For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice.
+ TS Eliot, little giddings
Words shape us, and our language provides the framework we use to make sense of our world.
Yet many of us realise we need a refresh. Because what we currently have isn’t serving us very well.
We’ve used words as weapons to divide and conquer. They’ve become the boxes we inhabit rather than the air we breathe, the beauty we see, and the wisdom we share.
And we’ve forgotten how to listen with our senses and not just our rational mind.
Today, we don’t need words to tell us what to think, but to inspire, encourage and provoke us to wake up and become our whole selves.
An emerging language
Since early 2018 Sue has been wrestling with words – hers and those written by others – to craft more a regenerative language.
It started with coining the phrase quiet disruptor, initially simply as a self-identifier when other descriptors were too cumbersome. Instead, she found people hungry for a way to express themselves that felt authentic and no longer boxed in.
The Manifesto for Quiet Disruptors followed, and in September 2018, Sue started experimenting with a short daily blog with an accompanying photograph from the valley, which is now read across the world.
Here is the latest post as a taster
Sensing the significance of the times, Sue committed to writing a book expanding on the manifesto, which was published in January 2021. It is available worldwide in paperback and Kindle via Amazon.
+ sue heatherington
The most frequent and heartening response has been people saying they felt seen and heard for the first time. They recognised themselves in the pages and realised that they were not alone.
Being Seen & Heard… Quiet Disruptors: Notes for People Professionals is the free companion eBook for those who want to embed creating space for quiet disruptors in their leadership and professional practice. It can be found on the Quiet Disruptors website
Finally shall come the poet…
+ Walt whitman, leaves of grass
Poems and blessings
Both are countercultural, yet we need these subtle interruptions and need to let them do their work in us.
Poems invite us into a world beyond our cognitive understanding. Re-framing who we are and what we see changes us in the process.
Blessings are given and offered for our benefit to enable us to live in grace and hope and to thrive.
Both are powerful and required for this emerging journey because knowledge isn’t enough.
Sue uses a variety of poems and blessings in her work – her’s and others – and has recently been commissioned to write blessings for The Presence Project.
Other voices include:
- John O’Donohue – the late Irish poet and philosopher, especially his book Benedictus: A Book of Blessings
- David Whyte – poet and writer currently based in the Pacific North West
- Gideon Heugh – an emerging UK poet with a perceptive and fresh voice
The Art of Quiet Disruption
This is our latest endeavour and represents a natural next step for changing the conversation for good. You can find out more on Sue’s website: SueHeatherington
In the meantime, here is the manifesto:
The Art of Quiet Disruption
… changing the conversation for goodSeeding beautiful words
as an act of radical hope
that words make worlds.pause – see differently – re-story …
A final word…
Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom—poets, visionaries—realists of a larger reality.
Ursula K. Le Guinn, Acceptance Speech at National Book Awards ceremony, November 20, 2014
