facebook.com/people/Reclaiming-Death/100066604446905/), the Ottawa-based nurse and [deathcare worker](https://communitydeathcareottawa.com/practitioners/?ref=chudgar.com) who’d taught me the word. Below are my notes from our conversation about care and endings, which led us to talk about everything from healthcare policy to God to books about grief. Enjoy! --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/08/kelly-butler.jpg) ## A conversation with Kelly Butler ### August 14, 2023 #### ASH CHUDGAR: Tell me about your interest in death! - **KELLY BUTLER:** The labor of dying is often hidden from us. It’s like a birth — we know there is pain and labor involved. - I’m less interested in the death of the individual than I am in the collective death that’s going on around us, with climate change. I have been deeply concerned about how we’re going to manage, psychologically. - Things will fight death. A wound will fight death. Systems fight death. #### Absolutely. We see fossil capital fighting its own death right now. Capitalism really doesn’t want to die. - It’s back to the idea that we don’t have an experience of limitation. Culturally, we have an appetite for *more.* - You see that in end-of-life care: always more. People don’t recognize that you’re not getting more living, you’re just getting longer dying. - The pandemic, climate change: lots of the \[ambient cultural\] conversation is about how we keep what we have, rather than about how we gracefully, skillfully go into composting, hospice, the end of it. - What does *less* feel like? #### What do you want to see happen, culturally? - I would like to see death — all ending — reinstated in its proper place, in the way I learned in the years of tending a garden. - My background is in healthcare; I do care about people and how they are coping. - I’m doing my master’s now. What are the therapeutic offerings we can come up with that aren’t the conventional modalities? We have more trauma to deal with than therapists could possibly treat. - How do we learn to hold this? That can be things like mindfulness, contemplative arts, psychedelics, ritual work. Seeing that change so that we’re not completely undone by what’s ahead. - My master’s is in health sciences; I’m looking at mindfulness and its influence on adolescent anxiety. I’d like to do a Ph.D. on grief or bereavement. I’ll probably do something about grief in the workplace and its impact on productivity, so I’ll be employable; but my secret interest is how we support people through death. - How do we support men, in particular? Lots of what’s there supports women, and men aren’t well served by existing offerings. - We have a group within our umbrella organization — [Community Deathcare Ottawa](https://communitydeathcareottawa.com/?ref=chudgar.com) — focused on [natural burial](https://communitydeathcareottawa.com/nbo/?ref=chudgar.com). For some people that’s for ecological reasons; for others it’s for people to be more engaged in the deathcare. #### You’ve mentioned that death and birth have moved from homes into institutions. I’m seeing the consequences of that shift with my mother-in-law right now — she’s 94, and being cared for in [an institution](https://www.chudgar.com/kindness-in-space) that is really committed to her staying alive indefinitely. What are the consequences of that shift to institutions? - In moving death and birth into institutions, we’re serving the system. We’re not serving the individual or the family. And I don’t see how you break that. You have to get out of that loop — the system can’t *not* serve itself. - One problem that arises is that we treat patients as “consumers.” We want informed consent — but what does that mean to your 94-year-old mother-in-law with dementia? #### Canada must have a must healthier approach to death, since assisted suicide is legal there. - Well — there is a problem with MAID \[Medical Assistance In Dying\] in Canada, for the same reason that the U.S. has a [32% cesarean section rate](https://www.cesareanrates.org/?ref=chudgar.com) (which is ridiculously high): it’s convenient for the system. #### Oh wow. Of course, it’s easier for the healthcare system to deal with scheduled events than unpredictable ones. - This is the real danger in MAID: it’s a lot more efficient. It also has *huge* issues around disability rights. We don’t have the guardrails that are needed. - I am a reluctant supporter of MAID. If you have a degenerative condition, you should have the option to say you’ve had enough. - But what’s happening — along with the necropolitics of not caring about some bodies as much as others, like disabled and Black and brown bodies — is that some people are choosing this because they’re afraid of dying, so they want to skip over that part. #### The same way people can now skip over labor and go straight to birth? - \[*Kelly said something like:* Even more so. Birth gets represented on TV and in movies, increasingly realistically. But death isn’t represented in anything like a realistic way at all.\] - What would it be like if you knew what the process looked like? - Again, there’s a mirror with birth: A vaginal birth has benefits for the baby. What do we lose when we skip over dying and go straight to death? That’s an open question. #### Well, for one thing, going straight to death isn’t going to please the American institutions who benefit from keeping people alive but very sick for as long as possible. - The system does like people in their expensive dying years. But I do think you’re going to see that, if MAID is legalized \[in the U.S.\], it’ll be like C-section rates. It serves the system itself, because they need the bed. - This also goes back to limits. What would it be to have the system say, “We are going to allow death to happen”? You have to start pretty far upstream to have that take hold, because it runs counter to what people in healthcare, even as individuals, are trained to do, which is to prolong life. - A patient like your mother-in-law: How do we make sure she’s comfortable in what ought to be her last days? #### Speaking of my mother-in-law, it flummoxes me that her Catholic faith didn’t prepare her for death in any real way. My own Catholic upbringing really did, and though I’m not Catholic any longer, I’m still grateful for that. Do you have a spiritual approach to death yourself? - I find myself coming back to the Catholic church after 20 years away. I am definitely an animist, but I have found Catholicism to be a pretty easy place to be. - In my time away, trying to find something to replace that was very unsuccessful. There just *isn’t* something. The patchwork, made-up modern spirituality that you see — I’m pedantic enough, I suppose, to object when something was made up in 1942 or whatever! - What I find easy about Catholicism is that, because they absorbed all these pagan practices, especially in Ireland, I can navigate that in a way that feels comfortable. - It is a place where there’s ritual. The whole Mass is ritual, it’s ceremony. - This work in grief and death has brought me back. I can be mad at the Church; but man, they’ve got some stuff figured *out.* - I got to a Catholic church in Harlem, where my partner lives. Mass will finish, and somebody gets up and says, “Second collection is for the church pantry; there’s a free consultation for people around immigration.” So much of what the community needs, the church is bringing to them. #### Newer kinds of spirituality seem not to have those elements of ritual and community care as much. - I can’t do the made-up cosplay new-age whatever. If you’re tracking where things emerge — their genesis brings with it something about what potential exists. In a new-age faith (I’m being a bit facetious), you’re coming out of a hyper-individual society. How can you really be focused on our collective liberation? - This idea of stewardship of the earth, and understanding of death’s place — the absence of them in \[recently developed\] faith traditions might be because of the time and place in which they came into being. - The Catholic church is a lot bigger on the inside than it looks like from the outside. The people I’m sitting with on a Sunday morning in Harlem don’t have a lot to do with the hierarchy! #### What can I read to think about death differently? - Francis Weller’s [*The Wild Edge of Sorrow*](https://www.worldcat.org/title/898909750?ref=chudgar.com) is a useful book. - Even more delightful, more exceptional to me, is [*The Geometry of Grief*](https://www.worldcat.org/title/1237632211?ref=chudgar.com), by Michael Frame. That is an absolute gem that I came across about a year ago. It’s a little memoir. [Learn more about Community Deathcare](https://communitydeathcareottawa.com/?ref=chudgar.com) ### Join an Inner Community Writing Workshop URL: https://www.chudgar.com/join-the-internal-community-writing-workshop/ Last updated: 2024-01-18T19:23:52.000Z Some people experience ourselves not only as individuals, but also as internal communities. We explore the worlds within us in many forms, and one of the most powerful is writing. **Inner Community Writing Workshops are weekly online groups for people who use writing to explore our own internal multiplicity.** We have three primary goals: 1. **To support each other’s writing practice**, 2. **To develop our craft**, and 3. **To pursue healing and liberation in community**. The first two Inner Community Writing Workshops ever [in November and December of 2023](https://www.chudgar.com/fall-2023-icww). A bunch of us participated for free as an experiment in building this kind of writing community, and [we wrote beautiful work](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/icww)! What we’ve learned learn will make the next round of Workshops even better. ## What it’s like to be in a Workshop > **Having a weekly group of writerly humans was so helpful to my own writing habit and building up that muscle from where it had been, lonely and yearning.** — [Andrea](https://www.trailstoself.net/?ref=chudgar.com), writer and IFS practitioner > **Writing from different parts of myself for the first time was a unique experience, but it’s quickly becoming a practice that I rely on. For me it’s an important bridge between my sense of self and my desire to craft authentic characters in my creative writing.** — [Anitet Wheeler](https://www.scythianfeathers.com/?ref=chudgar.com) > **To have weekly structure in an emotionally safe space to tap into my creativity and explore my inner world more was such a fun way to build my confidence. To be witnessed and witness myself and my system was therapeutic in many ways.** — [Meg Ferge](https://www.chudgar.com/author/meg-ferge) ## The next Workshops will begin in spring 2024 Here’s what to know: - **When will we meet?** Starting some time in spring 2024, weekly, for six weeks. We choose the time we meet based on what’s convenient for the participants. - **How will it work?** During each meeting of the Workshop, I’ll provide a soft prompt ([like these](https://www.chudgar.com/fall-2023-icww/#schedule)) for the week’s writing. - Three days before the weekly Workshop meeting, we all share our writing in a Google Drive folder. - We all read, interact with, and ponder each other’s work, then discuss it during our video call. - **For whom?** Workshops are for folks who experience themselves as internally plural, have an existing writing practice, can commit to weekly meetings, and are curious about other systems. - **How many?** Four to six participants in a Workshop. - **How much?** A sliding scale, to be determined. - **Who’s this?** [Ash Chudgar](#ash) (he/him or they/them), who’s organizing this group. **Read on for more details — or just** [**click here to sign up to be notified about upcoming Workshops**](#form)**.** ## What you’ll get out of your Workshop **Inner Community Writing Workshops will interest you if you are looking for three things:** 1. 🙌 **Support for your writing practice.** You’ll have a consistent weekly excuse to talk about writing in a supportive community. We’ll help each other cultivate and sustain a writing practice over time. 2. 🛠️ **Developing your craft.** By engaging deeply with other people’s work and having frequent opportunities to share your own, you’ll get to play around with new forms and techniques for exploring your internal world in writing. 3. ❤️‍🩹 **Pursuing healing and liberation in community.** Writing about your inner community can help wounded parts of you heal, facilitate accountability and reconciliation after internal harm, and help liberate your inner society from shame and other forms of oppression. As you use writing to pursue healing and liberation within your own system, you’ll also be helping the rest of us heal and get free as a community. And together, we might discover ways to pursue healing and liberation in *all* the communities we’re part of, at every scale. **Workshops are different from other writing communities in important ways:** - 🚫 **Publication isn’t the goal.** Some of us are quite likely to publish work we create for this group, and that will be wonderful! Others of us may never share what they write beyond our Workshop itself, which is also perfectly fine. Writing for publication, in any form, is *not* an expectation or a goal. - 🚫 **This isn’t a critique group.** We will undoubtedly learn a lot about technique from each other — and simply writing a lot is likely to help us all write more and better. But in our Workshop, our shared goal isn’t to help each other become *better writers*, but to *use writing better* to explore our inner multiplicity, whatever form that exploration may take. ## What Workshop participants have in common We are probably going to be a wildly various group of people. But all of us will have these things in common with you: - **You experience yourself as internally plural,** whatever that means to you. Many folks who fit this description identify as a [plural system](https://pluralpedia.org/w/System?ref=chudgar.com), a collection of ego states or alters, or otherwise internally multiple. Many others (like the organizer) got in touch with our inner multiplicity through the Internal Family Systems model. *This group is for plural folks only.* - **You can commit to your Workshop reliably.** Of course life happens, nobody’s perfect, and we’ll give each other ample grace. But because our writing will put us in contact with each other’s delicate inner ecologies, we need to be able to count on each other to show up in community, week after week, with compassion for each other and our systems. *This isn’t a group to dip in and out of casually.* - **You are committed to your writing practice,** whatever that means for you. You might be a published author, a faithful scribbler of "[morning pages](https://juliacameronlive.com/basic-tools/morning-pages/?ref=chudgar.com)," a compulsive diarist, a famous blogger, a secret poet — the form of your commitment to writing is all your own, but your commitment to the practice of writing should be deep and abiding. *This isn’t a good place to try writing for the first time.* - **You are very curious about other systems.** The real magic of your Workshop will happen as each of us gets to explore other systems than our own — not only each other’s internal communities, but also the external communities we participate in too, at every scale from the microbial to the municipal to the intergalactic. *This isn’t a group for people who* just *want to focus inward.* (If that’s what you need at this point in your healing, consider hiring an [IFS coach like me](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching).) #### About the organizer I’m ****Ash Chudgar** (he/they), and I’ve been exploring my own internal system in writing ever since I discovered its existence in 2020\. In the years since, a couple dear friends have joined me in sharing our writing about our inner worlds. We’ve learned so much from each other’s work, and found such healing and freedom in the process, that we wanted other folks who are similarly inclined to join our community. Because my system adores bringing people together around language (and enjoys tidy administrative work), I’m the one who’s organizing the group. Learning to practice the IFS model got me in touch with the members of my inner community, and over time I’ve come to conceptualize myself as something like a [median system](https://pluralpedia.org/w/Median?ref=chudgar.com). When I’m not writing about my inner world, I [practice as an IFS coach](https://www.chudgar.com/coaching) and a [communications consultant and writer-for-hire](https://www.chudgar.com/consulting). A decade ago, I spent a dozen years thinking and teaching about poetry, fiction, and philosophy with college students in Chicago and Saint Paul. Today I live in [neuroqueer](https://neuroqueer.com/neuroqueer-an-introduction/?ref=chudgar.com) contentment in Northeast Minneapolis, where I share a home with my husband, [outdoor birds](https://birds.haikubox.com/listen/348518973538?ref=chudgar.com), and indoor cats. ## What to expect Your Workshop is very simple in its structure, kind of like a brief, mellow, and very unusual college course. - **Weekly prompt.** Every meeting, I’ll provide a soft prompt for us all to write about, which Workshop participants can interpret strictly or loosely. - **Sharing our writing.** Three days before our meeting, you’ll share up to 1,000 words of your writing in a Google Drive folder. The rest of us will read, interact with, and ponder each other’s work. - **Weekly meeting.** Then, during our weekly call, we’ll talk about each other’s writing in ways that sustain our practices, develop our craft, and pursue healing and liberation for every system. #### “Soft prompts”? The first prompt will be simply to ****introduce your inner system to the rest of us**, whatever that means to you. From the second week on, the prompts will be responsive to whatever our Workshop seems to want or need at the time. For example, I might prompt us to: - Put our inner systems in dialogue with other systems at other scales (microbial, municipal, galactic, etc.) - Create works of praise or thanks to an unsung hero in our inner worlds - Explore a tension between two or more parts of our selves using the tropes of genre fiction - Write a brief skit that dramatizes an important historical moment in the development of our internal dynamics These are just a few ideas — we will come up with many, many more together. # Sign up to be notified about the next Workshops If you’re interested, just fill out this form to let me know, and I’ll keep you posted about upcoming Workshops. ### How IFS coaching works: an introduction in video clips URL: https://www.chudgar.com/an-introduction-in-video-clips/ Last updated: 2023-08-24T15:37:40.000Z The kind of coaching I do is hard to explain in the abstract, but you can understand it intuitively when you see it in action. That’s why [my colleague Alysa](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-first-sessions/) suggested recording demonstration sessions, to show folks what our methods are like and why. In this one, Alysa plays “Michelle,” a new client who’s just started coaching with me. If you’re thinking about working with an Internal Family Systems practitioner, or if you’re curious about [exploring your inner world on your own](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/ways-to-get-started/), our session — in brief clips or [as a whole](#whole-session) — will give you a vivid sense of what it’s like and how it works. ## 8 IFS concepts in 8 short clips Each of the posts below pairs a brief clip from our session (between 2½ and 6½ minutes long) with a clear, easy-to-understand explanation of what’s going on and why. [Demo session 1: “A lot of feelings at one time”Having mixed feelings is a common experience — and it’s the easiest, most direct way to begin exploring the complexity of our inner communities. During the first few minutes of this demonstration session, see if you can track all the different ways “Michelle” is feeling.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/size/w256h256/2023/08/yellow-object-square-3.png)Ash ChudgarAsh Chudgar![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/08/Screenshot-2023-08-19-at-9.59.26-AM.png)](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-1/) [Demo session 2: Why turning inward requires consentWhen you’re experiencing emotional suffering, deliberately turning your attention inward can be daunting. Before I invite my client to start paying attention to her inner world, I explain why, and reassure her that she can stop at any time. Can you catch three requests for consent in this clip?![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/size/w256h256/2023/08/yellow-object-square-3.png)Ash ChudgarAsh Chudgar![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/08/Screenshot-2023-08-19-at-10.01.23-AM.png)](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-2/) [Demo session 3: Meeting a part who feels anxiousWhen you start paying attention to your inner world, parts of you may use strong sensations to get your attention. Here, a part of “Michelle” floods her with nausea — uncomfortable, but bearable. This illustrates a crucial point: as long as you can observe a feeling, it can’t overwhelm you.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/size/w256h256/2023/08/yellow-object-square-3.png)Ash ChudgarAsh Chudgar![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/08/Screenshot-2023-08-19-at-10.04.39-AM.png)](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-3/) [Demo session 4: Honoring protective responsesThe part of “Michelle” who’s giving her intense nausea clearly has a lot of information for her — but before she can inquire, another part of her intervenes to put “shields up” against the bad feeling. Rather than persisting, we honor its protective wisdom and back off. See what happens when we do.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/size/w256h256/2023/08/yellow-object-square-3.png)Ash ChudgarAsh Chudgar![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/08/Screenshot-2023-08-19-at-10.08.04-AM-1.png)](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-4/) [Demo session 5: Explaining the theoryThe idea that you can heal just by making friends with various parts of your inner life — how can that possibly be true? The skeptical parts of us are wise to demand an answer. Here I explain exactly how the IFS model is supposed to work by explaining how it’s similar to my client’s line of work.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/size/w256h256/2023/08/yellow-object-square-3.png)Ash ChudgarAsh Chudgar![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/08/Screenshot-2023-08-19-at-10.12.06-AM.png)](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-5) [Demo session 6: Learning about positive intentionsIn Internal Family Systems practice, we take it as given that every part of who you are is doing its very best to keep you alive and safe — but when parts of you are causing you pain, it’s hard to believe they mean well. Listen to how “Michelle” is wary of some of her parts.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/size/w256h256/2023/08/yellow-object-square-3.png)Ash ChudgarAsh Chudgar![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/08/Screenshot-2023-08-19-at-10.15.11-AM.png)](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-6) [Demo session 7: Paying attention to inner wisdomWhen we’re trying to heal hurting parts of ourselves, “slow is fast.” If we rush toward our pain too quickly, protective parts of us will redouble their efforts to keep the pain at bay. That’s why we insist on honoring every protective impulse as it appears — just as we do in this clip.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/size/w256h256/2023/08/yellow-object-square-3.png)Ash ChudgarAsh Chudgar![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/08/Screenshot-2023-08-19-at-10.17.59-AM.png)](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-7) [Demo session 8: Planning for the week to comeA coach or therapist can help you make sense of your own inner world, but you’re the only person who can make the choice to pay attention. In this final moment in our demonstration, “Michelle” and I negotiate a daily practice of internal inquiry that feels doable for her. Do you think she’ll do it?![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/size/w256h256/2023/08/yellow-object-square-3.png)Ash ChudgarAsh Chudgar![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/08/Screenshot-2023-08-19-at-10.20.05-AM.png)](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-8/) ## The flow of the session My whole first session with “Michelle” lasted almost an hour, but much of that time we spent in silence — which is necessary for exploring your inner world, but very boring to watch! The video below condenses our whole session down to about 28 minutes, so you can see the flow of it uninterrupted. ### Demo session 8: Planning for the week to come URL: https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-8/ Last updated: 2023-08-23T21:52:12.000Z The real magic of partswork happens *between* coaching sessions, as my clients get in touch with their own internal communities. At the end of every session, I help my client choose a specific way to stay in touch with their inner world, every single day, until we see each other again. Since this is my first session with “Michelle” (Alysa Haas), I’m introducing the notion of daily inner work for the first time — and I suggest doing just a tiny bit of inner inquiry every day, no more than a minute at a time. Even so, parts of “Michelle” are very skeptical about the idea. > “MICHELLE”: I’m 85% on board. That sounds good. > > ASH: Tell me about the 15% that’s not on board. > > “MICHELLE:” Oftentimes when there’s something like this, like “you should do self-care,” I don’t want to do it. Or … I do it and then I fail, and then I feel even worse about myself, you know? So I’m skeptical about making promises that I usually don’t keep. > > ASH: Makes perfect sense. So with respect to the … “self-care”: great news, this is *not* that. You’re a reporter, right? You’re a journalist, yes? > > “MICHELLE”: Yes. > > ASH: This is inquiry, this is reporting. Think of it that way. > > “MICHELLE”: I do like that. > > ASH: So for 60 seconds, just report. Just pay attention. “Michelle” leaves the session not entirely convinced of the utility of this practice — in fact, she’s pretty sure that she’s not going to do it. Experience tells me otherwise. What do you think? ## Thank you Alysa! At the end of this demonstration session, I am just incandescent with gratitude to my friend and colleague [Alysa D. Haas](https://www.alysadhaas.com/?ref=chudgar.com), whose idea it was to make this video, and whose remarkable performance as “Michelle” made me a better coach than I was when we started. I hope we can work together again some day soon! > [⏮️ Previous](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-7) | [All clips](https://www.chudgar.com/an-introduction-in-video-clips) ### Demo session 7: Paying attention to inner wisdom URL: https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-7/ Last updated: 2023-08-23T21:47:26.000Z I’ve gone to quite a few traditional therapists over the years, and I’ve always joked that they must make a notch in their desks every time they get a patient to cry. That’s not actually true, of course — I have asked therapists point-blank, and they assure me it’s not — but the feeling behind the joke is both profound and widely shared. From our own experiences with mental healthcare, directly or in cultural representations, we can easily assume that healing *only* happens on the other side of an intense experience of negative emotion. As one client said to me the other day, in perfect seriousness: “If I’m not a sobbing mess, am I really getting better?” I know exactly what that client meant, since I asked that question myself when I first started exploring my own inner world. The IFS practitioner I was seeing at the time frustrated me by *not* quickly homing in on my worst childhood traumas and deepest internal pain. I was impatient to feel better, and I thought I couldn’t possibly feel better without first feeling much, much worse. But my IFS practitioner was in no hurry. “We’ll get there when we get there,” he would say serenely. And we did — much faster, I know now, than we would have if we’d aimed straight for the pain. As my session with “Michelle” (Alysa Haas) winds down, I invite her to turn her attention inward one last time — and when she does, she moves in a way that gets my attention. > ASH: It seems like — like something just happened. > > “MICHELLE”: Yeah. Um, yes. I don’t fully want to tell you. But what I’m going to tell you, is that I’m also noticing I’m feeling sad. > > ASH: I get why you might not want to tell me about that. We’re very new to each other. You don’t have to tell me any more about that sad feeling, now or ever, unless you want to. At a moment like this, parts of me *really* want to learn more about the sadness! But because I am an IFS practitioner, I gently acknowledge the parts of me who want to aim for the pain — they’re curious, of course, and they want to help “Michelle” feel better — and invite them to let me keep working, which they do. > “MICHELLE”: I was tearing up because when you said that I don’t have to tell you anything more about it, it just felt like relief. > > ASH: Yeah. Yeah. The way that this works is based on consent, at every second. So at every moment as we’re working together, you get to decide whether we keep going or not, or back off. You get to decide whether you want to tell me something or keep it private. At every single second, you get to decide. Insisting on consent in this way reassures every part of “Michelle” that I’m not going to harm her, or make her do anything *they* aren’t comfortable with. We trust their wisdom; if they think it’s too dangerous to go somewhere, then we won’t. “Michelle” and I will leave this session without learning anything more about the sadness — and that’s exactly as it should be. We’ll get there when we get there. As our first session comes to a close, “Michelle” and I will turn our attention to the part of coaching where the magic really happens: deciding how she’ll keep in touch with her inner world between now and our next session. > [⏮️ Previous](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-6) | [All clips](https://www.chudgar.com/an-introduction-in-video-clips) | [Next ⏭️](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-8) ### Demo session 6: Learning about positive intentions URL: https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-6/ Last updated: 2023-08-23T21:44:35.000Z Because “Michelle” is *actually* my friend Alysa Haas, a trained IFS practitioner, she could ask me common questions about how the model works in particularly delightful ways. At this point, I’m explaining that every part of “Michelle” has her best interests in mind: > ASH: You can be assured that whatever you feel, or whatever different parts of yourself you notice, it’s trying to protect you and help you live in the world as well as possible. How does that sit with you? > > “MICHELLE”: I mean, yeah. I’m like, yeah, sure... > > ASH: But? > > “MICHELLE”: I’ll believe it when I see it. … I’m like, yeah, but *why?* Why do I want to feel like I want to throw up? And the, and the teeth-grinding and stuff? That’s really not helpful! That’s really not helpful! Good question! The parts of us who communicate with unpleasant physical sensations and habits *do* feel unhelpful — which is why it’s vital to begin from the premise that their intentions are good. > ASH: My hypothesis is that the teeth-grinding and the feeling like you want to throw up — these are actually different parts of Michelle, who are trying to help you in one way or another. > > “MICHELLE”: Why, why would they be doing stuff that hurts and is annoying? > > ASH: They might think that there’s no better way. Or no other way to get you to pay attention. > > “MICHELLE”: Okay. > > ASH: And to be clear, you’re paying attention! Partswork, like any kind of community-building, takes a leap of faith and trust. Against much evidence to the contrary, we have to believe that every part of who we are — even the parts of us who cause us terrible suffering — is acting only for our good. Taking that leap of faith, over and over, is the work we practice in coaching. Now that we’ve talked about the theory for a while, I’ll accompany “Michelle” on one more inward turn before our session concludes — which will give us even more opportunities to practice consent. > [⏮️ Previous](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-5) | [All clips](https://www.chudgar.com/an-introduction-in-video-clips) | [Next ⏭️](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-7) ### Demo session 5: Explaining the theory URL: https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-5/ Last updated: 2023-08-23T21:38:36.000Z At some point or other, my coaching clients always ask a version of the same skeptical question: *How is paying attention to my inner world supposed to make me feel better?* By the time they make an appointment with me, my clients have usually spent years or decades trying one healing practice after another, with little success to show for it. Many parts of them are justly suspicious of any new offer of support. They don’t want to get their hopes up, only to be disappointed again — and they *really* don’t want to try anything that could make them feel even worse. And the idea of attributing personal qualities to various mental patterns strikes many skeptical parts as hokey, childish, or even literally insane. In the [previous part of our demonstration session](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-4-honoring-protective-responses), a part of “Michelle” (Alysa Haas) intervened to shield her from lingering too long on a very intense feeling. We honored its intervention and immediately backed off. At this point, I had a hunch that there were parts of “Michelle” who might feel more comfortable if they understood what we were doing. I explained the Internal Family Systems model in terms that were likely to make “Michelle,” a journalist, feel in control and confident. “You’re a writer, right?” I asked. > “MICHELLE”: Yeah. > > ASH: So I think of what we’re doing now as sort of characterization. Looking inside of us and finding patterns. And then trying to interact with them by imagining them as sort of characters. Does that make sense? > > “MICHELLE”: Yeah, it does. But I’m also like, why? Another fair question! > ASH: What you and I are doing is we’re trying to make all of those different voices that are right now yelling in your head. We’re trying to get it so that they can have more of a friendly dialogue. And the way we do that is by just paying attention to them. And because as humans we’re really good at paying attention to other human beings, we just imagine these different parts of ourselves as though they were like little inner characters. Like a little internal family, as it were. And that is the IFS model in a nutshell. See how “Michelle” responds: This quick explanation of the theory doesn’t win over *all* Michelle’s protective parts at once, of course. As we continue, she’ll ask another wise and profound question: Why in the world do parts of us *deliberately* make us feel bad? > [⏮️ Previous](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-4) | [All clips](https://www.chudgar.com/an-introduction-in-video-clips) | [Next ⏭️](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-6) ### Demo session 4: Honoring protective responses URL: https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-4/ Last updated: 2023-08-23T21:36:40.000Z By this point in our demonstration session, “Michelle” (Alysa Haas) has been focusing on a part of her who’s communicating through an electrical feeling of nausea. As unpleasant as that feeling is, I know it’s got useful information for “Michelle” — so I ask her to pay a little more attention to it. Then another part of Michelle swiftly intervenes to stop her from doing just that: > “MICHELLE”: I really don’t like it. Like, I really don’t want to \[pay more attention to it\]. > > ASH: For sure, for sure. What does it feel like not to like it? What is that feeling like in your body? > > “MICHELLE: … I guess my *thought* is that I want it to go away, but in my body I *feel* like, “Shields! Shields! Shields!” That’s what it feels like. At a moment like this, many traditional therapeutic modalities would pounce: Aha, there’s pain here, let’s dig deeper! But in Internal Family Systems practice, we do exactly the opposite. Instead of pushing past the part of “Michelle” who’s shielding her from an unpleasant feeling, I trust that protective part of her — and back off immediately. Notice what happens then: Over the course of her life so far, various parts of “Michelle” have evolved all kinds of strategies to keep her safe — including simply refusing to inquire too deeply into potentially overwhelming feelings. By honoring the wisdom of that protective response, we’re showing every part of her that we will *never* do anything without their full consent. In the next part of our session, we’ll earn the consent of another part of “Michelle” — one who really wants to understand what the heck we’re doing here. > [⏮️ Previous](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-3) | [All clips](https://www.chudgar.com/an-introduction-in-video-clips) | [Next ⏭️](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-3) ### Kindness in Space URL: https://www.chudgar.com/kindness-in-space/ Last updated: 2023-08-24T15:39:02.000Z **My husband Paddy just told me about [a memory-care home in the Netherlands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogeweyk?ref=chudgar.com) that is arranged like a little town.** The corridors have the names of streets, and the seniors’ rooms are arranged to feel like apartments whose front doors open onto a public sidewalk, each of which has its own neighborhood character — rural charm, urban bustle, or quiet piety, for example. Every nexus of corridors is principally occupied by an important civic service — grocer’s, post office, restaurant, clinic — each of which is a perfectly realized miniature of the most common local version of its type. I imagine these miniatures have the sort of uncanny, meaning-saturated super-recognizability that AI pictures often have nowadays, and I am tempted to ask one of them to show me its bemused alien’s God’s-eye view of the idea of Dutch beauty parlor, just to see. (I resist the temptation because, never having been to the Netherlands, I enjoy picturing Delftware dairy-maids getting tiny blue tulips painted on their tiny white nails inside a wooden shoe.) The idea behind the facility, my husband explained, was to create the sort of space where people whose memories have been sanded down to the distant past would be able to recognize, instantly, the meaningful landmarks of home. “It seems very kind,” Paddy said, and I agreed. The two of us contemplated The Dutch nursing home quietly in our garden, as bumblebees and butterflies attended to their business among the flowers. Paddy’s mother Millie, who is 94½ years old and by all accounts quite the character, lives in a very different sort of place. Thought I have not seen the Dutch home, I imagine it’s laid out very much like her memory-care facility in rural Minnesota: wide bright hallways, commodious nurses’ stations here and there, all the needful services in clearly marked areas of their own. When Millie calls my husband — the youngest of her six boys, her baby, and also a burly 58-year old man with a grizzled beard — from the nurses’ station where she lives, as she does relentlessly some days, she is having a senile delusions. She says, “I’m in the waiting room at the car dealership,” or “Come pick me up at the bank,” but of course she is in no such place. In Millie’s sanded-down memory, at least from what I overhear, she lives in a farmhouse far outside Grand Forks, North Dakota. Her parents live there too, sometimes, along with some of her twelve brothers and sisters (all but two are dead), most or all of her sons (the oldest of whom is pushing eighty), and some of her sons’ senior spouses. As the most junior spouse, I myself was consigned to the sawdust of her memory early on. That makes me sadder than I thought it would. But I respect the structural justice of the process (last in, first out). I suspect I must have been tricky for Millie to remember in the first place. Even a decade ago, when she was still quite sharp, there couldn’t have been a readymade conceptual nook in her mind to keep her baby’s same-sex spouse in. To this day, she has never once betrayed even the slightest discomfort about my relationship with her son — not just back when she was still able to be polite, but long after dementia had abraded away any lingering grooves of chilly Midwestern politeness. (To Millie’s credit, that layer of artifice had always been pretty thin.) Her acceptance of me always felt deep and genuine, quite as sincere as her opinions about my former academic career (“hah, you’re not so smart”), her husband’s tattoos (“it breaks my *heart*”), or my beard (“I’m going to cut it off while you’re asleep”). No matter how fond she was of me, though, a pious Ukrainian Catholic farm girl of her generation couldn’t have had a readymade category for an in-law of my particular description, any more than I can imagine a second cousin twice removed. The closest analogy I can imagine is the bachelor farmer who one day quietly moves in with another bachelor farmer, which I imagine sometimes occurred in rural North Dakota. But I don’t know if Millie ever knew of such an arrangement, and even if she did, the analogy is hardly precise. At any rate, I can scarcely begrudge her weary brain the relief of no longer having to figure me out. When she’d forgotten my name and relationship to her son, but still recognized me as somebody familiar and friendly enough to holler at, it became clear that Millie’s *son’s husband* — a phrase even I, fifty years younger than she is, am still old enough to find uncanny — still fit, somehow, into the messy but roomy drawer that held Millie’s idea of kin. Until she forgot me altogether, she always told me she loved me, “like one of my own,” and I loved her right back. But now there is no longer any groove to hold the idea of “my son’s husband” on the ever-smoother surface of her memory. --- **Other ideas never really made much of a mark on her memory at all, like the ideas she would need to conceptualize the place where she now lives.** Dedicated memory-care facilities were unknown in the world that formed her as a person, and even nursing homes themselves looked entirely different. Paddy tells me St. Anne’s, the only old-folks’ home Millie ever knew well, was a squalid disinfectant-smelling last resort run by dour nuns. (His sister maintains that the nuns were not dour, and made great efforts to engage the residents in social interaction, but she agrees that “the digs were yucky.”) Millie’s grandparents died at their farmhouse; so did her parents at their farmhouse, and so did most of her siblings at farmhouses, or regular houses, of their own. Dying at home made sense to Millie and her kin because, in their experience, nursing homes were little better than prisons. I don’t just mean nursing homes from the distant past. Just six or seven years ago, the county exiled Millie’s best friend Ray (a noted boxer, musician, and bachelor bon vivant) to an old-folks’ home eight hours north-northwest of Grand Forks, almost at the Canadian border, after a neighbor found Ray on the floor of his farmhouse one winter, where he’d been lying for days. Millie still lived by herself at the time, though in retrospect she probably shouldn’t have. “Come bust me outta here, Millie,” Ray roared over the phone, “you gotta come bust me outta here!” — whereupon she hung up, put on her coat, tossed her little dog in the back seat of her bright-yellow truck, drove the eight hours north-northwest in the bitter cold, threw open the passenger door at the curb, and busted Ray outta there. “I never set *one foot* inside that place,” she crowed when she told Paddy about the caper. “Not *one foot.*” Ray lived on the recliner in her TV room for several months after that, until a couple of Paddy’s brothers came and kicked him out for cause. He’d been pissing into the recliner since he couldn’t really walk, and tiny Millie couldn’t haul all six-feet-six of him up when he fell, which he did often. There was nothing to be done about it. Poor Ray did end up back in a nursing home, but by then Millie was already too far gone to visit him, much less bust him out. At any rate, the first nurse’s station at a memory-care facility that Millie ever encountered in her near-century of life was the one she calls Paddy and his brothers and their senior wives from, sometimes thirty times a day, when the old head nurse quits (they’ve had four in four years) and the new head nurse doesn’t realize she has to re-approve Millie’s anti-anxiety meds *every time,* or Millie stops getting them and starts dialing. (The regulations that govern such matters seem designed largely to protect nonagenarians from ruining their lives by getting hooked on benzos.) The nurse’s station here looks like no place Millie has ever been before, so she does her best to guess. A clearly public place, seating meant for strangers, high ceiling, high counter, blond wood, gray and burgundy finishes, busy women typing behind glass: a hospital, a police station? Nothing in this environment legibly says what it is, or where, or what’s supposed to happen there, so Millie can only do her best to make inferences. “I’m just waiting here at the auto shop,” she says to her son on the phone, beside herself with worry, “please, please come pick me up.” It is very sad: she has dementia, she’s very far gone, and she doesn’t know where she is. --- **Later on I looked up [an article](https://www.cnn.com/2013/07/11/world/europe/wus-holland-dementia-village/?ref=chudgar.com) on the Dutch memory-care place that Paddy mentioned, which describes it in sinister terms:** as “a place where residents can live a seemingly normal life, but in reality are being watched all the time.” Of course [being watched all the time *is* a normal life](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/07/facial-recognition-fbi-dod-research-aclu/?ref=chudgar.com) for many people right now — but the author is concerned about the seniors. “In some ways,” he frets to Yvette van Amerongen, the remarkable nursing home she founded > is similar to the manufactured reality depicted in the movie “The Truman Show,” where a man played by Jim Carrey discovers his entire life is actually a TV program. Everything he thinks is real is in fact a mirage. … van Amerongen dismisses any accusations that she and her staff are duping their residents. “We have a real society here,” she says. “I don’t think people feel fooled. They feel fooled if we just tell them a story that’s not true and they know it. We’re not telling stories.” I think the founder of the place is being too modest: they’re doing the *opposite* of telling people “a story that’s not true.” The reality of van Amerongen’s place is certainly “manufactured,” but I think that’s equally true of *any* environment made by human hands. The set in the movie *The Truman Show* is manufactured no less than the set *of* the movie, no less than the soundstages and small towns where they film them, no less than the houses the crew and the actors go home to after they wrap for the day. A bank is a manufactured reality. So is a a circle of stones around a campfire. So is the nurses’ station at a memory-care facility. Because manufacture is a deliberate act, every human environment has its own opinions about what reality there can be like. The circle of stones around the campfire can be big enough to welcome or small enough to exclude. The bank that might once have resembled a tiny godless Greek temple now looks like a strange, sterile coffeeshop where nobody really drinks coffee. The memory-care facility can be manufactured to make foolish delusions of its residents’ bewildered attempts to describe their alien surroundings. Or, like van Amerongen’s place, it can be manufactured so the ways they describe their environment are *true.* --- **I imagine Millie at the Dutch place, calling up her youngest son. “Hi, Patrick,” she says.** “Hey mom! Whatcha doing,” he asks, as he always does. “Oh, not much,” she replies. “I’m sitting outside the restaurant.” We know exactly where she means: we’ve sat outside the restaurant too, on the park bench there, before we went in for lunch the last time we visited. The restaurant in question is a bright and sparse-tabled dining room where all the diners are quiet elders in wheelchairs, since after all we are in a memory-care unit. (I imagine everybody is wearing wooden shoes and eating from windmill-and-tulip china, though I know that is silly.) Outside the door is a sign with a restaurant’s name; just inside, there’s a host standing a little lectern, who shows you to your table. The employees who glide around the dining room perform the exact functions of waiters, providing food and drink upon request and clearing plates away. The food and drink are real, listed on a menu, and have been paid for; the dishes are done by others in a kitchen out of sight. For all intents and purposes, truly and literally, Millie is sitting outside a restaurant. This does not seem so very sad. Here too Millie has dementia, and she’s very far gone; but here she knows exactly where she is, which is exactly where *we* think she is too. Here she is not just another useless old lady experiencing a senile delusion in the memory-care facility Medicaid pays to warehouse her until her body dies. Here Millie is a patron, dining out. The Dutch place, as I am imagining it, does something really quite marvelous. It certainly makes anxious and confused people feel safer, more capable, more at home. I imagine it also makes work infinitely more pleasant for the kind and gentle employees who take care of the old folks who live there. Working at a clinic in a memory-care unit is one thing; working at a clinic across the courtyard from the grocer’s, at the intersection of two streets with names, seems like quite another, and much less grim. But the real marvel, I think, is how its designers manufactured the reality of the place to accommodate both the memories of the residents and the contemporary experience of staff and families *at the same time*. This is what makes it so very kind. The place where Millie lives is not kind at all. It’s not the place’s fault; its form follows its function, just as the people who work there live [lives of shocking economic misery](https://www.epi.org/publication/residential-long-term-care-workers/?ref=chudgar.com) because that is what capital wants. Designing kind space, like paying personal-care assistants and nurses dignified wages, is not very efficient upfront, so capital has no patience for it. Imagine paying thoughtful people to wonder about what a particular set of old folks will remember, then to average all that out, and then to name the streets just right and spec the perfect cobblestone-patterned carpets for maximum familiarity. At Millie’s memory-care faculty — indeed, at most memory-care facilities in the Netherlands, too, from what I hear — capital has not allowed any humans to make such costly efforts. I hasten to say that Millie lives in a *perfectly lovely* facility, where all the staff really do try their best. But it is conceptually unkind. To understand her day-to-day environment in anything like an accurate way, Millie would need a staggering array of concepts she and her contemporaries never had any need for, or needed so recently that dementia must have made quick work of them: asset forfeiture, prior authorization, Medicaid. When she calls Paddy and his brothers from the nurses’ station, over and over, demanding to be picked up from whatever public building she finds herself in, her best efforts to guess her own location diverge so dramatically from the reality her sons and the nurses inhabit that she seems to all of them like a foolish old lady. In that alien context, whose reality was manufactured without her brain in mind, that’s really all she can be. In recent months, Millie’s dementia seems to be smoothing away the ideas of banks, car dealerships, and public buildings overall. Lately she mostly describes her surroundings as a small child might: my bed, my TV, a chair, a nurse. Increasingly, she and the staff of the place, and her sons, are living in the same reality, which includes only one room at a time. This change feels like a small blessing, in that Millie seems less and less delusional. But this thin sort of shared reality, so meagerly supplied with simple nouns, is not really a place where human sociability can flourish. These days, during their ever-briefer conversations, Paddy and his mother talk about her bed and her TV, which they agree about. His profession (visual merchandising), age (senior), and location (Minneapolis) are no longer remotely comprehensible, but it still pleases her very much to hear that he’s doing well for himself, and that he’s happily married. It really doesn’t seem to matter to whom; to Millie, married is good. When he visits her, he shows her pictures of the bees in our garden on his phone. --- **Now that I know about the kindness of the Dutch memory-care facility, I am starting to see other marvels of kindness all around me.** The computer interface I’m typing in now is mostly an abstract series of overlaid boxes with images and text in each of them, but it is kind that in this reality the boxes are called “windows,” with “tabs,” on a “desktop.” These metaphors make no spatial sense all together, but they seem to work well enough that those of us who spend our days in their environment can describe them without seeming foolish or crazy. I can talk about to the tabbed windows on my desktop, even with someone who knows much more about computers than I do, and I will not seem delusional because the computer person calls them the same thing. The much-maligned skeuomorphic interfaces of software from years ago were kind in just that way. Carefully and deliberately, they bent an incomprehensible new environment into shapes most people could recognize, so nobody would have to sound like a crazy old lady, at least not for long. Design theory calls little knobs and handles and such “affordances,” objects whose material reality helpfully suggests just how to interact with them. The kind door-handle shows you how to push on it before you even have to wonder. The horizontal bar on a door that opens inward, by contrast, makes you look like a crazy person while you push on it, which is not kind at all. Kind places are manufactured to fit comfortably into readymade grooves in the minds of the people who encounter them. The narrower and more homogeneous those people are, the more precise its kindness can be. For the team who designed the Dutch old folk’s home, it presumably took quite a bit of work — “human-centered design,” as it’s called — to realize the spatial ideals that their residents would find most familiar. No matter how well they performed that task, though, I imagine not *all* the seniors in the Dutch old-folks’ home find a little Dutch village reassuringly familiar. For some, whose oldest memories were formed in very different spatial worlds, a corner grocery store might be just as alien as a nurses’ station in a memory-care facility. But even if you grew up far from windmills and tulips, I suspect you’d still recognize paths as paths, doors as doors, and signs as signs. In fact, I think people can and do detect even the *effort* to be kind in this way, and feel welcomed because of it. Even a novel and mysterious affordance — a dial on an unknown machine, an unmarked button on a wall — is subtle but irresistible evidence that someone once made a deliberate effort to bend reality into a familiar shape to be kind to somebody else. There is a German phrase, of course, for this tender abstract sense that an effort has been made: *Zweckmäßigkeit ohne Zweck*. I don’t know if the designers of the kind memory-care facility used the corresponding phrase in Dutch — “doelmatigheid zonder doel,” the internet tells me — to describe the effect they were shooting for, but I like to think they did. The phrase, coined by Immanuel Kant, describes the quality something has when you’re not sure what it’s for, but it seems indisputably *for you* — saturated with purpose and welcome, like a cake soaked in sweet milk. With something like the same attitude, the flowers in our garden seem to say to the bees, very kindly: you belong here, you are welcome, you are needed, we agree. --- *Thanks to Patrick Chudgar and Kris Vervaecke for their help.* ### Demo session 3: Meeting a part who feels anxious URL: https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-3/ Last updated: 2023-08-23T21:36:04.000Z I heard a saying often during my years in A.A.: “Your mind is a scary neighborhood, so don’t go there alone.” I believed it, too — for good reason. Most people who wind up in 12-Step meetings, including me, suffer from intensely unpleasant inner sensations, thoughts, and feelings — mental phenomena so overwhelming that we use addictive substances and practices to keep them out of our awareness. Once we don’t have our addictions to rely on any longer, the overwhelming inner experiences we’ve been trying to avoid tend to come roaring back to consciousness. Only confronting those demons with the help of other people in recovery keeps us from having to face them all by ourselves. Like 12-Step recovery, Internal Family Systems work aims to make your mind a less scary place — but it does so in a very different way. Rather than asking other people for backup while you battle terrifying inner monsters, we help you get to recognize, understand, and even appreciate *every* part of your inner experience, even the parts who try to get your attention by giving you intense, unpleasant feelings. In this clip from our demonstration session, my client “Michelle” (Alyssa Haas) encounters an intensely unpleasant feeling (at 1:38): > “MICHELLE”: I’m imagining some sort of like electrical circuit that’s connected up and down my body, down to my legs and up, and it’s like the electricity is going. There’s also some circuits that go through here and like come out through my mouth. There’s this sense of wanting to like get it out through throwing up. Like that. I want to push a button that’s like “Eject!” For someone who’s just found out she’s carrying an unexpected child, that feeling makes perfect sense. *Of course* there’s a part of her who wants to evict the uninvited guest from her body! But that’s not the only part of “Michelle” we encounter: another part of her is able to come up with a funny metaphor to describe the first one. Laughing with me about the “eject button” gives Michelle a much-needed respite from the feeling of electric nausea. In that respite, I invite “Michelle” to notice something crucial: > ASH: You just noticed something really important, which is that even though you’re having this very strong feeling, it’s not all of you. … There is another part of you that could make a little joke with me and we could laugh. … This really strong feeling … it’s just one part of Michelle. It’s not all of who you are. This is the central insight of Internal Family Systems practice. No matter how intense the inner experiences you’re having at any point, no individual sensation, thought, or feeling is *all of you.* You have many parts, not just one; and beyond all the individual parts that make up your personality, there’s always a calm, clear awareness that can calmly observe all the others. In IFS, that awareness is called your “Self.” When you’re in touch with your Self, there is *nothing* in your mind that can scare you, no matter how monstrous it might first seem. Before “Michelle” can rely on her Self for guidance, though, she’ll have to meet all the parts of her who’ve been trying to protect her in its place. We’ll meet one of them next. > [⏮️ Previous](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-2) | [All clips](https://www.chudgar.com/an-introduction-in-video-clips) | [Next ⏭️](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-4) ### Demo session 2: Why turning inward requires consent URL: https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-2/ Last updated: 2023-08-23T21:35:27.000Z In the [first few minutes](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-1-greetings) of our demonstration session, my new coaching client “Michelle” (Alysa Haas) told me all the different ways she’s feeling about what’s going on in her life. Those mixed feelings led us to directly the internal conflict that brought her to my virtual office: while most parts of her want to have the baby she’s carrying, other parts of her do not agree. The real work of our session begins just afterward, when I invite “Michelle” to turn her attention inward, toward all the different feelings she’s having. This is what Internal Family Systems practitioners call a “you-turn”: deliberately shifting your consciousness from the world outside you to the world within yourself. If you expect the sensations, thoughts, and emotions inside of you to be unpleasant or even overwhelming, turning inward can take great courage. That’s why I carefully explain to “Michelle” the rationale for doing so. I assure her that, if what she finds in her inner world gets too intense, she can simply stop at any time. And I ask her, three times, for her explicit consent to continue. See if you can catch them all. In the next part of our session, “Michelle” will encounter a part of her who’s feeling very intense indeed. > [⏮️ Previous](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-1) | [All clips](https://www.chudgar.com/an-introduction-in-video-clips) | [Next ⏭️](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-3) ### Demo session 1: “A lot of feelings at one time” URL: https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-1/ Last updated: 2023-08-23T21:33:44.000Z In the first few minutes of our first coaching session, my new client “Michelle” (played by my colleague [Alysa Haas](https://www.alysadhaas.com/?ref=chudgar.com)) tells me all about what’s causing her stress — the end of a romantic relationship, a transatlantic move back to her hometown, and an unexpected pregnancy. “Michelle” has lots of conflicting feelings about all these dramatic events, and her discomfort with all those feelings is what led her to coaching. “Wow,” I say (4:13 in the video). “That is a lot of feelings at one time!” By drawing attention to the sheer number of emotions “Michelle” is having at once, I’m gently introducing the fundamental principle of Internal Family Systems model: that our personality is composed of many different parts, and those parts often have very different reactions to the same events. That’s the principle that underlies this powerful model of healing. In the next part of our session, I’ll ask “Michelle” for her explicit consent to turn her attention inward. > ⏮️ Previous | [All clips](https://www.chudgar.com/an-introduction-in-video-clips) | [Next ⏭️](https://www.chudgar.com/demo-session-2) ### What a first coaching session might be like URL: https://www.chudgar.com/demo-first-sessions/ Last updated: 2023-08-23T20:45:34.000Z [Alysa Haas](https://www.alysadhaas.com/?ref=chudgar.com) and I got trained in Internal Family Systems together, and we’ve been pals ever since. She is currently on her way to licensure in clinical counseling, but for now she’s practicing as a non-clinical coach, like me — and one day this summer, she pointed out an important difference between clinical mental health and the kind of coaching we do. Whereas everybody who’s ever watched TV knows more or less what traditional therapy is like (two people, quiet room, tissues on the table, lots of nodding), almost nobody knows what “coaching” is — particularly the special kind of inward-focused coaching that she and I practice. “I wish I could give people a better idea of what IFS actually is,” she wrote to me back in June: > What it looks like. And that it’s not as scary and weird as it might sound to some people, who are like, ‘So … voices in your head?’ I’ve been thinking about making a sample video of a session to share on my site. I’m wondering if you might be interested in being my sample client, and in return, I’d be happy to be your sample client. I’m imagining we would make up some of our character while also using our authenticity. What do you think? I thought the idea was *amazing.* A couple weeks later, Alysa and I got together on Zoom and recorded two “first sessions.” ## Alysa’s first session with “Ted” I played “Ted,” a middle-aged English professor whose recent panic attacks brought him to Alysa for coaching. I wore my beard down for the purpose, and used an appropriately bookish Zoom background. The character of “Ted” is very much like me in many ways, so our session was much more moving than I expected. Alysa excerpted this part of our session to demonstrate “unblending,” the IFS technique we use to get a little distance from a part of ourselves who’s taking over the seat of our consciousness. #### How Alysa helps “Ted” unblend **“Ted” gets a stomachache when he describes how he’s feeling about his work, and Alysa asks him how he feels about it. He wants it to go away. Here’s what Alysa says at 4:30 in the video:* ****ALYSA:** So I’m wondering if you can see the thought that happens in your mind, that says, “That stomachache should go away,” and witness that thought as something a little bit **out here*. A little bit removed from you. ****“TED”:** Like — not just me? … ****ALYSA:** Right. ****“TED”:** Okay. … Huh. ****ALYSA:** So how do you experience that thought, now that it’s a little bit removed from you? ****TED:** So, this is — it’s just silly, but, like — I imagined it as, like, a surly teenager. Yeah. I don’t know where that came from. **Keep watching to see what happens next!* “What Is ‘Unblending’ in IFS? Highlights from an Internal Family Systems session.” Video: Alysa D. Haas, [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-voZOpj6lFw&ref=chudgar.com) ## Ash’s first session with “Michelle” One session down, one to go. To get into our new roles, I braided my beard and put on one of my usual summertime shirts, and Alysa put on a dignified cardigan. Then I had my first coaching session with “Michelle,” a young journalist who has just moved from Europe back to the small American town where her mother lives. (You may recognize her story from a famous and very beloved TV series, which I have somehow managed never to see.) We did a lot of work together, and here’s an abridged edit of the whole session, with chapters to show different phases of the work. #### Ash asks “Michelle” for consent to turn inward **This kind of coaching is built on consent, at every moment, at every level. Before asking “Michelle” to turn her attention inward, at 8:50 in the video, Ash explains how she’ll be in charge the whole time:* ****ASH.** Any time during what we do together, when you are trying to understand how you’re thinking and feeling on the inside, any time you start to get overwhelmed, you can just stop. If if ever starts to feel like too much, just say so, and we’ll back off. That sound okay? ****“MICHELLE”:** Yeah. That sounds really nice. ****ASH:** For the rest of our time today, there is nothing to do but be curious. I’m going to pay attention to the time, so you don’t have to worry about it. And all you have to do is just inquire internally. That sound okay? ****“MICHELLE”:** Yeah, it sounds okay. It sounds a little nebulous, which makes me nervous. But I’m willing. I’m willing. ****ASH:** All right. It’ll make sense as we do it. So. Just to start out, make yourself as comfortable as you can, just right there where you are. ****“MICHELLE”:** Should I close my eyes? ****ASH:** If it feels good to you, you can. **Keep watching to see what “Michelle” discovers in her inner world.* “Internal Family Systems practitioners Alysa D. Haas and Ash Chudgar demonstrate what a first session of IFS coaching can be like.” Video: Ash Chudgar, [Vimeo](https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/854155707?ref=chudgar.com) ## More to come There’s so much richness in each moment of my session with “Michelle” that I’m planning to write about it just a little bit at a time, chapter by chapter. But for now, I’m so delighted with our videos that I wanted to share them right away, with immense thanks to my friend and colleague [Alysa](https://www.alysadhaas.com/?ref=chudgar.com) for her idea and our delightful creative partnership. If you find these videos helpful, pass ’em along! ### July is BIPOC Mental Health Month, and you’re invited URL: https://www.chudgar.com/support-bipoc-mental-health/ Last updated: 2023-08-05T19:31:35.000Z ****Individual trauma and social oppression tend to harm people in similar ways, and they need similar kinds of healing.** People of color in the United States, particularly Black and Indigenous folks, bear the heaviest burdens of both kinds of harm — and they’re also the least likely to have get the support they need to heal. That’s not just because white supremacy makes *all* forms of support harder to access for people of color, although it certainly does. It’s because the very idea of “mental health” [excluded people of color from the start](https://ct.counseling.org/2020/05/the-historical-roots-of-racial-disparities-in-the-mental-health-system/?ref=chudgar.com). That’s been changing since the middle of the 20th century, but *far* too slowly — which is why it matters that July is nationally recognized as BIPOC Mental Health Month. #### This month, I’m inviting you to join me in supporting [Mental Health Liberation](https://mentalhealthliberation.org/?ref=chudgar.com). Our donations will help connect people of color with high-quality mental healthcare from BIPOC providers, at no cost — and support BIPOC clinicians during their training and early careers. [Donate to Mental Health Liberation](https://mentalhealthliberation.org/bipoc-therapy-fund/?ref=chudgar.com) ### Embodied IFS in the Twin Cities URL: https://www.chudgar.com/robyns-embodied-ifs-group/ Last updated: 2024-06-19T19:53:10.000Z **This fall, certified IFS therapist and consultant** [**Robyn Lending Halsten**](https://ifs-institute.com/practitioners/all/14220?ref=chudgar.com) **will share her decades of experience in** [**Dance/Movement Therapy**](https://www.adta.org/what-is-dancemovement-therapy?ref=chudgar.com)**,** [**Sensorimotor Psychotherapy**](https://sensorimotorpsychotherapy.org/about/?ref=chudgar.com#what-is-sp) **(SP) and the** [**Discipline of Authentic Movement**](https://disciplineofauthenticmovement.com/discipline-of-authentic-movement/a-brief-description-of-the-discipline-of-authentic-movement/?ref=chudgar.com) **(DAM) with other Twin Cities IFS practitioners — including me! — in a new monthly consultation group.** --- ### Twin Cities Monthly In-Person Embodied IFS Case Consultation Group Forming **Facilitated by Robyn Lending Halsten, MA, LPC (WI), LPCC (MN), BC-DMT** #### About the group Each session will incorporate movement-based experientials to foster a deeper connection for growth and healing for both the provider and client. Connecting with Self and parts as they arise in relationship to the client will be explored. Participants will have the opportunity to integrate the IFS model through a neurobiological, somatic perspective that does not solely rely on verbal language for parts and Self to be revealed, expressed, and integrated. The first hour will be experiential and the second hour will focus on case consultation. No prior movement experience necessary. #### Details - **WHO** For Level 1 trained or equivalent IFS therapists and practitioners - **WHEN** September 8, 2023 to January 12, 2024, on the second Friday of every month from 10:00 a.m. to noon Central - **HOW MUCH** $150 per session ($750 total)—commitment to pay the 5 sessions required. Limited to 8 participants. Deposit of $150 due by July 15, balance due by September 1 #### About Robyn Robyn is a certified IFS therapist and consultant, board certified dance/movement therapist and is trained in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and the Authentic Movement. She has been integrating IFS into her therapy practice for over 30 years and was formerly trained in the model by Dick Schwartz and [Susan McConnell](https://www.embodiedself.net/?ref=chudgar.com) in 1999\. She has worked with children, teens, and adults in a variety of settings and is currently in private practice where she provides therapy, supervision and consultation. [Interested? Click here to email Robyn!](mailto:robyn1362@gmail.com?subject=Fall%202023%20embodied%20IFS%20consultation%20group) ### Avoiding the construction on 37th URL: https://www.chudgar.com/avoiding-the-construction-on-37th/ Last updated: 2024-02-21T17:40:39.000Z During the construction, you can’t drive west on 37th Avenue. If you’re driving, here are the best approaches to [my office](https://goo.gl/maps/gAUEZLxfWCoqomMJ7?ref=chudgar.com) while the construction is going on: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/08/2023-directions-to-our-place-1.png) - **Best: come north on Johnson Street.** It’s best to get here by driving north on Johnson Street, then turning left *immediately after the railroad tracks*, into what looks like an alley. That alley will take you directly to Buchanan street and my place. - **Possible: come east on 37th Avenue.** They’ve narrowed 37th to one very tight lane going eastbound, and you can take that from Central if you need too. It’s really bumpy! ### Book review: Healing, embodiment, and IFS in Palestine URL: https://www.chudgar.com/review-of-gordon-together-beyond-words/ Last updated: 2023-08-12T14:05:15.000Z In community with other Israeli and Palestinian women of all faiths, Nitsan Joy Gordon developed a unique peacebuilding method that blends movement and dance, improvisation, healing touch, compassionate dialogue, and Internal Family Systems. In a touching new memoir, Gordon recounts how the *Together Beyond Words* approach evolved from her own life. I reviewed the book for the new IFS online journal *Parts & Self* — take a look! [Book review: Together Beyond Words by Nitsan Joy Gordon - PARTS & SELFIn Together Beyond Words (Éditions du non-A, 2022), Nitsan Joy Gordon joyfully reflects on a life spent building peace amid the wreckage of trauma — a life’s work for which her own experience prepared her well. Born in an Israeli kibbutz less than a mile from the Jordanian border, where all the chil…![](https://partsandself.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/cropped-Parts-favicon-270x270.png)PARTS & SELFJane Doe![](https://partsandself.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/book-review-chudgar-scaled.jpeg)](https://partsandself.org/book-review-together-beyond-words-by-nitsan-joy-gordon/?ref=chudgar.com) ### Compassion from Self and Buddha URL: https://www.chudgar.com/compassion-from-self-and-buddha/ Last updated: 2025-01-22T21:03:18.000Z Through guided meditations like [this one](https://insighttimer.com/ralphdelarosa/guided-meditations/visualization-for-connecting-to-our-deeper-self?ref=chudgar.com), I’ve come to understand what Internal Family Systems calls the “Self” as something very much like “Buddha-nature,” and my internal family likes to imagine Self in the form of the female Buddha called [Tara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara%5F%28Buddhism?ref=chudgar.com), who both perfectly knows and perfectly loves every being. She loves all of us the way Self loves all our parts. Today I learned about another Buddhist way of thinking about Self from [Satya Robyn](http://www.satyarobyn.com/?ref=chudgar.com), a Buddhist teacher, author, and IFS therapist. “In Internal Family Systems,” she writes, > Great Love is known as ‘Self’ … and it is perpetually available both inside of us and outside of us. In Pure Land Buddhism this quality is personified as Amitabha Buddha, the Buddha of Infinite Light. Self, like Amitabha, loves us perfectly, despite all our protectors’ mostly clumsy and sometimes harmful efforts to keep our exiles out of sight. And as soon as we encounter that perfect love, Robyn explains, our protectors can finally stand down: > How can we start to dismantle the fierce self-protective defenses that keep us … always striving for more or better? Internal Family Systems and Pure Land Buddhism offer us the same answer: we must encounter Great Love. We must begin to believe in the possibility of something that sees us exactly as we are, with all our deep flaws and ugliness, and that accepts us just the same. It sounds too good to be true, right? And yet, day after day, we see the truth of it in our own systems. May you encounter Great Love today, in whatever form your parts find most consoling! [Meeting Shame with Compassion: A Pure Land AntidoteHow Pure Land’s teachings on compassion and the Internal Family Systems model can help unburden our deepest feelings of shame![](https://tricycle.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/site-icon-300x300.png)Tricycle: The Buddhist ReviewSatya Robyn![](https://tricycle.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/meeting-shame-with-compassion.jpg)](https://tricycle.org/article/meeting-shame-with-compassion/?ref=chudgar.com) ### Guided introductions to your inner world URL: https://www.chudgar.com/guided-introductions-to-your-inner-world/ Last updated: 2024-06-19T19:53:21.000Z ### For many years, almost every day, I’ve used an app called [**Insight Timer**](https://web.insighttimer.com/download-app?ref=chudgar.com) to listen to guided meditations from wise teachers around the world, including many versions of Internal Family Systems practice. If you’re ready to get to know your inner system a bit, here are some guided meditations you can use to get started — no previous knowledge required, all by yourself, for free. --- ## Gentle guidance from the founder of IFS To my ears, family therapist Richard C. Schwartz, the psychologist who created the IFS model, has an extraordinarily healing voice and compassionate presence. (One of my young parts calls him “Papa Dick.”) When you listen to [**his recordings on Insight Timer**](https://insig.ht/0B3lKNfIMyb?ref=chudgar.com), you get to explore your internal system with guidance from one of the wisest guides there is. - **A first step into your inner world.** This is the meditation to start with if you’ve never explored your internal community before. This is the gentlest, kindest and most welcoming introduction I can imagine. [***11 minutes long, music at both ends***](https://insighttimer.com/drrichardschwartz/guided-meditations/ifs-meditation?ref=chudgar.com) - **Quality time with a single part of yourself.** Here, Schwartz gently invites you to spend time with just one part of who you are — just one. This is the meditation I use most often myself. [***9 minutes long, music at both ends***](https://insighttimer.com/drrichardschwartz/guided-meditations/ifs-one-part?ref=chudgar.com) ## Meeting your parts for the first time In the decades since IFS began, wise teachers of many varieties have adopted the model to their own ways of teaching — so today, teachers with all kinds of different perspectives and identities can help you take your first steps into your inner world. Here are some of the introductory guided meditations I love most myself. - **“Receiving our Internal Family,” by Rainier Wells.** This is an abundantly spacious first exploration of your inner landscape, guided by an [**autistic, nonbinary mental health counselor**](https://endeavor-to-hope.square.site/meet-rainier?ref=chudgar.com) with amazing fashion. I find their voice and presence deeply healing. [***15 minutes, soft music throughout***](https://insig.ht/Oe5296BJMyb?ref=chudgar.com) - **Getting to Know the Parts Inside,” by Tim Fortescue.** In a soothing baritone voice, a new IFS practitioner leads you through a simple and intuitive first encounter with your internal system. A sound and simple place to begin exploring. [***6 minutes, no music, little bell rings at the end***](https://insig.ht/LcOkusK6Nyb?ref=chudgar.com) - **“The Selves Within: The Parts Work Perspective,” by Jogen Sensei.** Led by a former Zen Buddhist monk, this guided introduction to your inner world is very cheerful and matter-of-fact — less a blissed-out meditation, more a practical sort of workshop. It provides very simple guidance about “two simple things you can do to begin a partswork practice in yourself.” If you like to keep things simple, this is a great place to start. [***7 minutes, cheerful narration, no music***](https://insig.ht/JKNUf1mZNyb?ref=chudgar.com) - **“Divine Comfort for a Hurting Part,” by Jenna Riemersma.** If you’re a person of faith — any kind of faith — this meditation, by a wonderful Christian IFS teacher, will help you care for a part of you who’s hurting. You don’t need to know anything else about IFS to use it. If you like the to the idea of comfort from a divine presence of some kind, this meditation will absolutely help — no previous experience required. [***10 minutes, soft music throughout***](https://insig.ht/sb6DlgFXNyb?ref=chudgar.com) - **“Healing Meditation: Parts Therapy,” by Fred Wood.** At the beginning of all his meditations, against a background of lovely piano music, this trained hypnotist and IFS practitioner intones, “This is Canada Meditates” in his velvety baritone. This introduction to your inner world will work best if you have a very visual or spatial imagination. Over a subtle soundtrack of beautiful music, Fred Wood invites you to imagine your inner world as a house in a garden, and then leads you through a loving first encounter with all the parts who live in it. [***15 minutes, musical soundtrack throughout***](https://insig.ht/4IfoOyEYNyb?ref=chudgar.com) ## Getting in touch with your Self Many of us start exploring our inner worlds by meeting various parts of ourselves and getting to know them. An equally good way to begin is by focusing on the essence of who you are: that state of clarity, calm, compassion and curiosity IFS calls the Self. Because many spiritual traditions understand our essential being in a very similar way — as [**Buddha-nature**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddha-nature?ref=chudgar.com), [***ātman***](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%80tman%5F%28Hinduism?ref=chudgar.com), or [***imago Dei***](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image%5Fof%5FGod?ref=chudgar.com) — focusing on your true Self can be a very direct, and very therapeutic, way to begin exploring your internal world. - **“Visualization for Connecting to Our Deeper Self,” by Ralph De La Rosa.** This guided meditation, recorded live in New York City, is a beautiful way to encounter your inner world for the first time. Without using any technical terminology, Buddhist teacher and IFS practitioner De La Rosa provides “detailed instructions for connecting to what is sometimes called Buddha Nature, the inner teacher, Self.” It is both cozy and profound. I love it especially when it’s cold out, because you can hear the hiss of the radiators in the room and the creaking of the wood floor. [***17 minutes, no music, soft background sounds***](https://insig.ht/E1VEGuYWNyb?ref=chudgar.com) - **“Re-Parenting Yourself: A Mentor Visualization,” by Kathryn Fink.** This meditation, like the previous one, is inspired by a Buddhist practice, and it doesn’t use IFS terms. But it’s a very nourishing way to help your inner world come into loving awareness of the Self you truly are. I find this meditation especially helpful when my inner system is feeling overwhelmed. [***10 minutes, no music, brief chanting at the end***](https://insig.ht/MPIIb2SWNyb?ref=chudgar.com) If you try any of these meditations, I’d love to know how the experience was for you — [**send me a note**](https://www.parts.land/contact?ref=chudgar.com) if you’re so inclined. ### My sliding scale URL: https://www.chudgar.com/sliding-scale/ Last updated: 2026-09-09T14:36:37.000Z ### When I decided how to charge for coaching, I had three values in mind: 1. **Access.** I want to make the powerful form of support I provide accessible to as many people as possible — particularly people who need comfort, healing, and liberation [the most](https://www.chudgar.com/folks-i-love). 2. **Community.** When I value my own work, I’m also valuing the work of [every other partswork practitioner](https://ifs-institute.com/practitioners/all?ref=chudgar.com), so my prices must honor their wisdom and expertise as well as my own. 3. **Culture.** Together with the prices all other healing professionals charge, my prices help our culture value inner healing and liberation in economic terms. 4. **Sustainability.** I want all the different kinds of paid work I do to sustain me economically, so I can meet my financial obligations, contribute fairly to my family economy, and invest in the wellbeing of others too. ### Balancing those values led me to this particular sliding scale. Developed by [Alexis J. Cunningfolk](https://www.wortsandcunning.com/about?ref=chudgar.com), an intersectional herbalist and witch, this three-tier scale lets my clients choose how much to pay for the work I do. If you’re curious where it comes from, Alexis explains in detail [here](https://www.wortsandcunning.com/blog/sliding-scale?ref=chudgar.com) — but here’s the gist: - 💰💰💰 The **generosity rate** is for folks who can comfortably pay for their basic needs *and* some luxuries, too. This rate comes closest to what I believe the service I provide is worth. (You might wonder, as I did, if anybody would pay that rate voluntarily. Turns out they do!) - 💰💰 The **standard rate** is for folks who can reliably pay for their basic needs—food, housing, transportation—but sometimes stress about it. This rate is close to the “market rate” for one-on-one support of the kind I offer, and it’s about what I pay for services from other partswork practitioners. - 💰 The **accessibility rate** is for folks who sometimes don’t have enough money to meet their basic needs. This is the lowest rate I can charge consistently without devaluing the work I do. ## More options! I recognize that even my reduced rate is out of reach for most people. That’s why I offer other options, too: - **DIY for free or cheap.** You can start exploring your inner world right now, using the easy and effective Internal Family Systems model, using these [free or low-cost resources](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/resources). - **Financial support for coaching.** If you want some professional support to do the inner work you need to do, and my reduced rate would cause you economic hardship, [*please get in touch*](https://www.chudgar.com/contact)—I am happy to find a price that works for you. ### Ways to find a therapist URL: https://www.chudgar.com/find-a-therapist/ Last updated: 2024-06-19T19:53:33.000Z ## Making the most of insurance If you want or need to pay for therapy using private health insurance, Medicare or your state Medicaid plan, you’re limited to the list of clinicians your plan is willing to pay for, which can be frustrating. To avoid needless heartache, I suggest working in this order: 1. *Start* by looking up all the mental-health professionals your insurance plan covers. You can do that by visiting their website or calling the number on the back of your insurance card. It will probably be a very long list that it’s hard to make sense of. 2. Next, put that long list aside. Now look for therapists you might actually *want* to work with by asking folks in your communities, searching the directories below, or both. 3. Now, once you have a few clinicans in mind that might be cool, you can cross-reference them with the list of covered therapists from your insurance. From there, you can schedule consultation calls to find the best “in-network” clinician for you. ## Two excellent directories - **Find an IFS-trained therapist.** Tens of thousands of mental-health professionals worldwide have been trained to use the Internal Family Systems approach in their practice. If you like the IFS approach *and* you need a mental-healthcare provider, an IFS-trained clinician is your best bet. Search the IFS Institute’s directory [**here**](https://ifs-institute.com/practitioners/all?&availability=yes&ref=chudgar.com) to find one who can practice where you are. The directory includes both therapists and non-therapist practitioners like me, so look at the “credentials” section on profiles you find to make sure you’ve got a therapist, not a coach. - **Find therapists who share your values.** If you don’t want to look for IFS-trained therapists specifically, search for a good fit on [**Inclusive Therapists**](https://www.inclusivetherapists.com/?ref=chudgar.com), the best mental-health practitioner directory I know of. Here again, you can also find non-clinical coaches — [including me](https://www.inclusivetherapists.com/minnesota/minneapolis/ash-chudgar?ref=chudgar.com)! — so make sure the professional you find is the kind of clinician you need. More questions? Not sure if therapy or coaching is right for you? Want a referral for something specific? Just [**get in touch**](https://www.parts.land/contact?ref=chudgar.com), and I’ll do what I can to help. ### A do-it-yourself introduction to your inner family URL: https://www.chudgar.com/self-therapy/ Last updated: 2025-01-02T19:04:17.000Z ### I first encountered my own internal family in the summer of 2020 by reading this book, by Jay Earley. If you’re curious about your own inner world, it’s a good book to learn [partswork](https://www.chudgar.com/tag/partswork) from. The grandiose subtitle of this book nearly kept me from reading it — “Creating Wholeness and Healing Your Inner Child Using IFS, A New, Cutting-Edge Psychotherapy,” yeesh — but at the time I was so very unhappy that I was willing to take a chance. What I discovered in this book changed my life. Dr. Earley explains the Internal Family Systems model simply and clearly, with vivid anecdotes and sweet hand-drawn illustrations. But the real magic of this book is the simple, practical exercises he provides throughout: > You can learn much about yourself just by reading the book, even if you don’t choose to do the exercises. … However, if you do the exercises as you read the book, this will ground the concepts in your direct experience of your inner family. (15) That’s exactly what happened for me. Once I started trying to identify the various parts of my inner world, they turned out to have *a lot* to say to me — so much, in fact, that I later decided to [**seek out an IFS practitioner**](https://ifs-institute.com/practitioners/all?country=All&us%5Fstate=All&availability=yes&ref=chudgar.com) to help me sort through all of it. My therapist guided me in very much the way I guide my coaching clients now. Although I don’t agree with *all* the ways the book describes the model, I don’t hesitate to recommend it. Without reading *Self-Therapy*, I would never have started the journey that’s led me here. ### Places to get *Self-Therapy* You can find *Self-Therapy* on paper, as an ebook, or as an audiobook wherever you usually get books. (There’s also a companion workbook you can get, by Bonnie Weiss, which I didn’t use myself.) Here are some ways: - [**Find *Self-Therapy* in a library near you**](https://www.worldcat.org/title/502450986?ref=chudgar.com) - [**Find a used copy of *Self-Therapy***](https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=9780984392773&ref=chudgar.com)or the [workbook](https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=32042418814&ref=chudgar.com) - [**Buy a new copy of Self-Therapy**](https://bookshop.org/p/books/self-therapy-jay-earley/7035439?ean=9780984392773&ref=chudgar.com) or the [workbook](https://bookshop.org/p/books/self-therapy-workbook-an-exercise-book-for-the-ifs-process-bonnie-j-weiss-lcsw/7035441?ean=9780984392742&ref=chudgar.com) If you decide to work with the book, I’d love to hear how it goes for you! Just [**get in touch**](https://www.chudgar.com/contact). ### Crisis resources URL: https://www.chudgar.com/crisis-resources/ Last updated: 2025-11-11T21:34:16.000Z When you’re in crisis, and you need someone to talk to *now*, these resources can help: - **Crisis support for anyone, 24/7:** [**call or text 988**](tel:+1988), the [national mental health hotline](https://988lifeline.org/talk-to-someone-now/?ref=chudgar.com). *If the 988 operator thinks there’s an immediate danger to you or others, they may be required to notify local police even without your consent. They do this very rarely, but be mindful of the possibility.* - **Peer support for anyone, most evenings:** call the [Wildflower Alliance warmline](https://wildfloweralliance.org/peer-support-line/?ref=chudgar.com) at [**888-407-4515**](tel:+18884074515), 6–8 p.m. Central Mondays through Thursdays and 6–9 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. *Wildflower Alliance is staffed by trained folks with their own experiences of crisis, and they will never call police without your consent.* - **Peer support for trans and nonbinary folks, 24/7:** call or text the [Trans Lifeline](https://translifeline.org/hotline/?ref=chudgar.com) at [**877-565-8860**](tel:+18775658860). *The Trans Lifeline is answered by trained trans and enby volunteers, who will never call police without your consent.* - **Peer support for BIPOC Folks, 24/7:** call or text the [Blackline](https://www.callblackline.com/?ref=chudgar.com) at [**800-604-5841**](tel:+18006045841). *Blackline is staffed by trained volunteers of color, who will never call police without your consent.* ### Making meaning visible URL: https://www.chudgar.com/making-meaning-visible/ Last updated: 2023-08-10T19:42:14.000Z When people come to me for help with communications, they usually think they need help with words — but really, they need *structures for ideas*. As a consultant, I often create visual tools that help my clients understand and communicate their work in simpler, clearer, more powerful ways. --- ## Boardwork Once a professor, always a professor: most of my work involves mapping out the relationships between ideas on a whiteboard. In fact, some clients hire me *specifically* to do this kind of conceptual mapping. ![Helping a group of health-care leaders think through a regulatory framework for medicine as a public utility (2018)](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1581374776109-NXXE4LZGYMCU3ZEQ7E66/image-asset.jpeg) Helping a group of health-care leaders think through a regulatory framework for [medicine as a public utility](https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol114/iss1/2/?ref=chudgar.com). Photo: Bethany Otuteye ## Curriculum I’ve been teaching for going on two decades now, and I’ve learned how to use language as image to make ideas easier to remember. I built this training deck from the ground up to help the City of Saint Paul train 12,000 employees about data culture. ![From “How to use data to make Saint Paul better,” (2019)](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1588607305869-SY1E5DGFMBUGUME4E2GV/every-use-of-data-is-a-moral-choice.png) From “[How to use data to make Saint Paul better](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vTSIfl-JXfwPQBh1yNvdlOztkc6%5FG8zQuyKX4zDdKXE6wAPepUzqNy87Lq3%5FbTLnIpHaNu2xDfOSiVV/pub?delayms=3000&loop=false&start=false&ref=chudgar.com),” (2019) ## Graphic Sometimes a picture can communicate more than words ever could. I created this graphic for the Warren campaign in Minnesota, as part of a series of that encouraged Minnesotans to vote early by focusing on specific moral values. ![A graphic from the Minnesota for Warren campaign (2020)](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1581467095555-XJ5ZUMDASQ1RQ8ABH946/chudgar-design-sample.png) A graphic from the [Minnesota for Warren campaign](https://twitter.com/mn%5Ffor%5Fwarren/status/1217869559736209413?s=20&ref=chudgar.com) (2020) --- ## Diagram The word “diagram” comes from Greek words that mean “drawing through.” Here I wrote copy and directed the work of [a graphic designer](https://www.behance.net/bobtema?ref=chudgar.com) to make this diagram. It *draws through* a complex series of processes to explain a new health care technology. ![“A Fresh Approach to Health Information” (2016)](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1581466852965-3OWRIJCZMWI55H9AF1TN/chudgar-sample-infographic.png) “A Fresh Approach to Health Information” (2016) [Get in touch](https://www.chudgar.com/contact) ### Book review: The 3 things only leaders can do URL: https://www.chudgar.com/olson-real-flow-book-review/ Last updated: 2023-08-07T20:41:30.000Z ### If I could somehow require every leader in every organization to read just one book, it would be [Brandi Olson’s *Real Flow*](https://realworkdone.com/book/?ref=chudgar.com). It’s that good, and that important. # Three simple principles for leaders Over the course of my career as a consultant, I’ve read quite a few books about how leaders can make organizations work better. Most I forgot instantly; a few have suggested little bits of wisdom that I still pass along to my clients. But *Real Flow* is the only book I’ve ever encountered that tells leaders *exactly what they need to do* to help the people they’re managing do better work, more happily, in ways they can sustain over time. That practical advice is startlingly crisp and clear. “Stopping the flood and starting to flow begins with three practices,” Olson writes: “Make your work visible. Limit your work in progress. Prioritize.” Making work visible, limiting works in progress, and prioritizing — those, Olson says, are the three indispensable things leaders, and only leaders, must do. It’s as simple as that — and as difficult. Brandi Olson is a friend of mine, and I’ve been fortunate to hear her talk about these principles for years. I didn’t know if they’d survive the transition from speech to writing — but wow, did they ever. With the encouraging warmth of a wise mentor and the unsparing clarity of a good consultant, *Real Flow* offers a compelling argument for the necessity of these three leadership practices, and provides refreshingly realistic advice about putting each of them into practice in the messy reality of actually existing organizations. “It’s easier to solve problems in reality rather than in hopes and dreams,” Olson writes, and her commitment to reality is steadfast. Every chapter reckons compassionately and practically with the honest difficulty — and the exponential rewards — of leading actual people in the actual world. Throughout, real-world examples from Olson’s consulting career illustrate how each leadership principle works in vivid detail — and offer cautionary anecdotes about what happens in organizations where leaders ignore them. (“The details and names in the stories that follow,” she writes at one point, “have been changed to protect the misguided.”) Even more helpful, for me, are the luminous metaphors Olson uses to bring the conceptual work of her book to life. Two images in particular give the book its title and the book its conceptual scheme: work as water to be carried across a room, leaders as the captains of boats on a raging river. Across nine brief and lucid chapters, Olson deftly elaborates each of those metaphors to illustrate how and why our current ways of working tend to produce bad results and human misery — and to show exactly how and why making work visible, limiting works in progress, and prioritizing are *essential* leadership practices. # A quiet manifesto for a new way of working Although its stated ambitions are more modest, *Real Flow* amounts to a quiet manifesto for a new model of work — one that *begins* by putting human wellbeing first, not only as an ethical principle but as a simple fact about how organizations operate. “Happy, healthy people are not a pleasant side effect of a high-performing organization,” Olson insists; “happy, healthy people are the *only* path to sustainable high performance.” The rest of this remarkable book about leadership follows from that simple premise. Olson’s abiding commitment to happiness is one reason why *Real Flow* will find a far wider audience than corporate executives alone. It will be life-changing for *anybody* who’s in the position of organizing other people to do work — nonprofit executives, academic administrators, project managers, union bosses, religious leaders, teachers, community organizers. That’s because *Real Flow* isn’t really about business at all: it’s about *work*, all kinds of work, and about how human beings relate to each other to do it. The book does spend time thinking with and about business folks, who are sure to be among its first and most enthusiastic readers. But Olson’s critique of what she calls the “machine paradigm” of modern corporate management — which imagines people as “resources” whose “productivity” can be subdivided into percentages, forecast and measured — is almost universally applicable. As any nonprofit or political leader can tell you, the machine paradigm has colonized practically *all* thinking about how organizations operate, at least here in the United States. # If you lead people, this is the book you need That’s the reason, Olson argues, why the world of work is so profoundly, chronically miserable — and why the work we *do* manage to accomplish together comes at the cost of staggering human suffering: “leaders create situations where people have to make impossible choices. Outcomes diminish and people suffer.” *Real Flow* is a relentlessly practical, refreshingly honest, and timelessly relevant manual for leaders who are committed to rejecting the false choice between happiness and good work. If you’re in charge of organizing other people to get things done, this is the book you need. [Buy REAL FLOW here](https://realworkdone.com/book/?ref=chudgar.com) ### “Bound together by the love of the game” URL: https://www.chudgar.com/bo-han-on-the-future-of-sports/ Last updated: 2023-08-10T19:42:38.000Z Aside from a brief period of situational Cubs fandom when I lived close to Wrigley Field, I’ve never understood the appeal of live sports. Learning about Bo Han’s upbringing for this piece gave me a new understanding of the way live sports convene communities where people can truly belong. --- ## Buzzer CEO calls for a shift in sports media: Building community and human connections by Bo Han [*Sports Business Journal*](https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/SB-Blogs/COVID19-OpEds/2021/07/12-Han.aspx?ref=chudgar.com), July 12, 2021 ![A portrait of Bo Han, founder and CEO of Buzzer](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/9d509038-262b-4b83-83af-240bc016ce72/Bo+Han.png) ****Bo Han**, founder and CEO, Buzzer Like a lot of immigrant kids, I grew up often not knowing where I fit. I didn’t know many other kids in Nashville who looked like me, and I spent a lot of time trying to find my place. But then I saw Michael Jordan and the [Birmingham Barons](https://bhamnow.com/2020/09/03/a-trip-down-memory-lane-michael-jordans-time-in-birmingham/?ref=chudgar.com) play against our local Nashville Xpress, and I knew there was somewhere I belonged. Watching MJ make an epic catch alongside thousands of other people at Greer Stadium, sharing the same reactions at the same time, gave me the most powerful sense of community I had ever felt. Watching that game live, I wasn’t just an awkward Korean kid in Nashville anymore. I was part of us — the crowd at the game, watching the best basketball player in the world play Double-A baseball, bound together by the love of the game at a single moment in time. There’s nothing like the magic of live sports to make human connections possible. But to sustain the vitality of live sports for generations to come, our industry needs to grapple with a hard truth. Live sports viewership is in trouble because we’ve made it difficult for fans, especially young fans, to discover and watch. Gen Z fans are less likely than previous generations to watch live sports regularly and more likely to say they “never” watch live sports. With unprecedented access to athletes on social media, the strong team loyalties that used to be passed down from parents to kids are fading. Sports media needs to adapt to the interests and behaviors of the young fan, or we will lose out on engaging with the next generation live, where the magic of sport brings real communities together in real time. What our industry does next will determine the future — not just for the business of live sports, but for the human connections that live sports make possible. ## **To save live sports, we need to be fans again** > “The fact that we’re losing $28 billion in sports revenue to unauthorized content suggests that our garden walls keep fans out better than they keep content in.” — Bo Han There is one fundamental truth: Sports media insiders are really fans, and kids, at heart. We’re just as frustrated by watching live sports as any Gen Z fan. Last year, I got a text from my best friend’s dad to tell me that Alec Mills was on his way to a no-hitter. I’d been head of live sports at Twitter for years, and I knew sports media inside and out. But at that moment, away from home and on my phone, I had to Google “how to watch the Cubs/Brewers game live,” just like everybody else. That kind of frustration drives fans away, loses revenue for rights holders, and makes the community of live sports less accessible for everyone. Worst of all, fans who give up trying to watch live games will never get to share those ephemeral sports moments that bring us together. As a sports fan, you know our industry can do better. I do too. And this is the moment for us to come together to save live sports for new generations of fans. Over the past decade, as mobile and streaming technology upended every media business model, our industry responded by distributing live sports in thousands of walled gardens. Both traditional cable models and subscription services for individual leagues or networks are meant to protect rights holders’ intellectual property, which is and ought to be valuable. But the fact that we’re losing $28 billion in sports revenue to unauthorized content suggests that our garden walls keep fans out better than they keep content in. That’s a $28 billion opportunity to give sports fans the moments they want most. ## The challenge for sports media Loud and clear, sports fans are telling us that they really, really value the powerful sense of community only live events can provide. Engagement with clips on Twitter spikes the closer to live they are. The gaming industry, powered by Gen Z talent and audiences, has made massive and successful bets on live esports content with digital goods or micropayments. And we’ve all seen adults watching a game live on TV, while their kids sit next to them glued to their phones, messaging with their friends about the very same game their parents are watching. Every market signal tells us that younger generations love live sports every bit as much as young people always have. Early learnings from Buzzer's beta indicated that Gen Z and younger millennials engage with live content when given a platform that caters to them. We just have to meet these younger generations where they find and engage with their community, and in the ways that speak to their hearts. That’s the challenge all of us in sports media have to overcome. We can win and will — but only if we come together across the industry. Saving live sports will take all of us, for two reasons. First, live sporting events are only possible if rights holders can keep existing live audiences, bring in new fans and earn incremental revenue. But because it’s still hard and expensive to watch live sports, younger generations of sports fans aren’t buying what rights holders have to sell. As an industry, we have to come together to help live sports rights holders make their amazing product easier for everyone to buy. Second, it’s going to take an industrywide effort to show young people the magic of live sports. Gen Z fans love the same things about sports that we all do: brilliant players, epic plays, amazing feats of athleticism, decades-long rivalries, history-making moments, the thrill of discovering a new player or even a new game. It’s going to take true teamwork across sports media to make those aspects of sports accessible beyond the television screen. Together, we’re going to make sure young people can feel the live human connections that make sports fans into communities. ## Moment by moment, fan by fan I played a role in how the industry has evolved over the past decade, and I feel a sense of responsibility to help the next generation of sports fans experience the incredible enjoyment that live sports provides. At Twitter, my team made live NFL, WNBA, NBA NHL, NWHL, MLB, PGA Tour, MLS, World Cup and Olympics games dramatically more accessible worldwide. Getting live games and matches on Twitter gave rights holders a big source of new revenue and engagement, brought well-deserved attention to brilliant underrepresented athletes and sports, and made live sporting events accessible to millions of new fans. But even though Twitter is like the best and biggest sports bar in the world, it can only play a fraction of the live games people want to see. That’s why I started Buzzer: to make live sports moments accessible to everyone, in real time, no matter what sports they love or what communities they belong to. ## The new era in sports media: Community first > “Right now, at a pivotal moment for our industry, our nation and our world, live sports can bring people together in a way we’ve never needed more. ” — Bo Han At Buzzer, we ask people why they love sports — What players amaze them? What teams break their hearts? What fandom makes them feel like they belong? And then, when we know what they love, we let them drop into the sports moments they don’t want to miss, right as they’re happening, wherever they are — in a way that earns revenue for rights holders and builds sports communities that last. Right now, at a pivotal moment for our industry, our nation and our world, live sports can bring people together in a way we’ve never needed more. And because our industry is built by sports fans like you and me, I have every confidence that we’ll make the cultural shift we need, from building walls around sports content to building bridges to sports communities. Buzzer is just one bridge between new audiences and the irreplaceable, moment-by-moment feeling of belonging that live sports make possible. And as our industry comes together as a community of fans, there are many more bridges yet to be built. What’s yours? *Bo Han is founder and CEO of [Buzzer](https://www.buzzer.com/?ref=chudgar.com), a mobile platform for watching live sports.* ### An elegy for Highly URL: https://www.chudgar.com/an-elegy-for-highly/ Last updated: 2023-08-10T19:54:35.000Z ### Highly was a masterpiece of human-centered design, a triumph of usability, a thing of beauty and a joy. ![A screenshot of my Highly collection, showing 5.4k highlights.](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1579880532635-9W3RI4YYA1GVU9J5839H/1_XgcNzCZlq38-67VTywb5ag.png) 5.4 thousand is a lot of highlights. My highlights began in the summer of 2016, not long after [Highly](https://medium.com/highlight-to-share?ref=chudgar.com) was born. The first thing I highlighted was, maybe a little pridefully, a good [review](https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/books/the-fate-of-gender-nature-nurture-and-the-human-future-by-frank-browning-review-a3317851.html?ref=chudgar.com) of a book I’d helped to edit. Since then, I’ve highlighted well over five thousand bits and pieces of the internet — most of interest to nobody but various consulting clients, and, in the aggregate, of interest to *precisely* no one in the world but me. This morning I learned that Twitter, which acquired Highly [this past spring](https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/17/twitter-highly/?ref=chudgar.com), is shutting it down. ![Screenshot of a tweet from me: "I think @HighlyTM might just have solved #annotation."](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1579880574538-VYXRDXS7GZT4VHQM0UN0/1_R_fjGEvB002MVp4mZQ56dA.png) Highly, you never stopped delighting me. I was startled by my own sadness on hearing this news. Since I think about things for a living, I am always testing out new gadgets for organizing ideas. Organizing ideas is a very difficult technical problem, and people have been at it for millennia. It is awfully unlikely, alas, that a new device will make any real improvements, the way (say) writing, printing, sticky notes, or hyperlinks have done. New idea-organizing gadgets usually don’t last long in my world. They’re too fiddly; too many steps, or steps in the wrong order; too scammy or, alas, unlovely. Still, out of optimism or maybe even slightly magical thinking, I still try them all. Highly was different. For me it was easy and intuitive, delightful in all kinds of ways (one bit of microcopy: “[Something’s amiss](https://twitter.com/chudgr/status/1211369538077560833?s=20&ref=chudgar.com)”), meaningfully gorgeous, and (most important of all) deeply respectful of the intelligence and humanity of its users. As a kind of funerary observance, this morning I scrolled all the way down my Highly highlights, back in time, waiting meditatively for each successive tranche of highlights to load into living memory at the bottom of the page. (For servers as for humans, remembering the past is not effortless, and takes time.) This wasn’t like scrolling back through Facebook or Instagram or even Twitter, which are archives of (for me) social duty, peonies with ants on them, and [opinions](https://twitter.com/chudgr?ref=chudgar.com) so important that they need to be hollered into the public square. Those other feeds are social by nature, and record my interactions, or at least my desires for interaction. > “Scrolling back through my Highly feed is tour through several years of my own convictions about what mattered.” Highly, as I used it, was different: not a performance or even a diary, but a neutral record of my attention over time. Scrolling back through my Highly feed is tour through several years of my own convictions about what mattered. For me, what mattered from mid-2016 to the present was predominantly American health policy in the Trump era. It’s pretty grim. My highlights record my voluptuous and intensifying hatred of Tom Price, who has since resigned in disgrace; the drama of Republican efforts to repeal and “replace” the Affordable Care Act, which failed (legislatively, anyway); my sense of the complex fortunes of “single payer” and “Medicare for All,” variously conceived, as truly universal health care evolved — thanks, Republicans! — from left-wing fantasy to solid Democratic consensus. Intermixed these fragments of national politics, my highlights record the teensy daily ins and outs of Minnesota politics and business, clever turns of phrase, inscrutable numbers and phrases must have mattered at the time, and occasional sentences of advice, wisdom, and consolation. Highly understood itself as “the Internet’s highlight layer”: a bit of startup puffery, perhaps, but also an elegant physical metaphor, one the app used to conceptually profound effect. In Chrome, I’d type **!** to load the highlighter extension. *Look! This is important! I am paying attention!* The Highly button in the toolbar would turn from white to vermillion — [#FF3B00](https://www.colorbook.io/hexcolors/view/ff3b00?ref=chudgar.com), to be precise. Then all the text I highlighted would turn be marked with a half-transparent bar of that same color: `rgba(255,60,0,0.5)`. On mobile, the process was a little bit fiddlier — I never quite mastered it — but when it worked, it was magic: that transparent vermillion highlighting would follow my finger as I slid it over a bit of human writing that, in the very specific context of that day and that time, mattered enough to touch with a thin film of transparent color. The metaphor of the “highlight layer” comes to life, as metaphors always do, in public. Every web page I highlighted got its own Highly URL, purpose-built for sharing. Importantly, I shared almost none of them; for me, Highly was not primarily a machine for sharing, but a machine for remembering. (I reflect that most startup founders *hope* their gadgets will be machines for sharing, but almost none of them end up that way.) Here’s the Highly page for the last article I highlighted — a searing indictment of opioid manufacturers by my friend Matt Klein, a hospitalist in our local safety-net medical center and, more recently, the medical conscience of the [Minnesota Senate](https://www.senate.mn/members/member%5Fbio.php?mem%5Fid=1235&ref=chudgar.com): ![My last Highly highlight — available, as long as Twitter allows, at https://www.highly.co/hl/EtPOge3LNIXZMk. Dr. Klein’s original article is here.](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1579880658925-L6UK1VFVF73Q88G61YAB/1_zDycFyx9WVmxKKY9MTFaRA.png) My last Highly highlight — available, as long as Twitter allows, at [https://www.highly.co/hl/EtPOge3LNIXZMk](https://www.highly.co/hl/EtPOge3LNIXZMk?ref=chudgar.com). Dr. Klein’s original article is [here](http://www.startribune.com/counterpoint-drugmakers-can-handle-a-modest-absorbable-fee-to-help-fight-the-opioid-crisis/508402112/?ref=chudgar.com). Here is “the Internet’s highlight layer,” vividly realized: a tidy series of sentences, which a human act of attention has lifted up and out of an ordinary page of the world wide web — a page that remains visible, in its original state, right underneath what the code calls (gorgeously) a backing of black glass. ![A code snippet:
](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1579880685403-CGC5W87AX9HTG4UTX43T/1_d6DlC5Jx6ipSYZoAwdHl0w.png) It’s always nice when code is a small poem. The original article gets visualized another way, too: as a thin gray line, on which each of my highlights is visualized as a vertical tick of transparent vermillion, as wide across as my highlight is long. Click one of the highlight cards, and the corresponding transparent tick turns solid vermillion; click one of the transparent bars on the article line, and you’ll scroll down the page to the corresponding highlight card. > “Attention is always radically particular, and a shared reality transcends anybody’s particular sense of what matters.” Together, the black-glass shadow of the original page and the thin gray line preserve the integrity of this piece of the Internet as it is, while the “highlight layer” records precisely what about it I found important enough to pay attention to. The relationship between the article and my attention is always visible, so what I *personally* *thought* was important never assumes the aspect of what *actually is* important. Highly knows that attention is always radically particular, and that a shared reality transcends anybody’s particular sense of what matters. In the upper right, the “See In Context” button — vermillion, because important — will dissolve the black glass and the highlight cards, revealing the page that was always visible underneath. I *know* it’s really not that big a deal. As much as I hate to admit it, I haven’t been faithful: [Highly introduced me](https://medium.com/highlight-to-share/ideas-that-revisit-you-9cdf78825616?ref=chudgar.com) to Readwise, which introduced me to Instapaper, which introduced me to Diigo, which is what I’ve been using for highlighting lately. But for me, this new app doesn’t work as well. It does a lot — much more than Highly ever wanted to — but there is no metaphor that makes it humane and delightful. Highly had a theory of attention, a model of the world and how people relate to it, that took form in a beautiful and useful interface. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever encountered, and I’m sad that it is gone. ### What concept kits can do URL: https://www.chudgar.com/concept-kits/ Last updated: 2023-12-01T22:39:23.000Z ### Here are a few examples of what they can do in [philanthropy](#philanthropy), [healthcare](#healthcare), the [public sector](#government), and [healing](#healing). --- # **Concepts for philanthropy** Far too often, global development organizations with the best of intentions end up talking about their work in ways that dehumanize the very people they hope to help. In 2020, Eastern Congo Initiative wanted to refresh their brand and communications in a way that brought their deepest organizational values to life. That’s what this concept kit is for. [![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/3867d4ac-5cce-455b-923e-f06c1ed9a776/ECI-brand-book.png?format=750w)](https://bit.ly/eci-brand-book-2020?ref=chudgar.com) From “[The ECI Brand Book](https://bit.ly/eci-brand-book-2020?ref=chudgar.com)” (2020). This slide shows how a concept kit can bring an organization’s deepest ethical values into the smallest communications decisions — like photo captions. # **Concepts for healthcare** ### Breaking through decades of inhuman jargon Sometimes, the only way to start new conversations is to create a new kind of language for it. That’s what Minnesota’s nonprofit health insurers asked me to do for their industry — and this is the radically new set of ideas we created together. ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1565370372850-B4G0NOMCKQ3L0CUZHVSP/Screen+Shot+2019-08-09+at+12.05.30+PM.png?format=750w) From “[Ten Concepts for Health Care](https://www.neilchudgar.com/big-ideas/concepts-for-health-care-communication?ref=chudgar.com)” (2015). This is a photo I took of my friend Tyler’s father-in-law-Godfred, cuddling Tyler’s baby son Lucas (who is now not a baby any more). # **Concepts for the public sector** I’ve been teaching for going on two decades now, and I’ve learned how to use language as image to make ideas easier to remember. I built this training deck from the ground up to help the City of Saint Paul train 12,000 employees about data culture. ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1588607305869-SY1E5DGFMBUGUME4E2GV/every-use-of-data-is-a-moral-choice.png?format=750w) From “[How to use data to make Saint Paul better](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vTSIfl-JXfwPQBh1yNvdlOztkc6%5FG8zQuyKX4zDdKXE6wAPepUzqNy87Lq3%5FbTLnIpHaNu2xDfOSiVV/pub?delayms=3000&loop=false&start=false&ref=chudgar.com),” (2019) # **Concepts for healing** Sometimes, ideas are so new and deep that only new images will do. Here, I worked with [Luminary Lab](https://helloluminary.com/?ref=chudgar.com) and the brilliant illustrator [Cicely Combs](http://www.cicelycombs.com/?ref=chudgar.com) to distill a simple, beautiful and truthful series of words and pictures, designed to make sense anywhere in the world people are suffering. ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1581469018354-PMWLE3T2692S6HDSFCI0/Screen+Shot+2020-02-11+at+6.56.12+PM.png?format=750w) From “[The Healing Journey: Helping people heal from the pain of trauma](https://www.neilchudgar.com/big-ideas/trauma-healing-institute?ref=chudgar.com)” (2018) --- ### If you want a powerful new way to understand and communicate about your good work, a concept kit can help. [Process and pricing](https://www.chudgar.com/concept-kit) ### 36 Minneapolis Small Businesses Endorse #Yes4Minneapolis URL: https://www.chudgar.com/small-businesses-say-yes4mpls/ Last updated: 2023-08-10T18:05:30.000Z ### Today I was proud to join 35 other Minneapolis small businesses owners in public support of #Yes4Minneapolis, the ballot measure designed to expand true public safety for all in the city we love. [Read more here.](https://patch.com/minnesota/southwestminneapolis/36-businesses-endorse-minneapolis-police-amendment-list?ref=chudgar.com) ### What justice for Daunte Wright requires URL: https://www.chudgar.com/what-justice-for-daunte-wright-requires/ Last updated: 2023-08-10T18:28:24.000Z Prosecutors are the most powerful people in the American criminal legal system. When Officer Kim Potter murdered Daunte Wright, my friend and hero Lena K. Gardner and I wrote [this article for the *Sahan Journal*](https://sahanjournal.com/commentary/daunte-wright-prosecution-minnesota-attorney-general/?ref=chudgar.com) to explain why only a prosecutor answerable to Daunte Wright’s community could pursue justice on our behalf. On May 21, Governor Tim Walz [bowed to public pressure](https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-death-of-daunte-wright-98f9c3afbc5cb75f81f82ff16079e05b?ref=chudgar.com) and did as we asked. --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2023/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-04-at-5.29.35-pm.png) ### Minnesotans have kind hearts and good intentions. But if kind hearts and good intentions were enough, Daunte Wright would be alive today. The horrific killing by Brooklyn Center Police Officer Kim Potter is the latest agonizing proof that Black lives will never matter in Minnesota without sustained, committed action from all Minnesotans – especially the 80 percent of us who are protected, simply by the color of our white skin, from the violence of the police. Today, we are calling on all Minnesotans to take a single action: Demand that Governor Tim Walz turn over the prosecution of Kim Potter to Attorney General Keith Ellison, whom the people of Minnesota elected to prosecute crimes against the people of our state. No other attorney in Minnesota is appropriate. Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman is, [by his own startling admission](https://www.hennepinattorney.org/news/news/2021/April/Statement-on-Brooklyn-Center-fatal-shooting?ref=chudgar.com), *incapable* of credibly prosecuting a police officer in his own county. Washington County Attorney Pete Orput, who has been donating his legal services to the Minnesota Association of Chiefs of Police for the past [three decades](https://www.co.washington.mn.us/1672/County-Attorney-Bio?ref=chudgar.com), is in no way accountable to the voters of Hennepin County, where the Brooklyn Center community grieves through tear gas. (Orput is also credibly accused of [cartoonish unprofessionalism](https://twitter.com/MariaKamenska/status/1382346504556355584?s=20&ref=chudgar.com), including public comments about [“thugs” who “deserve to be put in cages.”](https://twitter.com/MariaKamenska/status/1382346507945316355?s=20&ref=chudgar.com)) With Freeman passing the buck, no other attorney in Minnesota but the attorney general l is accountable—at the ballot box—to the people of Brooklyn Center. No other attorney can credibly prosecute the killing of Daunte Wright by Potter. But make no mistake: The fact that we must beg the governor of our state to insist on an accountable prosecutor is a staggering indictment of our system of justice. ## A cascade of failure ### At every moment since Kim Potter shot Daunte Wright, the haphazard prosecution of the crime has illustrated the systemic failure of our criminal legal system. First, Freeman referred the prosecution to Orput, citing an [apparently informal year-old agreement](https://www.hennepinattorney.org/news/news/2021/April/Statement-on-Brooklyn-Center-fatal-shooting?ref=chudgar.com) among the five members of the Urban County Attorneys’ Association. On Freeman’s account, he and his fellow county attorneys would refer cases “concerning the police use of deadly force” away from their own jurisdictions to another’s. The rationale? “To avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest.” These county attorneys—all elected by the people of their counties to evaluate police evidence and prosecute felonies—apparently agreed among themselves that none of them could plausibly be understood to be objective in cases when their own county police officers were shown, by their own county police evidence, to have committed felonies. We elect Minnesota county attorneys to evaluate the evidence provided to them by police objectively, and then to bring felony charges justified by that evidence — no matter whom that evidence implicates. That is what we elect county attorneys do. If we can’t trust their evaluation of evidence in the case of police misconduct, why should we trust their evaluation of evidence in *any* case? If Minnesota county attorneys cannot interpret evidence from their own police departments and prosecute felonies in their own counties *at the same time*, then they cannot do their jobs at all.Freeman’s recusal to avoid the “appearance of a conflict of interest” is a classic gaffe: an accidental acknowledgment of an intolerable truth. In any case, the Urban County Attorneys’ agreement appears to be more honored in the breach. Mike Freeman was not concerned about “any appearance of a conflict of a conflict of interest” when: - in August 2020, [Freeman declined to prosecute the Brooklyn Center police officers who shot Kobe Dimock-Heisler](https://www.hennepinattorney.org/news/news/2020/August/no-charges-in-kobe-dimock-heisler-officer-involved-shooting?ref=chudgar.com) six times in his grandmother’s living room; or when, - in December 2020, [Freeman declined to prosecute any of the nine MPD officers who participated in shooting Chiasher Vue to death](https://www.hennepinattorney.org/news/news/2020/December/officers-not-charged-in-vue-case?ref=chudgar.com) in the doorway of his own home; or when, - in September 2020, [Freeman argued that he should be permitted to take over the prosecution of MPD officer Derek Chauvin](https://www.hennepinattorney.org/-/media/Attorney/NEWS/2020/FloydcaseMotion-to-Reconsider.pdf?ref=chudgar.com) — the very “conflict of interest” that is supposed to have inspired the Urban County Attorneys’ agreement in the first place. The fact that the charging of this case has been handed over to someone who volunteers his time defending police is an example of a systemic failure—not a strange aberration that should be excused in this one instance. Radical transformation of the ways in which we understand and deploy ideas about public safety must happen. It’s an emergency. Inaction is complicity. And we, all Minnesotans, must help. Right now, call Governor Walz at 651-201-3400\. Demand that Governor Walz turn over the prosecution of Kim Potter’s crime to Attorney General Keith Ellison, the only prosecutor in Minnesota who can credibly seek justice for Daunte Wright. ### You should not have to make this call to beg for fair prosecution, but justice requires it. ### The attorney general should not have to take over this case, but accountability requires it. ### Daunte Wright should not be dead today, but Officer Kim Potter killed him. This is the world we live in, Minnesota. And without your help, things will never change. Call the governor. Please. --- ## LENA K. GARDNER **Lena K. Gardner**, a member of the board of [Recall Freeman](https://www.recallfreeman.org/about-us?ref=chudgar.com), is Executive Director and Co-Founder of the [Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism](https://blacklivesuu.org/?ref=chudgar.com) (BLUU). She has been active in the Movement for Black Lives since 2014. ## NEIL CHUDGAR **Neil Chudgar**, a member of the board of [Recall Freeman](https://www.recallfreeman.org/about-us?ref=chudgar.com), is an independent communications consultant in Minneapolis. ### What is trauma? URL: https://www.chudgar.com/what-is-trauma/ Last updated: 2023-08-10T18:46:21.000Z ## To heal from trauma, it helps to understand what it is. --- These days, the idea of *trauma* is at the center of much mental-health practice, and healing from trauma has emerged as an urgent global need. But as familiar as the word “trauma” has become, it’s not an easy concept to understand. People experience trauma from a bewildering variety of causes, from genocide to childhood sexual abuse to police brutality. And the ways trauma affects people are equally varied, from quiet dissociation to violent rage to physical pain. Our clients at Trauma Healing Institute wondered: How can we teach *everyone* the basic facts about trauma, no matter where they live or what they might know already? In collaboration with [Luminary Lab](https://www.helloluminary.com/about?ref=chudgar.com) and [Scope + Sequence](https://scopesequence.com/?ref=chudgar.com), we used the [touching visual language](https://www.neilchudgar.com/big-ideas/trauma-healing-institute?ref=chudgar.com) of THI to create this one-minute video to explain. (If it helps you, pass it on.) ### Nonprofit fundraising, reimagined URL: https://www.chudgar.com/reimagining-nonprofit-fundraising/ Last updated: 2023-08-12T14:12:24.000Z ## Fundraising for nonprofits is hard work. > “Nonprofit fundraisers have this really hard job of communicating about a societal breakdown. Everything we have to ask money for — every nonprofit mission — is a way society has failed. That’s really hard.” — [Sarah Staiger](https://www.staigervitelli.com/about-us?ref=chudgar.com) “I manage a team of eight people,” said my friend Sarah Staiger, who was director of advancement for [Beacon Interfaith Housing Cooperative](https://www.beaconinterfaith.org/who-we-are/?ref=chudgar.com) at the time. “Every single one of them right now needs to be seen. Isn’t that what everybody needs right now? Nonprofit fundraisers have this really hard job of communicating about a societal breakdown. Everything we have to ask money *for* — every nonprofit mission — is a way society has failed. That’s really hard.” That’s why, back in December of 2020, Sarah asked me to give a talk for the Minnesota chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. Sarah wanted me to provide “some ways of communicating that could help fundraisers communicate in a way that’s not so *hard* — that’s filled with more ease and integrity.” That was a tall order, for sure — but with help from Sarah, Cecelia Caspram, and other visionary [friends](https://chudgar.squarespace.com/friends?ref=chudgar.com), I came up with a way to help nonprofit fundraisers do just that. Here’s a recording of the workshop, edited down to the most important 12 minutes. In this education session for the Minnesota chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, I teach folks how metaphors work, why they matter to nonprofits right now, and how to build new ones to “practice the future.” This is a 12-minute cut of a 90-minute workshop with the highlights. ### How I learned I am white URL: https://www.chudgar.com/how-i-learned-i-am-white/ Last updated: 2023-08-10T19:13:31.000Z My father was from northwestern India, my mother is a Pennsylvania-Dutch kind of American. That combination produced my older brother in 1971, then me in 1979\. My brother is eight-and-a-half years older than I am, and he’s a little darker than I am. I get the sense people read my brother as nonwhite all the time, which was a liability in our southeastern Pennsylvania suburb in the ’80s. He did not have a good time in school. ![My older brother and me at the Philadelphia Zoo in 1982.](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1612464067992-W9NV24USCB18820CZS7K/1982+Jai+and+Neil+at+the+Philadelphia+Zoo.jpeg) My older brother and me at the Philadelphia Zoo in 1982\. Photo: Ashvin J. Chudgar I’m a little lighter than he is, and I went to the same schools nine years later. So while I got (relentlessly) pegged as queer, I never got told I wasn’t white. The handful of Indian kids in my school refused to believe I was Indian till they met my dad. (Indians *still* have a hard time believing I’m not adopted, so used to carry a family photo in my wallet.) That’s how it is for me. Even now, I'm low-key aware of the fact that I get read as white in public, mostly because I’m super-duper aware that I *might* be read as queer. (Pretty much everybody in America does this kind of low-key social threat calculation, I imagine, though [some](https://www.neilchudgar.com/big-ideas/why-im-not-a-centrist?ref=chudgar.com) might not know it.) So. Over the past couple years, several folks have given me professional opportunities that turn out — often quite a ways into discussion — to be premised on their belief that I am a person of color. Those discussions got real awkward, real quickly, for everybody. > **THEM** … and it’ll be great to bring a *diverse voice* into this process! > **ME** (*alarmed*) Because I’m queer? > **THEM** Oh! Um well yes, that and … > **ME** That and what? > **THEM** (*genuinely horrified*) I mean! You are? A person of color so > **ME** No! Well, actually, um It gets even more awkward after that. It turns out there is no conversational pattern to fall back on at such times. (We Americans, I think, do not have a very rich library of ways to talk politely about racialized identities.) It was after one of those “Oh but I saw on your website that your father is Indian and I assumed” conversations that I ran this little poll: ![A screenshot of a Twitter poll from @chudgr, dated Sept. 25, 2020. It asks respondents to answer "From my perspective, Neil Chudgar is:" 73 people voted, among whom 23% said "a person of color," and 77% said "a white person."](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/edc18a93-6c2f-4241-a680-a0d9db898d98/Screen+Shot+2022-06-02+at+1.21.56+pm.png) Seventy-three people voted, which felt like a lot to me — but very few commented, perhaps because it wasn’t clear at all what I was after, and perhaps because it’s never clear what *anybody* is talking about when they talk about racial identity. A few friends said they knew I was a person of color because they know my history, *but* that if they didn’t, they’d see me as white. But that made me ask: **Is there anything to whiteness *other than* passing?** Maybe not. That settled it, I thought: three out of four Twitter poll-takers identify me as white; I move around the world as white'; but I'm half-Indian: ergo, I am “white-passing.” So I replied, when anyone asked, “My father is from India, but I pass as white.” But then, months later, I read Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s reflection on whether Jewish folks are white. Here’s what she wrote: > It’s true that Jews were not coded as white in Europe, very much the opposite. And it’s also true that in the U.S., built as it is (literally) on antiblackness, I am seen as white and afforded the protection of whiteness in pretty much every aspect of my life. In stores, when I get health care, when I interact with the police, around my education and career, as a parent, etc. To deny that would be totally disingenuous as well as dismissive of the ways racism functions in American society. I’m white, and there’s no denying it. … We can only be allies in the fight against racism when we acknowledge this—the unfair advantages those of us with white skin are afforded as a result of that skin in a white-supremacist society. — [Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg](https://twitter.com/TheRaDR/status/1269681311825920002?s=20&ref=chudgar.com) “The unfair advantages those of us with white skin are afforded … in a white supremacist society.” This explains so much about my life: How my slightly-darker, much older brother had a dramatically different school experience from mine — and also why I’ve never felt *entirely* comfortable identifying as south Asian, since I know in my bones that people don’t think of me that way. But this is the moment in the Rabbi’s thread that really hit home: > And to clarify, imho “white-passing” is a misnomer. It implies possibly getting away with something. When a doctor or cop or etc. finds out you’re a Jew, they continue treating you as white. Because: Whiteness has expanded to include Jews, has done so since the GI Bill. > > — Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg (@TheRaDR) [January 18, 2021](https://twitter.com/TheRaDR/status/1351181795967062021?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=chudgar.com) Exactly. Unless I happen to be around a bunch of people for whom race is *really important* — like the white nationalists we’ve all come to know all too well these past few years, *and* the people who explicitly want to hire consultants of color — people don’t change their behavior toward when they learn my father was from India. They don’t decide I am a *different kind of person* when they know where my father came from. My Indianness is a “fun fact” about me, like piano-playing or having cats. It does not expose me to harm or violence. And that, this January 2021, is how I learned I’m not white-passing: I’m just white. The consequences that follow from this understanding about myself are just starting to unfold. I don’t *want* to be white in America today — because to be white in America today is to be *structurally* harmful. Now it’s up to me to figure out the harms I’m perpetrating, and work to undo them. --- *Thanks to several good-hearted people in the nonprofit sector for enduring those intensely awkward are-you-or-aren’t-you conversations, to the Rabbi for her wisdom, and to the 73 people who took my Twitter poll.* ### Why systems change takes patience URL: https://www.chudgar.com/why-systems-change-takes-patience/ Last updated: 2023-08-10T19:28:20.000Z If you live in Minnesota, you know someone whose life has been touched by the work of **Antonia Apolinario-Wilcoxon.** Among our state’s most distinguished policy leaders, she is best known for her persistent and powerful work to make the state’s Department of Human Services more equitable and responsive to the needs of all Minnesota communities. Now an independent consultant, Dr. Apolinario-Wilcoxon is a founding member of the Community Engagement for Equitable Systems Change [collaborative](https://www.equitablesystems.org/about/who-we-are/?ref=chudgar.com). This is the story of her life so far — and a lesson about the challenges and rewards of systems change. 1. [Systems and communities](#1) 2. [From Brazil to Minnesota](#2) 3. [From Minnetonka to Frogtown](#3) 4. [Turning the ship at DHS](#4) 5. [Bringing community voices into systems](#5) 6. [The need for patience](#6) --- # Why Systems Change Takes Patience (A Brief Autobiography) Equitable Systems [blog](https://www.equitablesystems.org/why-systems-change-takes-patience/?ref=chudgar.com), September 21, 2020 ![A photo of Antoni Apolinario-Wilcoxon](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/27f9423c-6a25-4f41-b991-6d89fccf7b68/Antonia%2Bheadshot%2B%282%29.jpg) ****Antonia Apolinario-Wilcoxon** ## 1\. Systems and communities I learned about systems change from the experience of growing up poor in Brazil, in what we would call a slum here. My father died when I was eight and my sister was just 18 months old, along with two brothers in between us. Widowed young, my mother supported our family as a seamstress in the homes of the wealthy. She was exposed to families in another economic and class situation; and because she was a brilliant critical thinker, she helped my sister and me put our experience of poverty in a systems context. Sometimes, after a long day of sewing elaborate wedding trousseaus, she would shake her head and say, “Their reality is different from ours.” It truly was different. As poor as we were, we had far more love and support. In our community, we were all poor *together* — and it was a wonderful environment. We shared school uniforms. We shared sugar. We were poor, but we were not destitute. We had a community around us who encouraged us, supported us, and expected the best of us. My mother was a widow, but she had a circle of people who supported our family. > “I learned about the necessity of helping people grieve the loss of old ways of behaving and cheer on their willingness to do new things. ” — Antonia Apolinario-Wilcoxon But still, our options were limited. From the reality of the wealthy, my mother developed a clear understanding of the limitations of poverty and the ways she could help her children see more of the world. Her goals for us were not based on resentment about what we didn’t have, but on carefully chosen hopes and dreams. She knew she could not leave us money, so she wanted to leave us with a diploma in our hands — so she sent me to take English classes at a private school of languages. The tuition was expensive, and she had to work very hard to make my education possible — a rarity among the predominantly wealthy students at that private school. But my mother told me: “There’s no reason they can do it and you can’t.” She was right. Thanks to my education, I was selected to participate in an American Field Service cultural exchange program for high-school students. The next chapter of my life began in [Lake Crystal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake%5FCrystal,%5FMinnesota?ref=chudgar.com), Minnesota — a different world, but in some ways quite familiar. ## 2\. From Brazil to Minnesota Lake Crystal is a tiny town in Blue Earth County, surrounded by acres and acres of fields. My host family grew soybeans and corn, and my host father worked at a soy processing plant in Mankato. It was the 1970s, I was a city kid from a slum in Brazil, and I was the only Black person for miles. As young as I was in this strange new world, I was never frightened. My mother had never feared for me, coming to the United States, and I learned from her never to fear for myself. Our family knew all about racism from our lives in Brazil, and we understood that the United States had its own racism too. On television we saw America in Dr. King; we also saw America in the police dogs and firehoses turned on peaceful Black demonstrators. Thanks to the kindness of my host family, I saw an America that reminded me of the community I came from, one of mutual love and support. They took me into their arms and loved me; thanks to them, my time in Lake Crystal was a very good experience. I met a lot of people, I learned a lot, I made presentations before local civic groups. I got to spend a week in the Twin Cities and visit Central High. I also met the man who would become my husband. ## 3\. From Minnetonka to Frogtown After graduating college in Brazil with a degree in economics, I followed my new husband back to Minnesota. My mother had trained me well to see education as the key to prosperity, so I went to the University of St. Thomas for a master’s in international management. Not surprisingly, Cargill hired me to work in international finance. They needed me for my Portuguese skills, since Brazil was a major place of economic activity as multinationals expanded in the early 1990s. My early education in systems thinking made it very uncomfortable for me to work in the world of international finance. Growing up in Brazil, I had learned that multinationals loved being there: labor was relatively cheap, environmental regulations were lax, and Brazilian politicians saw to it that foreign companies had a lot of incentives to be there. Now I was working for the most profitable division at Cargill — and I knew they were profiting on the backs of Brazilians. I discovered I was not much of a corporate animal, so in 1995 I went to work at a nonprofit in Frogtown. It was quite a change from a chalet in Minnetonka! [Model Cities](https://www.modelcities.org/?ref=chudgar.com) was one of the organizations that had been created during the 1960s in response to the urban uprisings of that era — and once I arrived, I knew this work was my calling. We served poor communities, and I knew poverty. We served single mothers, who were raising children with no support — just like my mother. After five years in the well-funded autonomy of the corporate world, I learned very soon that, in nonprofits, you have to work in collaborative relationships. Even back then, in the 1990s, funding was not plentiful; so we had to combine efforts to make sure that the services we provided did not go away. But that kind of collaboration felt like home to me. I worked for almost 15 years in Frogtown, in different agencies but with the same vibrant community — very active, very supportive of each other. A lot of us in the nonprofit world were executive directors of color. We really enjoyed that work together, and those relationships have endured. Working for a Head Start program, I started an initiative to help children with social and emotional challenges. To identify the kids who most needed our help, we brought together a group of community-based, state and education agencies to create a referral program from scratch. We recruited a diverse group of mental-health professionals to work with the children, and the climate in Head Start classrooms improved. As community and nonprofit leaders, we always found a solution, even when we didn’t have funding. And then, when we found a solution, the funding came to us. The Saint Paul Foundation was so impressed by our work on social and emotional needs that they gave us $100,000 to build out our referral program. We did. Then, a year later, our program officer for the Words Work initiative said, “You seem to have done a lot with $100,000\. How would you like $4.5 million?” The Knight Foundation invested in the creation of infrastructure at the agency. We were able to expand the referral system beyond Frogtown all the way through Ramsey County. From my work in Frogtown, I learned something important: I could see that policy could change systems for good, in ways that truly helped communities. Making good policy is exactly what I wanted to do when I took a job at the Minnesota Department of Human Services — the biggest opportunity and the biggest challenge of my career. ## 4\. Turning the ship at DHS In 2004, when I went to work there, DHS was the largest agency in Minnesota by far — it still is. The agency serves more than 1 million people directly, from moms delivering babies without health insurance to the elderly who need publicly funded nursing facilities to care for them. It is a large and complex organization with a powerful role in shaping policy. For a believer in systems change like me, it was perfect. I came to DHS believing that the children with the greatest needs were the ones the state should be paying attention to — such as Child Welfare Systems’ children in particular. So my colleagues and I screened them, we listened to them, and we paid attention to them. I traveled around the state with a child psychologist, training mental-health clinicians, pediatricians, and family doctors to help them work with children in ways that would reduce racial disparities. We helped co-locate mental-health services in pediatric clinics. We helped the University of Minnesota create a new certificate program in infant mental health. We changed Medicaid language to include mental health so the health plans would be reimbursed for it. We built coalitions with other organizations to support the wellbeing of babies and toddlers. All this was systems change, and it was good. But I kept seeing children of color in the statistics about poor health outcomes — and, unlike my work in Frogtown, I kept *not* hearing the voices of poor communities in the conversations we were having about policy. Why didn’t we ask the people who are affected by DHS policies for their opinions? I grew up in a poor neighborhood, and I know very well that people in poor communities have lots of experience, lots of wisdom, and many ideas. All we had to at DHS was ask. So we did. ## 5\. Bringing community voices into systems First, I went back to the University of St. Thomas for a doctorate in [critical pedagogy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical%5Fpedagogy?ref=chudgar.com). Paulo Freire’s [work in community-based literacy programs](http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed%5Flead/el%5F198802%5Ftimpson.pdf?ref=chudgar.com) inspired me. He stressed the importance of helping adults talk about their own lived experience, so their voice is at the center. I wanted to learn more about how to convene people to share their own ideas. Then I did a lot of convening! I brought people together all over to ask members of communities what *they* were thinking about the conditions of their own lives. How do they talk about their own health and wellbeing? How do they experience the systems they are in? Then — and this was crucial — how can we bring back what communities tell us to DHS leadership? My team and I spent three and a half years convening communities and bringing what we heard back to DHS. We never sanitized the language we heard: when African-American people told us, “DHS doesn’t care about Black people,” that’s what I told DHS. To the credit of the agency, my colleagues and I were heard. In 2013, the Minnesota legislature [passed a law](https://mn.gov/dhs/assets/2016-bylaws-ceclc%5Ftcm1053-311139.pdf?ref=chudgar.com) to create the Cultural and Ethnic Communities Leadership Council for the Department of Human Services, which serves “to advise the commissioner of human services on advancing health equity and reducing disparities that affect racial and ethnic groups.” For the next six years, I devoted all my work to supporting the Council. Most people in Minnesota have never heard of the Communities Leadership Council. But it made a meaningful difference in DHS — and DHS policies make a real difference in the lives of millions of Minnesotans. By the time I left DHS in 2019, there were more than 100 agency programs explicitly dedicated to equity. There was an equity director in every single department. This was systems change, too. ## 6\. The need for patience As I was leaving DHS, a colleague asked me if, after all my years at the agency, I had accomplished what I wanted to. It’s a good question. I left the agency because I felt my work was no longer being supported by leadership, and the work itself had often been exhausting. While I was at DHS, there was no time for reflection. My colleagues and I worked long hours, doing out best with slender resources, but we were highly motivated. If you work in systems change, you know this feeling: It needs to be done, so I have to do it. Working that way is hard. It is also hard to see things change so slowly — if you can see them change at all. Because DHS is such a large bureaucracy, it is impossible to see the full scale of systems change clearly. I don’t know that I will live to see the day when it’s *clear* that DHS has changed for the better. But because of my upbringing and my education, I have never expected to see the fruits of my labor. The phrase “systems change” is trendy and attractive these days, and that is to the good. But actual systems change is elusive. As I have seen up close all my life, systems are incredibly complicated — and most systems are very closed to change, especially those informed by white supremacy or old stereotypes about the humanity of people of color. Changing them is a tall order. Beyond that, the work we do to change American systems is constrained by the system of American culture itself. Our society is very results-oriented, very interested in speed and personal achievement, and very individualistic. But I simply don’t believe systems change produces visible achievements from individual efforts. Most systems change is invisible to the people who work to achieve it. So we must learn to be satisfied by *building the conditions* that make greater equity possible. At DHS, which is so vast and so hard to change, I learned to trust my intuition to recognize signs of progress. How is this department interacting with the commissioner it serves? How is this manager behaving toward her staff? How does this assistant commissioner talk about equity? Those tiny signs of change kept me going when the work felt impossible. The most promising signs of change, however tiny, are always in people. Although systems change is impossible to see at the level of individual contributions, it’s people who make systems change possible as they learn to embrace new ideas. Over the years, I learned to prepare people, one by one, to welcome the new. I learned that I would need to do a lot of cajoling and prodding, and to smile even when I felt like smacking someone. I learned about the necessity of helping people grieve the loss of old ways of behaving and cheer on their willingness to do new things. Systems change is like planting a forest. Someday, children will be able to play in the shelter of the trees. Today, your job is to dig holes and plant seeds. Tomorrow, and every day after that, your job is to tend the carefully — knowing full well you will not live to see the new environment your work makes possible. But now and then, you will see signs of life and hope. Those signs will keep you going. [Learn more about Antonia](https://www.peoples-center.org/blog/inroducing-antonia-apolinario-wilcoxon-board-chair?ref=chudgar.com) ### Mattering without measuring URL: https://www.chudgar.com/mattering-without-measuring/ Last updated: 2023-08-10T20:39:48.000Z Nonprofits are consumed with communicating about metrics. How tight is the budget? How big is the impact? How many are served? But by their nature, metrics can *never* capture the reality of mission. [Kallie Rollenhagen](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kallierollenhagen/?ref=chudgar.com) and I created this workshop for the [Nonprofit Communicators Workshop](https://www.minnesotanonprofits.org/events/event-detail/2019/11/07/default-calendar/NCW?ref=chudgar.com), sponsored by the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, to help nonprofit storytellers escape the tyranny of measurement to communicate more powerfully about what matters most. --- --- ### Workshop participants got a lot out of it! [Here’s their feedback](https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-FBXB8WKW7/?ref=chudgar.com): - This was a powerful reframing of how we think about metrics. Yes, we know they're kind of terrible … *but also* that we have to do them, so how can we think about using the time for tracking and the purpose differently? It was great to get both high-level concepts and great examples of these in action, both from Neil and from others in the room. - I left with lots of great ideas — it’s one of the best MCN trainings I’ve attended. - Appreciated Neil making time for people to share their thoughts, ideas and to push back on what he was presenting. It was a thoughtful, dynamic conversation, and that feels rarer and rarer these days. - I’m so glad this wasn’t another session on what to be tracking on Google analytics, but truly a way of thinking and talking about our work in a more expansive, life-giving way as nonprofits and as nonprofit communicators. - I really liked how the presenter was willing to lean into the tension around certain topics, and even to challenge (or “gently fight with”) things we as participants said. This was done in a very respectful way and made for lively, honest conversation about our experiences and beliefs related to the topic. I found this workshop very motivating. ### A global poem for healing URL: https://www.chudgar.com/trauma-healing-institute/ Last updated: 2023-08-10T20:17:41.000Z For twenty years, [Trauma Healing Institute](https://traumahealinginstitute.org/?ref=chudgar.com) has been helping people all over the world heal from the pain of trauma. They’ve done this by doing something extraordinary: their [curriculum](https://www.neilchudgar.com/big-ideas/trauma-healing-institute?ref=chudgar.com) fuses the spiritual wisdom of the Christian scriptures with the proven methods of clinical mental health. THI’s purpose, crucially, isn’t to help people heal in order to turn people into Christians. THI believes helping people heal *is* Christianity — no matter whether the people who need healing are Christian or not. My [friend](https://chudgar.squarespace.com/friends?ref=chudgar.com) Erin Rufledt at [Luminary Lab](https://helloluminary.com/?ref=chudgar.com) worked with me and the brilliant illustrator [Cicely Combs](http://www.cicelycombs.com/?ref=chudgar.com) to distill the method into a simple, beautiful and truthful series of words and pictures, designed to make sense anywhere in the world people are suffering. --- Here’s how Drew Hood, the American Bible Society’s vice president for global ministry, described our work at the 2019 gathering of the [Trauma Healing Institute](https://traumahealinginstitute.org/?ref=chudgar.com)’s global community of practice. Trauma Healing Institute Global Community of Practice, March 12, 2019, in Philadelphia. --- ## Some experiences in life are so painful, they cause deep and lasting suffering. That suffering is what we call “trauma.” ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1555333005788-OICMT358UQ84UBH4Y0WB/Screen+Shot+2019-04-14+at+5.41.43+PM.png?format=1500w) Trauma is a deep wound of the heart and mind that takes a long time to heal. It hurts every part of us: our relationships, our bodies, our thoughts, and our faith. ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1555333046010-4LVEEZ9LT0T4QALFI8UM/image-asset.png?format=1500w) But God is with everyone who suffers. God feels our pain with us, and God helps us heal. The light of love is stronger than the darkness of trauma. This is why we have hope. ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1555333082300-T8KEPWMVGZHJIYJ6RW6H/image-asset.png?format=1500w) Trauma Healing Institute provides a way for suffering people all over the world to find healing in the midst of their pain. With the strength and support of others, they experience God’s nearness and love. ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1555333102778-4IHC39WVER2DZ475YHYA/image-asset.png?format=2500w) Our method is simple. It brings a group of people together in a safe place, where they can help each other heal. ### Why I’m not a centrist URL: https://www.chudgar.com/why-im-not-a-centrist/ Last updated: 2023-08-10T20:33:52.000Z ## I. DISCRETION One day in August 2017, in the eighth month of the current American crisis, as the Democratic party split itself angrily in half and the Republican party wavered between ill-disguised incompetence and full-on malevolence, I stumbled on [an article in *Politico*](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/08/off-message-walker-alaska-215469?ref=chudgar.com) that suggested all was not lost: > 13 independent candidates who feel they don’t fit in the Republican Party in the age of \[the president\] are joining forces with a few registered Democrats, all looking at runs for governor and Senate in 2018\. The plan is to create shared infrastructure and funding for a slate of campaigns around the country, in the hopes of making this more than the latest go-nowhere whining about how awful the two-party system is. This new independent political venture was anything but quixotic, the story suggested. It was founded by the economist [Charles Wheelan](http://www.nakedeconomics.com/?ref=chudgar.com), [staffed](http://www.centristproject.org/leadership?ref=chudgar.com) by an impressive roster of political operatives from both major parties, [publicly](http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/michael%5Fsmerconish/independents-movement-hits-philly-walking-in-footsteps-of-the-founders-20170809.html?ref=chudgar.com) supported by Evan McMullin and [counseled](http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/michael%5Fsmerconish/independents-movement-hits-philly-walking-in-footsteps-of-the-founders-20170809.html?ref=chudgar.com) by strategist from Emmanuel Macron’s “En Marche!” party. It was funded to the tune of three-quarters of a million bucks, and that was without any particular public fundraising effort. It was called the Centrist Project, and I was in. By [its own account,](http://www.centristproject.org/mission?ref=chudgar.com) the Centrist Project was “a grassroots movement of Americans — Democrats, Republicans, and independents — who feel left behind by both parties and who want our leaders to work together to get things done … We are giving the silent majority a voice on some of the most important public policy issues of our time.” ![The home page of the Centrist Project as of Monday, October 9, 2017. Source: https://www.centristproject.org](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1583942996622-U4IES7S4RGCEYU99RNFR/0_nP2BJzhvFuX774TP.png) The home page of the Centrist Project as of Monday, October 9, 2017\. Source: https://www.centristproject.org The Centrists were not wishy-washy, they said. They had principles, and they were principles I believed in. Centrists believed in putting country before party; in following the facts; in finding common ground. They didn’t want to be third-party spoilers—instead, their “fulcrum strategy” aimed to recruit and run independent candidates in carefully selected state legislatures, and the U.S. Senate, to force commonsensical policy compromises between Democrats and Republicans. (Having seen how just [three Senate Republicans](http://nypost.com/2017/07/28/trio-of-republican-senators-help-vote-down-skinny-repeal-of-obamacare/?ref=chudgar.com) saved the nation from a health-policy disaster, I found this strategy all the more compelling.) After ten minutes on the Centrist Project website, I joined as a “founding member.” I felt as though I’d found a political home. There was no Twin Cities chapter of the Centrists yet, so I volunteered to start one. I made a [Meetup](https://www.meetup.com/Twin-Cities-Centrists/?ref=chudgar.com) group and a [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/groups/twincitiescentrists/) group and wrote enthusiastic messages to people who expressed interest. I started [tweeting](https://twitter.com/mspcentrists?ref=chudgar.com) Centrist stuff. I joined the Project’s monthly leadership conference calls and took careful notes. I was all in. The national outreach director was delighted to have a new chapter. “What do I do next?” I asked. He had great ideas: How about holding some public events to recruit new members? How about writing a letter to the editor to talk about my conversion to Centrist politics, and offering a Centrist perspective on Minnesota politics? Great ideas! I said, nodding. I’d definitely consider them. Meanwhile, I went about being a Centrist … discreetly. I donated money to the Centrist Project monthly, and to Centrist-endorsed candidates like the excellent [Terry Hayes](https://www.hayesformaine.com/?ref=chudgar.com), who was running for governor in Maine. But I didn’t encourage anybody else to do likewise. I met with people one on one to talk over discuss Centrist ideas. When they asked me what they could do to help get the Centrist Project up and running in the Twin Cities, I said “Nothing yet! I’ll be in touch.” On Centrist leadership calls every month, I’d hear about the public events that other chapters were organizing: a whiskey-tasting to help educate voters about ranked-choice voting; a volunteer effort to help feed the hungry; a big sign at a popular intersection. I read my fellow Centrists’ op-eds and was impressed by them, and dutifully tweeted them out. Every few days, I’d start to write my own op-ed about “Why I’m a Centrist, and Why You Might Be Too.” But I never got beyond the title. I couldn’t quite commit myself to being Centrist in public, and I was didn’t know why. Then some things happened. ## II. The power of structural politics ![By Anthony Crider (Charlottesville “Unite the Right” Rally) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1583943083254-TZK27IHAR5VT70SVWR3O/image-asset.jpeg) Men march with Nazi and Confederate flags at the 2017 “United the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Photo: [Anthony Crider, Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charlottesville%5F%22Unite%5Fthe%5FRight%22%5FRally%5F%2835780274914%29.jpg?ref=chudgar.com) Charlottesville happened, for instance, and the president of the United States deliberately and repeatedly gave aid and comfort to white supremacists. Graham-Cassidy almost wrecked the health system. Roy Moore, who honestly believes that the Bible is the law of the land, won his Alabama senate primary. I could go on. I responded to these events not in a centrist way, by thinking about the *structures* of American politics and the *processes* that uphold our democracy. Instead, I responded with rage and sorrow—not for the sake of the Republic, but for my own sake, and for the sake of the people I love. That was how I learned I’m not a centrist after all. At its best, centrism is a *structural* enterprise. It’s about the underlying shapes of things: the mechanics of elections and voting, the boundaries of wards and districts, the balance of power in legislatures, the deep grammar of our nation’s political life. Centrism is not about the nitty-gritty of policy positions; reasonable people may disagree about policy, and centrists are reasonable. This focus on process and form is the power and promise of the Centrist Project, and I still think it matters. But that very structuralism, as powerful as it is, makes centrism impossible *for me* — in three specific ways. ### 1\. Centrism is principled ![Centrist principles are easy to get behind. https://www.centristproject.org/principles. (Not for nothing, this wonkily principled approach later drew me, much much harder, to the Warren campaign.)](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1583943910392-RDXQJET1CQP8YOUPIICR/1_nYNEx-ICl7bhmI8Y1iL8XQ.png) Centrist principles are easy to get behind. [https://www.centristproject.org/principles](http://www.centristproject.org/principles?ref=chudgar.com). (Not for nothing, this wonkily principled approach later drew me, much much harder, to the Elizabeth Warren campaign.) First, centrist structuralism enforces a kind of grown-up seriousness that attracts goodwill and maturity, and modest but steady contributions of time and money. The wild-eyed partizans, tinfoil-hatters and true believers who populate the avant-garde of every kind of politics need ideas to get het up about. It is almost impossible to holler about ideas like ranked-choice voting and redistricting. Without specific policy positions, the Centrist Project gives passionate intensity no hooks to hang on. What reasonable person argues against centrist principles of good government, transparency and integrity, tolerance and goodwill, data-driven and human-centered policymaking, and the fundamental excellence of compromise for the greater good? I believe in these principles with all my heart, and everyone I respect does too. But the people I respect *also* have convictions about good and evil that make compromise impossible — and, as I’ve been discovering, so do I. I have friends who would rather stay home than vote for a pro-choice candidate; abortion is a red line for them. Turns out I have my red lines, too: questions of ethics that feel to me so deeply important that I simply refuse to compromise. Turns out that I am utterly intolerant of violence against women and children, whether in the form of outright sexual assault or ill-intentioned healthcare policy, and that I refuse to make common cause with anyone who tries to excuse or wave away such violence. Turns out that I am utterly intolerant of racism, whether with torches or with dog-whistles, and I have no patience for anyone who argues that it can ever be tolerated in public life. The deepest centrist principles are structural; my deepest principles, turns out, are not. ### 2\. Centrism is smart Centrist structuralism is *really smart*, since it’s focused on internal causes rather than external effects. As the centrist story goes, Democrats and Republicans focus on political appearances, while centrists can pierce the veil of partisan illusion to see the deeper causes of policy decisions. ![The fat part of the political curve, as visualized by Anthony Downs: “This is probably how David Brooks views the world,” Leber observes, “along with how anybody at pains to point out how moderate or middle-of-the-road they are.” https://thepoleax.c…](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1583943987288-TYMJTSK5MA99GCOUTMKA/image-asset.jpeg) The fat part of the political curve, as visualized by Anthony Downs: “This is probably how David Brooks views the world,” [Andrew Leber](https://thepoleax.com/eternal-smugness-of-the-centrist-mind-dc0ec8fa8a11?ref=chudgar.com) observes, “along with how anybody at pains to point out how moderate or middle-of-the-road they are.” But the unmasking quality of Centrist thought does have a certain … [smugness](https://thepoleax.com/eternal-smugness-of-the-centrist-mind-dc0ec8fa8a11?ref=chudgar.com) in it, as [Andrew Leber](https://medium.com/u/373989429d8e?ref=chudgar.com) argues. The Centrist Project’s deliberate messaging strategy — about the pernicious “duopoly,” about the need to “break through politics,” about “common sense”— strongly implies that everybody who’s *in* the two parties has just been too foolish, or too obstinate, or too blinded by tribalism, to see the deeper reality that centrists are intelligently pointing out. To some, that smugness might feel like a problem; to the Centrist Project, that’s a core part of the value proposition. This is troublesome — not least because it invites the charge, leveled with heartfelt fury [by Hamilton Nolan](https://splinternews.com/the-third-party-goes-in-the-middle-1797724280?ref=chudgar.com), of claiming to be the only “Reasonable Ones” in a nation of partisan hacks. Yet it turns out that some of the [people I admire most in the world](https://twitter.com/theshapeofform?ref=chudgar.com)—people who are most politically engaged, most principled, most energetic—are “partisan hacks” themselves. I admire my partisan friends too much to suggest, even for a second, that their years of political struggle have accomplished *nothing*. ### 3\. Centrism is safe Third, centrist structuralism doesn’t commit us to anything in particular, policywise. As a grown-up homosexual, I find the discretion of structuralism both comforting and familiar. Those who hate me for my sexuality — like the[ very fine people](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/us/politics/trump-charlottesville-white-nationalists.html?%5Fr=0&ref=chudgar.com) who were [chanting “Fuck you, f\*ggots!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P54sP0Nlngg&feature=youtu.be&t=4m34s&ref=chudgar.com)” in Charlottesville, for instance — hate the *fact* of what I get up to with other men. That’s one reason marriage has changed my life: sexuality is *content* and can be objectionable, but marriage is *form* and transcends controversy. Form is not disgusting; form doesn’t enrage people. Form doesn’t get you beaten up or killed. This is precisely why, to my shame, I’ve always taken refuge in ways of thinking that don’t commit me to particular positions. For me, structuralist discretion has been a convenient alibi for mere cowardice. ![The public rage of ACT UP made it possible, ironically, for a later generation to be silent in comfort. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1583944077283-F0L6TX05FIYVI2CSYHJT/1_lt-3iQsF8GUfncMSJZyJWA.jpg) The public rage of ACT UP made it possible, ironically, for a later generation to be silent in comfort. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Once I told a friend that I’d never really “come out” to anyone. He was surprised, even shocked. “Then how do people find out you’re gay?” I explained that I tended to let the topic arise on its own, and then let people their own inferences; I didn’t see any reason to force people into awkward conversations, I said reasonably. My friend paused a long while before he replied: “That’s fair. But you’re telling me you’re content to let other people have those awkward conversations *for* you. It’s fine if you don’t want to do the work that comes with being in a minority group, but you should be honest about why you’re unwilling to do it.” ## III. A grassroots movement of nobody in particular Looking back, I think I responded so quickly and powerfully to the Centrist Project because it seemed to promise a way to take helpful, public political action that wouldn’t commit me to any position that might offend anyone. Who could argue with the minimal policy platform, of good government and (undefined) fiscal responsibility and (unspecified) tolerance and (normless) fact-following data-drivenness? Who could object to the notion that violent partisanship on policy grounds is baleful, and that sincere conversation among grown-up people could gradually, day by day, repair the damaged infrastructure of our democratic process? I still believe in such ideas; I really do. And yet! One last Centrist Project leadership call made up my mind. One of our local chapter organizers had asked for publicly available voter rolls from his state election office, and he was asking how to use the voter information on the lists to target recruiting mailers or phone calls. What had the Centrist Project learned about who, demographically, would be most receptive to our message about “breakthrough politics”? The outreach director of the Centrist Project — a principled guy, a person of integrity and tireless political energy, whom I truly admired — hesitated before he answered the question. He really, really wished this weren’t the case, he said, but all the data they’d gathered so far had shown that the people most receptive to the Centrist Project tend to be older, and male. And white. “I have no idea why that’s the case,” said the outreach director, “and I really want our message to resonate with a much more diverse set of people. But that’s where we are.” Our outreach director might not have understood why the Centrist Project skews older, and male, and white, but I do. Middle-aged white men are attracted to the Centrist Project because middle-aged white men are the only people in our culture for whom political structures might *actually matter* more than specific policy positions. They’re the only people who can plausibly claim to be more interested in *structure* than in *content* — because they’re the only people in our nation who, by ideological agreement and structural reality, we’ve agreed have no content at all. At its best, centrism is a structural enterprise, and it appeals to Americans of good will who have the luxury of thinking structurally — the Americans whose demographic characteristics *don’t matter at all:* straight white men of middle age. If you’re too old for your parents’ insurance but too young for Medicare—between 26 and 65—you don’t really have an *age.* By default, structurally, political Americans are middle-aged. If you’re not a woman, or a trans person, you don’t really have a *gender*. By default, structurally, political Americans are men. If you’re not a person *of color*, you don’t have a color at all. By default, structurally, political Americans are white. And although our outreach director didn’t specify whether the middle-aged white men who are attracted to the Centrist Project are straight, he didn’t have to. If you’re not bi or queer or somehow odd, you don’t really have *sexuality*. By default, structurally, political Americans are straight. > “At its best, centrism is a structural enterprise, and it appeals to Americans of good will who have the luxury of thinking structurally — the Americans whose demographic characteristics don’t matter at all: straight white men of middle age.” These are the assumptions that middle-aged straight white men carry around the world with them. I get this because, in my secret heart, I often want to be one of them — and I almost can be. ## IV. Learning to be particular On days when I wear a suit and tie, I’m almost nobody at all except a featureless unit of default American personhood. With my bald head and tidy goatee, my gender is reassuringly simple. Now that I’ve got a wedding ring on my finger, people can assume I’m married to a woman (as most married men are), so I have no particular sexuality. Everyone who doesn’t know my father is Indian thinks I’m white, and I don’t correct them. I’m too old to be young and too young to be old. Sometimes, when I catch a glimpse of my reflection in a window during the business day, I think, with a shudder of sociopathy: Wow, I could do whatever the heck I wanted to, and nobody would really stop me. In my suit, on my way to the business factory, I am just *some guy,* and — reader, forgive me — I dig it. If you’ve been to college in the past five years or so, you call that feeling *privilege*. It’s the power that comes with being *nobody in particular* — the power of transcending any specific identity and moving freely about the world of pure American form, at liberty, without any characteristics that might attract hatred or violence or any strong feelings at all. My attempt to be a centrist has taught me something important: I’m somebody *in particular*. And as somebody in particular, I have a side. ![My parents on their wedding day, June 1, 1968.](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1583943266664-KVIELMA0N726CL53431V/1_6pTO_c1a9LlwZj2_kygkXg.jpg) My parents on their wedding day, June 1, 1968.= I’m somebody in particular because I am not white. In the oddly quaint jargon of white supremacy, I’m what you call a “[mongrel](https://dailystormer.name/demented-mongrel-charged-with-murdering-his-white-grandmother-landlord/?ref=chudgar.com).” My father was from India, and my mother is Pennsylvania dutch; they married across racial lines the year after [*Loving v. Virginia*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving%5Fv.%5FVirginia?ref=chudgar.com)*.* I’m not white, so I have a side: it’s the side that believes racism is evil. I’m somebody in particular because I am not straight. I married another man (hi Paddy!) the year after *[Obergefell v. Hodges](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obergefell%5Fv.%5FHodges?ref=chudgar.com)*. I’m not straight, so I have a side: it’s the side that believes homosexuality is not wrong. The Supreme Court decisions that legalized my existence and then my marriage have been loudly decried, in some quarters, as the harmful activism of liberal judges run amok; yet I am grateful for them, and I fully expect that, a few decades hence, my marriage will look just as uncontroversial to the next generation as my parents’ did to mine. That belief, and that expectation, give me a side to be on. The only question is whether I’ll side with my side. ### V. The side I’m on Centrism is premised on the notion that it’s possible to be on the side of good government *without* choosing sides. Indeed, centrists propose to intervene in the “duopoly” of Republicans and Democrats by insisting that there can and should be a place where reasonable people can convene outside partisan strife. They are right, I think; and I wish I could meet them there, beyond party, where process and structure matter more than policy and content. But I can’t. I have to side with the party that sides with me, and that means I’m not a centrist. So far as parties go, I’m a Democrat. I’m a Democrat because the [Democrats deliberately side with people who, like me, aren’t white](https://democrats.org/about/party-platform/?ref=chudgar.com#systemic-racism). I’m a Democrat because the [Democrats deliberately side with people, like me, who aren’t straight](https://democrats.org/about/party-platform/?ref=chudgar.com#lgbt-rights). So I’m a Democrat, first, for my own sake. But there’s far more at stake in this choosing of sides than self-interest. Today, America asks us to side with the man with the gun, or to side with the kid in the hoodie. Democrats side with the kid, even if he smokes pot, even if he’s kind of a jerk, because the man with the gun has [too much power](https://democrats.org/about/party-platform/?ref=chudgar.com#criminal-justice) and the kid in the hoodie, as scary as he may seem, has too little. America asks us to side with those who condemn the sick to suffer; or to try to bring wellbeing in reach for everyone, no matter what, because all human bodies are fragile. Democrats try to [comfort the sick](https://democrats.org/about/party-platform/?ref=chudgar.com#universal-health), because we have fragile bodies, and we love other people who do too. America asks us to side with those who pray loudly in public, or to side with those who try to do what goodness requires. Democrats try to make America the kind of country that does [what faith in a benevolent God requires](https://democrats.org/about/party-platform/?ref=chudgar.com#respecting-faith): a nation of peacemakers, where mourners are comforted and those who hunger are fed. Of course I have my quarrels with the Democrats. Our party is not immune to the blandishments of [populist demagogues](https://newrepublic.com/article/136327/all-rage-sanders-trump-populism?ref=chudgar.com). Even the most careless Democratic demagogues who truly want the nation to be kinder and more just. I have no love for demagogues; but Democratic demagogues are on the side of the angels, and so am I. The most wicked Democrat isn’t part of the party that refuses to denounce the man who refused to denounce the Klan. The most careless Democrat isn’t part of the party that simply refuses to debate policy in good faith. The most corrupt Democrat (and there are many) isn’t part of the party that tolerates brazen corruption at the highest levels of government. The most venal Democrat isn’t part of the party that sold its soul for a repeal of the estate tax and betrayed its nation to the schemes of a hostile foreign empire. The most cowardly Democrat isn’t part of the party who takes shelter behind the virile symbolism of the military and the police while innocents, even children, are being tortured abroad and at home. --- ### VI. I’m not a centrist — but you might be ![My husband files the flag outside our house on every official flag day.](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1583943720555-6N6L4FWB563BRS09601C/image-asset.gif) My husband files the flag outside our house on every [official flag day.](https://www.legion.org/flag/code?ref=chudgar.com) I am a Democrat, at least in how I vote; today, for me, there’s no other way to be American. But I still think that centrism can be a force for good in politics, and you might be able to. If you *can* transcend partisanship, you should. If you *can* put principles before policy, you should. If you *can* look past the partisan strife of our moment to care for the wellbeing of our nation for decades and centuries to come, you absolutely should. Centrism isn’t about embracing the unprincipled middle: it’s about using the power you have to sustain and uphold the democratic structures and republican processes that make civil society possible in the first place. It may be the case that centrists will keep America safe for those of us who, like me, can’t be centrists ourselves. But for now—and as long as I’m somebody in particular—I’ll vote like a Democrat. And I won’t be discreet about it. ### On “consumership” in healthcare URL: https://www.chudgar.com/on-consumership-in-healthcare/ Last updated: 2023-08-10T21:24:10.000Z ### “My main point was to keep my kid alive.” So says the father of a six-year-old girl with cancer in [Vikki Ortiz’s gut-punch of a story in the *Chicago Tribune*](http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-life-debt-from-cancer-20180520-story.html?ref=chudgar.com) about “cancer-related financial toxicity.” Here’s what I learned from that story: It is long past time to abandon the delusion that [the “market” for health care can or should operate like a market for any other consumer good](https://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoodman/2018/05/22/can-the-market-really-work-in-health-care?ref=chudgar.com). It’s long past time to let go of the delusion that we can fix things by inventing new and better “market driven reforms that,” as [the CMS writes brightly](https://innovation.cms.gov/initiatives/direction/?ref=chudgar.com), “empower beneficiaries as consumers.” The cherished fantasy of a “market” in which “health care consumers” make rational economic choices: that woefully common fetish generates more than wildly incoherent (and [grotesquely profitable](https://www.economist.com/business/2018/03/15/which-firms-profit-most-from-americas-health-care-system?ref=chudgar.com)) health policy — though it certainly generates plenty of that. Here’s the kicker: We tell people they *should* be good “health care consumers,” and they believe it. They believe it so deeply that, when getting care for a serious illness bankrupts them, they’re *ashamed*. They think they’ve failed. To get that shame out of the shadows, we’ve name it like a disease. Per the *Tribune:* advocates like [Carla Tardif](https://twitter.com/familyreachceo?lang=en&ref=chudgar.com) of [Family Reach](https://familyreach.org/?ref=chudgar.com) “say they hope to take the shame out of cancer-related financial toxicity.” The shame of [#CRFT](https://threadreaderapp.com/hashtag/CRFT?ref=chudgar.com): the shame of not having “shopped” well enough; the shame of needing care in the first place; the shame of not being rich; the shame of being a bad “health care consumer.” This delusion is heartbreaking. So, please, let’s agree on one clear and simple truth: ## **There is no such thing as a “heath care consumer.”** There are only people with bodies, who love other people with bodies, and who respond to the threat of suffering or death with a sincere willingness to go to any length, incur any debt, and suffer any indignity. In short, [#consumership](https://threadreaderapp.com/hashtag/consumership?ref=chudgar.com) in health care is a sick joke. Let’s stop telling it. ### Minnesota, we’re on our own URL: https://www.chudgar.com/minnesota-were-on-our-own/ Last updated: 2023-08-10T20:47:31.000Z This summer, Congress and the White House are planning major changes to existing health care law. While the specifics of their plans change daily, it’s likely that federal support for state health care programs will be reduced — maybe by a lot. These federal changes are forcing Minnesotans to confront the long-hidden expense of care in our state. Money from the federal government, sometimes helped along by temporary state budget shifts, has let Minnesota sustain our [**best-in-the-country**](https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-best-health-care/23457/?ref=chudgar.com) health care programs. But after many years of helping states bring more care to more people, the mood in Washington has shifted. It’s becoming clear that Minnesota can no longer depend on the federal government to help us bring care within reach for everyone. Based on [**draft legislation**](https://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2017/06/republicans-put-repeal-and-replace-hold-what-would-actually-fix-affordable-c?ref=chudgar.com) from the U.S. House and Senate, the next federal health law will slash funding for Medical Assistance (our Medicaid program) and MinnesotaCare. Help for middle-income people who buy health insurance on their own may fall dramatically, leaving middle-aged and less healthy Minnesotans especially vulnerable to unaffordable insurance premiums and deductibles. The state Department of Human Services [**estimates**](https://mn.gov/dhs/aca-repeal/?ref=chudgar.com) Minnesota stands to lose $2 billion in the next year and a half. “That amount of money can’t be made up in other areas of the state budget in Minnesota or any other state,” [**says Emily Piper**](http://www.startribune.com/dflers-blast-republican-healthcare-efforts-in-washington/432732983/?ref=chudgar.com), our state commissioner of human services. As a former state budget director, I believe she’s right. Congressional action threatens to put care for more than a million Minnesotans at risk — about one out of every five people in our state. While the details are certain to change, the general direction of federal policy is clear. Washington wants to cut national spending on health care, loosen federal regulations about the price of health insurance and the care it has to cover, and cut taxes for the medical industry and wealthy households. **Dramatic change is coming in how the United States government helps pay for our care. The wellbeing of a generation of Minnesotans depends on how honestly and courageously we act now.** Courage and honesty are hard to come by in the national discussion these days. Partisan outrage is everywhere. Some believe people in a free society need to take responsibility for their own health and medical bills — even if the poor, the disabled and the elderly might end up suffering along the way. Others believe a democratic government has a duty to provide for the care all people need — even if we have to raise taxes, increase regulation or go deeply into debt to guarantee care for everyone. On the news or in the paper, there seems to be little room for compromise between these two extremes. I worked on Minnesota’s state budget under four governors from three parties, and I understand the appeal of ideological positions. But as someone whose job it is to help health insurance in Minnesota work better — and as a father, a husband and a son — I can see through the partisan rhetoric to the more challenging reality that underlies it. I believe you can too. The reality is this: our care is too damn expensive. Simply changing the amount of money our government spends on care won’t solve that basic problem. Simply shifting responsibility for the rising expense of care between different groups of people won’t change the amount that’s due. No matter how we divide up our medical bills, *we all end up paying* — in taxes and fees, in out-of-pocket expenses, in lost opportunities, in rising premiums and deductibles, and in the suffering of people who can’t get the care they need. **The task before Minnesota today is to tell the truth about the expense of care.** Only then can we face the difficult decisions before us all with courage and goodwill. I want to be clear: the choices we’re facing now are the most difficult choices there are. What kinds of medical care count as necessary, and who decides? How much should taxpayers support low-income adults? Should our society provide as much treatment as it takes to save one sick person’s life for a month — or should we spend the same amount to keep a thousand people healthy for a decade? Is it worth paying more in taxes to do both? Is it worth spending less on roads or schools? Easy, abstract answers are plentiful on TV and on the internet. But in reality, health care choices are seldom easy and never, ever abstract. They have profound and sometimes painful effects on individual human lives. Here’s the deal: Minnesota’s medical bills are high and rising, and we’re probably going to have less federal help to pay them. To respond responsibly, we have to ask difficult questions that nobody wants to ask. As a leader of our health care industry, I will do my part to speak clearly and openly about the choices we’re facing, especially when they’re painful. I believe Minnesotans can come together to bring care within reach for everyone, and someday we will. To get there, we need honesty about the challenges before us, and the courage to face them squarely. ### How to avoid a healthcare disaster URL: https://www.chudgar.com/how-to-avoid-a-healthcare-disaster/ Last updated: 2023-08-10T20:52:06.000Z A bill now before the U.S. House of Representatives, called the American Health Care Act (AHCA), would not help health insurers serve Minnesotans better. The AHCA, as currently drafted, would increase the overall cost of health care for many people, make health insurance unaffordably costly for many — particularly those who need it most — and increase the financial burden on all Minnesotans to compensate for decreased federal health care funding. We believe our representatives can and must do better. In this we agree with many others who serve the health and wellbeing of Minnesotans, including the [Minnesota Medical Association](https://www.mnmed.org/news-and-publications/News/MMA-Formally-Opposes-AHCA?ref=chudgar.com), the [Minnesota Hospital Association](http://www.mnhospitals.org/newsroom/news/id/2000/mha-does-not-support-the-ahca?ref=chudgar.com), the [Minnesota Department of Human Services](http://mn.gov/dhs/assets/public-health-funding-and-ACA-issue-brief-march-2017%5Ftcm1053-284348.pdf?ref=chudgar.com), and lawmakers from both the [DFL](http://www.startribune.com/where-minnesota-s-delegation-stands-on-gop-healthcare-bill/416950794/?ref=chudgar.com) and the [GOP](http://www.startribune.com/tom-emmer-erik-paulsen-jason-lewis-praise-house-gop-health-care-plan/415737754/?ref=chudgar.com). As members of Congress learn more about the bill, it seems unlikely that the AHCA will become law in its current form. \[Update: [It didn’t.](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/us/politics/health-care-affordable-care-act.html?ref=chudgar.com)\] Still, we know that other efforts at reform will soon follow. To help policymakers achieve meaningful health reform more effectively, it’s important to learn from the mistakes of the AHCA — mistakes that, fortunately, can easily be avoided. ## **Health reform should:** - **Cut costs.** The biggest problem in health care is that it’s simply too expensive. There is broad consensus — among experts across industries, sectors and political views, and [the American people as a whole](http://kff.org/health-costs/press-release/poll-early-perceptions-of-house-bill-show-public-thinks-it-would-cover-fewer-people-and-raise-health-costs/?ref=chudgar.com) — that the reforms set forth in the AHCA would not make health care more affordable, in Minnesota or in the nation at large. *Good health policy brings down the overall expense of health care.* - **Encourage personal responsibility.** In Minnesota, we are already seeing health people who buy health insurance on their own. By eliminating the existing requirement that everyone have insurance — the “individual mandate” pioneered in Massachusetts by Gov. Mitt Romney — the AHCA would discourage young and healthy people from buying health insurance. Coupled with a delay in other incentives to encourage coverage, this means fewer people will buy health insurance on their own and that those left are more likely to need care. With fewer people to help, expenses would rise dramatically for those of us who still had health insurance. *Good health policy includes everybody.* - **Help people who buy insurance on their own.** About 250,000 Minnesotans don’t get health insurance through an employer or a government program, and they have seen their health insurance premiums soar in recent years. While the AHCA would make health insurance cheaper for younger and healthier people in this group, it would dramatically increase the expense for those who really need to buy their own insurance — farmers, early retirees, freelancers and contractors, and many many more. *Good health policy doesn’t favor “young invincibles.”* - **Make it easier to be healthy.** We support policies that bring health care within reach for everyone in Minnesota. By cutting or eliminating health insurance for [about 1.2 million Minnesotans](http://mn.gov/dhs/assets/public-health-funding-and-ACA-issue-brief-march-2017%5Ftcm1053-284348.pdf?ref=chudgar.com), the AHCA would make it harder for one out of every five of us to stay well and get care. *Good health policy tends toward health.* - **Help us help each other.** The AHCA would change the way the federal government helps people pay for health insurance through tax credits. According to the nonpartisan CBO, the new tax structure would make health insurance more expensive for many who need it most — particularly older and lower-income Minnesotans. *Good health policy looks out for the most vulnerable.* - **Take advantage of federal support.** By reducing the amount of federal funding for our state by billions of dollars every year, the AHCA would make health care more expensive for individual Minnesotan businesses, families and individuals — not least by raising taxes to compensate. *Good health policy helps the states.* - **Encourage Minnesota innovation.** By capping the amount of Medicaid support states could receive from the federal government, the AHCA would penalize Minnesota for the cost savings we have already achieved through innovative ideas of our own. *Good health policy rewards efficiency and quality.* The health care regulations we have now are far from perfect. Although more people have health insurance in America — and in Minnesota — than ever before, we still have far to go before everyone has stable access to excellent and affordable health care. Lawmakers in Washington and Saint Paul are trying to lower the expense of health insurance by creating new policies. In the process, they are debating the basic principles that structure how we get and pay for medical care. Some of our political leaders think health care can only be better, cheaper and more accessible if government leaves individual consumers free to choose medical services in open markets. Others believe the government of a democratic nation has a duty to bring wellbeing within reach for all its people. A battle between these competing ideas about health, law and freedom is playing out before our eyes. No one can foresee the outcome of today’s political battles. But we do know that all of us, no matter who we are or where we live, will feel their effects. On the behalf of our members, we urge state and national policymakers never to forget the human consequences of their choices. No matter our politics, we can agree that good health policy should advance the cause of human wellbeing. A bill now before the U.S. House of Representatives, called the American Health Care Act (AHCA), would not help health insurers serve Minnesotans better. The AHCA, as currently drafted, would increase the overall cost of health care for many people, make health insurance unaffordably costly for many — particularly those who need it most — and increase the financial burden on all Minnesotans to compensate for decreased federal health care funding. We believe our representatives can and must do better. In this we agree with many others who serve the health and wellbeing of Minnesotans, including the [Minnesota Medical Association](https://www.mnmed.org/news-and-publications/News/MMA-Formally-Opposes-AHCA?ref=chudgar.com), the [Minnesota Hospital Association](http://www.mnhospitals.org/newsroom/news/id/2000/mha-does-not-support-the-ahca?ref=chudgar.com), the [Minnesota Department of Human Services](http://mn.gov/dhs/assets/public-health-funding-and-ACA-issue-brief-march-2017%5Ftcm1053-284348.pdf?ref=chudgar.com), and lawmakers from both the [DFL](http://www.startribune.com/where-minnesota-s-delegation-stands-on-gop-healthcare-bill/416950794/?ref=chudgar.com) and the [GOP](http://www.startribune.com/tom-emmer-erik-paulsen-jason-lewis-praise-house-gop-health-care-plan/415737754/?ref=chudgar.com). As members of Congress learn more about the bill, it seems unlikely that the AHCA will become law in its current form. \[Update: [It didn’t.](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/us/politics/health-care-affordable-care-act.html?ref=chudgar.com)\] Still, we know that other efforts at reform will soon follow. To help policymakers achieve meaningful health reform more effectively, it’s important to learn from the mistakes of the AHCA — mistakes that, fortunately, can easily be avoided. ## **Health reform should:** - **Cut costs.** The biggest problem in health care is that it’s simply too expensive. There is broad consensus — among experts across industries, sectors and political views, and [the American people as a whole](http://kff.org/health-costs/press-release/poll-early-perceptions-of-house-bill-show-public-thinks-it-would-cover-fewer-people-and-raise-health-costs/?ref=chudgar.com) — that the reforms set forth in the AHCA would not make health care more affordable, in Minnesota or in the nation at large. *Good health policy brings down the overall expense of health care.* - **Encourage personal responsibility.** In Minnesota, we are already seeing health people who buy health insurance on their own. By eliminating the existing requirement that everyone have insurance — the “individual mandate” pioneered in Massachusetts by Gov. Mitt Romney — the AHCA would discourage young and healthy people from buying health insurance. Coupled with a delay in other incentives to encourage coverage, this means fewer people will buy health insurance on their own and that those left are more likely to need care. With fewer people to help, expenses would rise dramatically for those of us who still had health insurance. *Good health policy includes everybody.* - **Help people who buy insurance on their own.** About 250,000 Minnesotans don’t get health insurance through an employer or a government program, and they have seen their health insurance premiums soar in recent years. While the AHCA would make health insurance cheaper for younger and healthier people in this group, it would dramatically increase the expense for those who really need to buy their own insurance — farmers, early retirees, freelancers and contractors, and many many more. *Good health policy doesn’t favor “young invincibles.”* - **Make it easier to be healthy.** We support policies that bring health care within reach for everyone in Minnesota. By cutting or eliminating health insurance for [about 1.2 million Minnesotans](http://mn.gov/dhs/assets/public-health-funding-and-ACA-issue-brief-march-2017%5Ftcm1053-284348.pdf?ref=chudgar.com), the AHCA would make it harder for one out of every five of us to stay well and get care. *Good health policy tends toward health.* - **Help us help each other.** The AHCA would change the way the federal government helps people pay for health insurance through tax credits. According to the nonpartisan CBO, the new tax structure would make health insurance more expensive for many who need it most — particularly older and lower-income Minnesotans. *Good health policy looks out for the most vulnerable.* - **Take advantage of federal support.** By reducing the amount of federal funding for our state by billions of dollars every year, the AHCA would make health care more expensive for individual Minnesotan businesses, families and individuals — not least by raising taxes to compensate. *Good health policy helps the states.* - **Encourage Minnesota innovation.** By capping the amount of Medicaid support states could receive from the federal government, the AHCA would penalize Minnesota for the cost savings we have already achieved through innovative ideas of our own. *Good health policy rewards efficiency and quality.* The health care regulations we have now are far from perfect. Although more people have health insurance in America — and in Minnesota — than ever before, we still have far to go before everyone has stable access to excellent and affordable health care. Lawmakers in Washington and Saint Paul are trying to lower the expense of health insurance by creating new policies. In the process, they are debating the basic principles that structure how we get and pay for medical care. Some of our political leaders think health care can only be better, cheaper and more accessible if government leaves individual consumers free to choose medical services in open markets. Others believe the government of a democratic nation has a duty to bring wellbeing within reach for all its people. A battle between these competing ideas about health, law and freedom is playing out before our eyes. No one can foresee the outcome of today’s political battles. But we do know that all of us, no matter who we are or where we live, will feel their effects. On the behalf of our members, we urge state and national policymakers never to forget the human consequences of their choices. No matter our politics, we can agree that good health policy should advance the cause of human wellbeing. ### Concepts for healthcare communication URL: https://www.chudgar.com/concepts-for-healthcare-communication/ Last updated: 2023-08-10T20:59:45.000Z ![Screen Shot 2019-08-09 at 12.11.09 PM.png](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1565370855284-A2KULKKG4H818HS4S2M2/Screen+Shot+2019-08-09+at+12.11.09+PM.png) These are the some of the concepts we’ve identified as *most important* to start new and better conversations about health care in Minnesota. To use our concepts well, we have to understand what they mean *outside* the industry. Two important points: - Any discussion of health policy speaks to our deepest hopes and fears—even for experts. - Concepts derive their power from human feelings. The significance of this idea can’t be overstated. To put it more bluntly: everything I have seen and read and heard suggests that healthcare is so very emotionally fraught that rational conversation about it is practically impossible. In fact, *rational discussion about health policy is frequently suspect*. That’s how important feelings are in the field the we work in. # RISK ## Companies manage risk. People provide for care. ![Screen Shot 2019-08-09 at 11.42.15 AM.png](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1565368958840-YPNF5VDGEYFMK2JOXLS2/Screen+Shot+2019-08-09+at+11.42.15+AM.png) Understanding insurance requires and understanding of risk—namely, that insurance spreads risk across a pool of premium-payers. But the trouble is that human beings don’t (or perhaps *can’t*) understand our *own* health, or our family’s, in terms of risk. Accordingly, we have to explain the fundamental mechanism of insurance in terms that are both conceptually coherent *and* emotionally bearable. - **Avoid “risk” whenever possible.** It’s not usually necessary to appeal to this concept to explain health plans’ decisions or make recommendations. Avoid the concept whenever possible—and when the concept is unavoidable, use “odds” or “chances” rather than *risk*. Risk is accurate, but also callous. - **Avoid a feel-good story** about how insurance *shields* people from risk. Increasingly, it doesn’t. Thanks to the structure of our national health system, policyholders have to shoulder an increasing burden of financial responsibility—and an increasing burden of *moral* responsibility for difficult decisions (about choosing coverage, setting aside money for expenses, and deciding on treatments). - **Avoid the idea of “risk pools.”** This concept can’t help but divide people into groups we didn’t choose to belong to, and with which we simply don’t feel a sense of fellowship. - **Talk about *providing for care*.** It’s the plans’ job to think about risk; it’s my job, as a citizen, to *provide for the care* that my family and I might need one day. Insurance companies manage risk *so that* human beings can provide for care. - **Stay realistic.** “Health insurance makes health care *as affordable as possible*.” “Having health insurance *helps us* provide for the medical care we might need.” - **Emphasize the individual.** When you can’t avoid talking about a particular risk pool, speak whenever possible about *a particular individual* in the group rather than the group as a whole. “*Someone in this group* was likely to need a lot of medical care last year”; “*If you get your insurance this way,* you might be able to find a more affordable plan on MNsure.” # SYSTEM / COMPLEXITY ## Systems only matter at the human scale. ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1565368920584-LMQBLB86ONV3LL9QBF2R/image-asset.png) Expert audiences make policy at the level of the large-scale systems that work together (or not) to keep Minnesota’s care delivery and finance systems functional. That is as it should be. And part of our mission is making these large-scale systems comprehensible to ordinary human beings (including human beings with power, like legislators and industry leaders). But at the level of daily life, nobody *interacts* with “the health system” except as a conceptual placeholder for complexity and frustration. Instead, we interact with health care on a very small scale, at the level of doctors, hospitals, clinics and pharmacies—our “healthcare neighborhood.” Our communications have to make large-scale systems comprehensible *as they affect* individual human interactions, and (in the other direction) to clarify how individual human interactions inform our recommendations for large-scale systems. - **Avoid the word “system.”** In healthcare, “the system” is a placeholder for all that’s complex and frustrating. Even “systems,” plural, has the flavor of mechanical policy-talk. It’s very difficult to avoid “the health system,” but we should try. - **Avoid the appeal to complexity.** Yes, it’s complicated; but nobody is interested in the internal difficulties of health insurance companies. “It’s complicated” is never a good answer—even and especially if it really *is* complicated. - **Avoid zooming out.** While we are and must be a voice of expertise about the large-scale mechanics and economics of the health system, we have to avoid the temptation to answer human questions in system-scale terms. - **Name the parts and specify their interactions.** Every system has parts, and those parts have names—so, whenever possible, be very specific about the *parts* of the system that are interlocking, and how. For example: “Doctors, hospitals and others who provide medical care negotiate the price of their services with health insurance companies”; “the federal government provides money to the state government in order to help the health plans cover these expenses,” etc. - **Emphasize the effort to simplify.** Speak about unavoidable complexity by talking about what’s being done (or what should be done) to cut through it. “We’re working together with state officials *to understand the care* that Minnesotans who buy insurance on their own will need next year”; “the health plans *use all the information they have to choose the best possible networks* for Minnesotans.” - **Explain systems *in terms of* its human interactions.** We can and must talk frequently about Minnesota-scale economics; but whenever this is necessary, descend to the particular as the final level of analysis: “Provider networks help make sure that we get the best possible care at the best possible prices. *When you see an in-network doctor*, you can be sure that you’re getting the best possible value for the premium you pay every month.” In the other direction, make it as clear as possible how recommendations for change are *informed by* better human interactions: “We believe that the proposed legislation *will help secure Minnesotans’ access to the prescriptions they need* by … .” # MONEY ## The only money that matters to me is mine. ![Screen Shot 2019-08-09 at 11.44.26 AM.png](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1565369550278-JABTNNT07BMH3I24GC08/Screen+Shot+2019-08-09+at+11.44.26+AM.png) With respect to money, we have two competing goals: first, to explain the large-scale economics of the statewide health system in ways that advance the interests of the health plans; and second, to articulate health economics in terms that ordinary people find comprehensible and compelling. To accomplish both of these goals, it’s important to distinguish them from each other: *health economics* is a nation-scale problem, but *the expense of medical care* is a vividly human concern. - **Avoid “the cost of care.”** The “cost of care” is a company- or government-sized idea, and it’s difficult to comprehend—and it feels cold and abstract. - **Never cry poor.** There is no way in which even *nonprofit* health plans can plausibly be made to seem economically disadvantaged—even if, as we well know, they are sometimes in grave financial distress. Under no circumstances should it ever be said, or even *implied*, that the health plans are somehow struggling to make ends meet, or are suffering because others aren’t pulling their weight. - **Avoid laying blame.** Even though other players in the industry really are working (actively or by accident) *against* the best economic interests of Minnesotans, this is never a helpful point to make. - **Explain cost in terms of *individual expense*.** Explain large-scale health economics *as it affects* individual Minnesotans’ pocketbooks. The word *expense* is the word to use, since that’s the problem we feel most immediately. “It’s the health plans’ responsibility to make sure we can pay for all their members’ care, and the care Minnesotans need is more expensive than it ever has been before. We feel that expense *directly* in the premiums we pay every month.” - **Acknowledge human hardship.** Simple acknowledgment goes a long way: “Premiums are increasing for many Minnesotans next year, and *that’s very hard news to hear. For many of us, health expenses are a genuine hardship*, and to have to pay more every month for insurance.” - **Explain large-scale economic problems with a view to collaborative problem-solving and specific recommendations.** Rather than gesturing to the unsustainable economics of healthcare as the *answer* to any question, try to talk about how we’re working together to address such challenges: “Although the increasing expense of prescription drugs is a growing challenge, health plans, government leaders and care providers are working to find sustainable ways of keeping these costs in check. For instance … .” # ~~HEALTH~~ CARE ## Health matters. Care matters more. ![Screen Shot 2019-08-09 at 11.54.30 AM.png](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1565369699933-3EE89Y9ADOG8PJ0HP5J3/Screen+Shot+2019-08-09+at+11.54.30+AM.png) When it comes to health insurance, “health” is a placeholder—it’s an abstraction that answers the question, “What am I buying when I buy insurance?” But in ordinary experience, the benefit of health isn’t something I associate with my health insurance. What I *do* get from my insurance is *care*—and care means much more than just *medical* care. For us, the concept of care should embrace the whole range of *health-promoting actions* that contribute to the wellbeing of Minnesotans. - **Avoid “health” in the abstract.** The health plans themselves have complicated and nuanced ways of talking about health. The Council need not intervene in that discussion. When it comes to the health insurance *industry*, “health” simply isn’t a concept that’s helpful. - **Leave “healthcare” to journalists and politicians.** The space in “health care,” as we write the phrase, isn’t audible: people hear the term as *healthcare*, and *healthcare* is mostly synonymous with “the system.” - **Broaden *care* to include all health-promoting human actions.** Doctors and nurses provide care—and so, in their own ways, do the people who work for the plans: “Like doctors and nurses, the people of Minnesota’s nonprofit health plans work every day to make care less expensive and more accessible.” - **Emphasize *caring*.** The word isn’t as important as the concept: “The people of our health plans are *deeply concerned* about the expense of prescription drugs”; “we’re *truly committed* to policies that build on new insights in public health research.” And make sure to give everyone else credit for caring, too: “Like us, the Commissioner is *working hard to improve access to care* for Minnesotans. But we don’t believe that this policy is the best way to achieve that goal.” - **Talk about *wellbeing*.** Since the plans do far more than pay medical bills, it makes sense to talk as much as possible about *wellbeing*—a broader and deeper concept than “health,” and one that tracks the current thinking in public health more closely: “it’s in everyone’s interest to improve *wellbeing* for all Minnesotans, not just provide for care when we get sick.” # FUTURE ## The only credible vision of healthcare is of its future. ![Screen Shot 2019-08-09 at 11.59.39 AM.png](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1565370108057-60TV4T1RMMLE9JWG8EJD/Screen+Shot+2019-08-09+at+11.59.39+AM.png) In 2015, the health system is changing so rapidly that it is simply *incomprehensible*, even to experts. No one can pretend to have a clear understanding of healthcare in the present—but we can and must have a clear and compelling vision of where we *want* healthcare to be in the future. - **Don’t talk about “change” in the abstract.** Yes, healthcare has changed a lot and it’s only going to change more: everyone knows this already. Like “system,” “change” is a placeholder for more interesting ideas. - **Avoid “reform.”** The idea of healthcare reform is toxic to a great many people—but more importantly, *reform* is essentially negative, emphasizing the need for change (rather than the desired future state). - **Focus on the future.** Whenever possible, emphasize ends (rather than means), solutions (rather than problems): “This is one of the ways in which Minnesota’s health insurers would like to work toward *providing affordable coverage* for every single Minnesotan.” - **Articulate the questions clearly.** Sometimes, we just don’t know what the future *ought* to look like—and in those cases, the greatest possible public service is to clarify the questions that matter: “Premiums have risen, it’s true. And to solve that problem, we need to ask a deeper question: namely, why does excellent medical care need to be so expensive?” # PERSON ## Only people are healthy. Only people care. ![Godfred Otuteye cuddles his grandson Lucas Reitzner](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53e4d517e4b0dc6847406585/1565370372850-B4G0NOMCKQ3L0CUZHVSP/Screen+Shot+2019-08-09+at+12.05.30+PM.png) Godfred Otuteye cuddles his grandson Lucas Reitzner. Photo: me Beyond payers and providers, beyond policymakers and patients, the individual human being is the fundamental unit of all wellbeing and all care. All the state-scale problems the we’re trying to solve are solved *by* people and *for* people. - **Avoid consumer language.** While it’s very common to talk about “healthcare consumers,” the Council should resist this common figure of speech. The fact is, everybody who has a human body is, *a priori*, a “healthcare consumer.” The whole set of consumer-focused language should be avoided: for instance, talking about insurance policies as “products.” - **Avoid language that dissolves people into abstractions.** Not “patients,” but people; not “risk pools,” but *people in this group*; not “the individual market,” but *people who buy insurance on their own.* - **Avoid personifying *systems themselves*.** Saying “Minnesota’s nonprofit health plans believe,” for instance, gives to much human agency to the *companies*. Likewise phrases like “DHS is trying” or “the legislature wants.” Personhood is special; reserve it for persons. - **Find the people in the systems.** Whenever we’re talking about wants, desires, and actions—all the properties that distinguish persons from mere things—*find the people*. So “*the people of* Minnesota’s health plans believe”; “the leaders of DHS are trying”; “the representatives who have brought this bill forward want.” - **Speak like a human being.** Use the first person singular to talk about *yourself as a person*, and do so frequently: *“I* believe in this approach to solving the problem.” Use the first person *plural* to talk about *Minnesotans*: “We deserve to get the best possible care as affordably as possible.” Use the third person to talk about the plans: “*They* are working on this problem in partnership with doctors, hospitals, and government leaders.” I am a person; *we* are people; *they* are companies. ### In memory of Ashvin Jayantilal Chudgar URL: https://www.chudgar.com/in-memory-of-ashvin-jayantilal-chudgar/ Last updated: 2024-02-19T19:29:30.000Z Ashvin was born in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, on May 16, 1939, the first son of the late Jayantilal and Nirmala (Mehta) Chudgar. He came to the United States in 1961 to study textile engineering at North Carolina State University, where he received a master’s degree. He took his second master’s in business administration from Fresno State University. After his education, he came to Pennsylvania to work in research and development in the Textile Machine Works division of Rockwell International. Shortly after moving to Reading in 1967, Ashvin attended an evening mixer at the YMCA, where he met Ginny Moll, daughter of the late Conrad and Roze (Casner) Moll. After a prayer-filled and thoughtful courtship, Ashvin and Ginny were married in the chapel at Alvernia College on June 1, 1968\. They were married for 43 years, until his death temporarily parted them. Ashvin is survived by Ginny and two sons, Justin, husband of Leslie Zane, in Weed, CA, and Neil, of Saint Paul, MN; by his brothers, Kiran, of Louisville, KY, and Amit, of Birmingham, AL; by three nieces and three nephews; and by many loving and beloved friends. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/02/2006-08-10-at-13-03-01.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/02/sc009dd6e8.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/02/IMG_0874.JPG) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/02/574554591.159387.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/02/2005-06-27-at-12-09-39.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bb/50/bb504411-a080-44c6-becf-7f48885a9e1c/content/images/2024/02/458653-R1-03-4A.jpg) Throughout his professional career, Ashvin contributed to the textile industry in Berks County. After leaving Rockwell, he worked in other textile concerns until he founded his own company, Keystone Hosiery Mills, Inc., of Reading. Many will remember him for the unparalleled excellence of the socks his factory produced. After Keystone Hosiery closed, Ashvin turned his attention to photography, a longstanding passion. He was permanently attentive to beauty, finding loveliness in unsuspected places. He often turned his camera to record the patterns of color and light in the centers of flowers. His photographs have been exhibited widely across Berks County, and their beauty endures at [ashvinphotos.com](https://web.archive.org/web/20110128122600/http://www.ashvinphotos.com/Site/Welcome.html). These images show how he viewed the world. It would please him if you took a moment to enjoy them. According to Ashvin’s wishes, his traditional Hindu cremation service will be private. Though he disliked funerals, Ashvin loved to entertain, so his family will be hosting a memorial open-house instead of a viewing. On Saturday, Feb. 18, between 1 and 4 p.m., those who loved him are invited to visit his home in Spring Township. There will be light refreshments, displays of Ashvin’s photographs, hugs, tears, smiles, and many happy memories. Donations in lieu of flowers may be sent to the [Akshaya Patra Foundation USA](https://www.apusa.org/?ref=chudgar.com), a program that provides school lunches to children in India; or to [Mentors for Berks Youth](http://www.m4by.org/?ref=chudgar.com), 106 W Lancaster Avenue, Reading, PA 19607. Published by the *Reading Eagle* on Feb. 15, 2012. # Memories and Condolences for Ashvin Chudgar > Dear Chudgars, > > I was so sorry to just moments ago hear of our loss and that we missed Saturday’s opportunity to connect and share happy memories with many neighborhood friends. We send our deepest sympathies and will continue to keep you all in our prayers. > > **Cathy Fennell**, February 21, 2012 > To the family of Ashvin. I met Ashvin a few years ago at the Body Zone. We spent many early mornings going around in circles, both walking the track and discussing the topics of the day. Some things we agreed on and some we disagreed, but his friendship made those mornings pass quickly. A man of vision and integrity, he is missed. > > **Joe Schaeffer**, February 20, 2012 > Dear Ginny, Neil and family, Our sincerest sympathy in your loss. You are all in our hearts and prayers. > > **Pramukh & Deena Patel**, February 20, 2012 > Dear Ginny and Family, > I just read online of your family's loss. Please accept my sympathies. May your warm, loving memories sustain you... > > **Brenda Winkler**, February 20, 2012 > Dear Ginny Aunty, J, and Neil, > > I am so sorry to hear that Ashvin Uncle has passed on. You all were so wonderful to our family when we lived in Reading. I was very young when our families would meet, but I know you were our close friends. I always wondered how you all were doing and hoped for the best. > > I will never forget our parties we had at your house and how one day Ashvin Uncle decided to make homemade ice cream for us in the basement. I thought that was so creative and it was something I had never done before. I still have never done that, and I am 35 now. It was the best ice cream ever that I can remember. > > We have very warm memories of our time together and I wanted you to know that. > Much love and peace to you all at this difficult time. > > Love Always, > > **Simone Tehsildar Kakar and Family**, February 17, 2012 > Dear Ginny, > > You have been in my constant thoughts and prayers, and while I am positively heartbroken by the loss of a true gentleman and gentle spirit, I am also relieved that his suffering is over. Your descriptions of his time at the hospital were very difficult to read and imagine, both for his sake and for yours. > > When I told Aidan that his special friend "Ashbin" had gone to heaven, he looked so sad and said, "I sure will miss him." Yes, I sure will miss him, too. > > Hoping to be able to stop by on Saturday to see you and hug you and take part in the celebration of an extraordinary man. > > Much Love and God's Peace to you, dear Ginny. > > **Sallie Mercer,** February 16, 2012 > I was so sorry to read the news in the paper. That tribute was very moving and I learned some things about your family. I still have some notecards I purchased from the show at the high school. I am praying for all of you. > > **Nancy Poole** > February 16, 2012 > To the family of Ashvin- many of us at Vanity Fair Outlet remember Ashvin as he would be there bright and early . He was a wonderful man full of kindness and wisdom. He will be missed by many such as Pauline Follmer , Loretta Kostick and myself. > > **Connie Ramsey** > February 16, 2012 > Ginny, > > So sorry to read of your husbands passing. My husband and I sat across from you at our last class reunion. You had your yearbook with you and we mentioned Peggy Molets. I emailed her in case she does not get the newspaper. > > **Kathy Higo**, February 15, 2012 > May your hearts soon be filled with wonderful memories of joyful times together as you celebrate a life well lived. > > **Ted and Jen (Wolf) Perezous**, February 15, 2012 > To Ashvin’s family, You don’t know me , but I had the wonderful gift of knowing your Ashvin from Body Zone. I use to see him every morning working out and always admired him for his friendliness toward everyone. He will be greatly missed by everyone, including me for he’s raidiant smiling spirit. It is so great to know that you will see him again someday. My deepest sympathy for your loss. > > **Donna Bowers**, February 15, 2012 > Hi Ginny: We were so sorry to hear about Ashvin. Please accept our deepest sympathies and condolences at this time of loss. We think of you two often and how we spent time together while we were in PA. I still have photos that Ashvin took of the boys and I will always remeber the party you had for us after we became Citizens of USA and coming to vouch for us as witnesses. We had a good friendship. Hope you are doing OK. You are in our thoughts. > > **Arati and Janak**, February 15, 2012 > Offering a deepest sympathy during this time. He will be in our prayers. we will always remember his smiling face and warm greetings whenever we met him.We pray God will bless him and give strength to his family in this difficult times. > > Harnish and Sonal Shah, February 15, 2012 > Ginny, you have my deepest sympathies for you and your family. > > **Myrna Fuchs**, February 15, 2012 > Ginny–my deepest sympathy to you at this sad time. > > **Ellen H**, February 15, 2012 > Dear Ginny and Family, > > We are deeply saddend by the news of Ashvin’s passing. As your neighbors on Sherwood Rd., we would like to offer our assistance, should you need it, by bringing ‘light fare’ for you to serve at your Memorial Open House. Please contact us by phone if this would be helpful during your time of grief. > > **Kristie & Matt Zielinski**, February 15, 2012 > Offering our deepest sympathies during this time. He will be in our prayers. May God bless his soul. > > **Kirtida & Trilochan Bhatt**, February 15, 2012 > Offering our deepest sympathies during this time. > > **The Staff of Giles & Yeckley Funeral Home**, February 14, 2012