Letter from Nadia Chaney, Director of Training

We envision a world in which all young people lead creative, purposeful lives.

Dear PYE community,

With a heart full of gratitude I will be stepping down as the Director of Training at PYE at the end of this year. When Rup Sidhu suggested I volunteer at a Power of Hope camp in 2002 I could never have suspected the incredible turn my life would take. I found a life’s purpose and a lifetime’s worth of friendship and community.

Nadia Chaney, Director of Training

I’m so proud of all the work I have done with PYE. I’m not someone who looks back in time too often, but in doing so in these last few months I find I’m especially proud of the mistakes, of the evolution, of everything that was hard that I did, that we all did together. I have so many memories of gatherings and camps, adventures and intimacies, that they are all overlapped and entangled in my heart, as if they were a universe unto themselves. I feel a perfect balance of sorrow and joy as I write this. The heart-circle feeling. I know you know what I mean. It’s the feeling of transformation.

I’m not disappearing! I’ll still be available as a freelance facilitator, trainer, and facilitation and creativity coach. At the same time, I’m dreaming of new questions, new methods. It’s such a gift to have practiced the Creative Community Model so consistently for so long. I feel as though my identity is changing, from a branch of a strong tree to one of its seeds that is ready to catch a bird’s wing and fly.

One important aspect of this change for me is an examination of my relationship to power. I’ve been in a senior-type position with PYE since 2009 and I notice how, while that has been an incredible opportunity to expand and grow, it also comes with a limitation. Power accrues around the role of an expert, and it can be corrosive. I’m ready to return to the role of beginner. 

I want to learn and study, and in particular I want to study more deeply how groups operate. Even more specifically, I want to learn about the nature of time and temporality. This is the material basis of creative facilitation, the medium of time, and I want to know more about it! With wide open arms I invite you to join me in this exploration. To learn more: nadiachaney.com/timezoneresearchlab

My hope for PYE is simple but very deep. It’s that, as it continues to grow and thrive, it remains always true to its roots in heart-centered community, in the courage of creative risk-taking, in listening for and encouraging the whispers of emergence. That it lives in the spirit of experimentation and responsive accountability in which it was born and raised. That it stays nimble and honest and true so that it always keeps that tender, vibrating, empty, living possibility at the centre of the heart-circle. That it is always loved, and that it grows in love.

I’m a little sad to be leaving. But I’m also ready. After graduating so many eighteen year olds from camps, signing off so many incredible trainers, it’s time for me to leap, too. My long apprenticeship is over, and I could not possibly be more overwhelmed with gratitude for all that you have taught me.

With all my love forever,

Nadia

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