We are living in an important time in history, a time that makes me feel angry, scared, and hopeful all at once – it is certainly a time of tremendous change.
There is a growing pressure to act publicly and decisively. To say the right thing. To show up in the right way. To make our position unmistakable.
In this current environment, I am feeling pulled in many directions – to take a side, to make a bold statement, or to stay silent, often all at once. But, none of those options seem quite right to me.
I have been pondering another way—not something to prescribe to others, but something I am trying on for myself, and for us as a community of helpers and healers who care deeply about the world we are shaping.
There is a feeling in the streets and across our online spaces—a current of grief, anger, fear, numbness, and disillusionment. It’s rolling through our communities. Moments like this do not stay contained to the headlines. They move through our bodies, our relationships, and our sense of safety.
And for many people, the urgency behind it all feels exhausting – I know it does for me.
Why does this moment feel so hard to navigate?
I’ve been asking myself this question a lot lately.
Not long ago, I had a conversation with a colleague about the difference between complicated and complex. This language comes from the work of Dave Snowden, founder of the Cynefin Framework, and it is often used in leadership and decision-making. Snowden worked for IBM—a business very different from ours. Nonetheless, the distinction gave me another way to make sense of what is happening in our world.
It gave me words for what I — and so many others — are trying to do: stay engaged without pretending to have all the answers, and without shutting down when things feel overwhelming. (I’d like to go on record saying that most days I fail miserably at this, but I do keep trying.)
If you’ve been feeling lost, stuck, or unsure how you’re meant to respond, you’re not alone. Maybe this lens can help.
If you have clarity about your role and what is right for you during this difficult time, my writing is not meant to result in a change of course. I trust you to do what you believe is right. I honor both your beliefs and the actions that grow from them.
Each of us in the NL community is committed to doing our part to build a world where connection—and the value of healthy relationships—can be seen and felt in everything we do. And each of us will live that commitment in our own way.
Today, I write from a place of profound love for our community. I long to be part of a community that can sit with grief, uncertainty, and even powerlessness with radical compassion and presence. I am imperfectly, and wholeheartedly, committed to helping build and support that kind of community.
Naming What Is Happening
We are living in a time of real social and political upheaval.
Families are divided. Communities are strained. People are frightened, angry, grieving, and overwhelmed. The news cycle is relentless, and the stakes feel deeply personal, even when events are happening far away.
For many, neutrality no longer feels like an option. Silence can feel dangerous. Speaking can feel risky. Doing nothing can feel like complicity.
This tension is not abstract. It shows up at dinner tables, in workplaces, in therapy sessions, and inside our own bodies. The question becomes not only what we believe, but how we are meant to live inside this moment without losing ourselves or one another.
What We Mean When Something Is Complicated
This time in our history is reinforcing the idea that we live in a complex system, not a complicated one (as defined by Snowden).
A complicated system is difficult or intricate, but it is ultimately predictable. A familiar example is car engine trouble. When a car stops running the way it should, something specific has usually gone wrong. A sensor has failed, a belt has worn out, or a connection has come loose.
Even if you do not know much about cars, you understand the basic logic. A mechanic can run diagnostics, identify the faulty part, replace it, and restore the system to working order. The process may take time and expertise, but it follows a clear sequence.
In complicated situations, there is a knowable relationship between cause and effect. When something goes wrong, the problem can usually be isolated and addressed with the right knowledge. There is a correct order of operations, and following it brings the system back into balance.
In systems like these, expertise carries significant weight. Precision and planning matter. Control feels both possible and appropriate. Complicated systems can be addressed through research, analysis, and the scientific method—and with enough expertise and time, they can often be solved.
Many of us have been trained, both professionally and culturally, to approach challenges this way. This model rewards effort and mastery, and it works well in the contexts it was designed for.
But Complex Systems Operate Very Differently
Complex systems are made up of living, interdependent parts that influence one another continuously. In these systems, cause and effect are not linear, and outcomes cannot be reliably predicted ahead of time. Change emerges through interaction and relationship rather than through instruction or control.
Let’s look at conflict between family members as an example. When tension builds between two people, there is rarely a single cause or a clear fix. The history of the relationship, past hurts, stress levels, timing, and the emotional states of everyone involved all shape what happens next. Even when one person changes their behavior, the rest of the system responds in ways that are not always predictable.
You cannot isolate one “problem” person, apply the right technique, and expect the family to suddenly feel settled. When one part of the system shifts, everything else is affected.
Families, communities, cultures, and healing processes are not machines that can be repaired by following the right sequence of steps. They are living systems that reorganize themselves over time through relationship, meaning, and context.
Complex systems call for pattern recognition—paying attention to what we know, what we don’t know, and what is emerging. From there, we assess, discuss, and experiment together.
This means solutions don’t come from one expert or one answer. They come from the purposeful coming together of people.
In complex situations, expertise still matters, but it no longer takes precedence over relationships. Attunement becomes more important than technique, and presence becomes more influential than control.
The Cost of Confusing the Two
My sense is that some of the tension we are experiencing right now comes from treating a complex reality as though it were merely complicated.
Complicated systems can be fixed. Complex systems can only be related to.
When something feels frightening or unjust, it is natural to want clarity and resolution. We look for the lever that will make things better. We look for the right argument, the right policy, the right action or the right person to blame or support. This approach makes sense when we believe the system can be controlled.
But in complex systems, that same approach often creates more strain. It’s a complicated fantasy applied to a complex reality.
When we push for certainty too quickly, conversations harden. When we demand clear alignment, relationships fracture. When we try to force outcomes, resistance tends to grow rather than dissolve. What begins as a desire for safety or justice can unintentionally deepen polarization and exhaustion.
This brings me to a story that has shaped how I understand these moments on a very personal level. It is a story about my grandmother, someone I loved deeply, and whose life continues to inform how I think about survival, morality, and what it means to be human inside a complex system—especially a complex trauma system.
When Survival Is Misread as Silence
My grandmother loved to dance, loved a good beer, and never missed a chance to sing her favorite drinking song. Every afternoon around four, she would have her coffee and cake, and she cared for those around her through a quiet mastery of the culinary arts. She kept the windows spotless and, whenever she visited us when I was a child, folded and organized my underwear and sock drawer with loving precision. Each Christmas Eve, I try my hand at her bratwurst and sauerkraut. It’s not the same—but in the attempt, I still feel closer to her.
We did not speak the same language, so she spoke with her eyes—such expressive eyes. She passed away many years ago, yet I can still see them, and I can still feel the love in them as it warms my body.
She also lived in Germany, about 3 hours from Auschwitz, during Nazi rule. She was very young, living inside a system shaped by fear and constant threat. After the war, when borders shifted and her home became part of Poland, she was displaced and forced to start over.
She risked crossing the border from East Germany to West Germany to reunite with my grandfather. She was caught and detained before eventually being released. She told the story of stealing plums out of a neighbors yard so she could make Pflaumenkuchen – plumb cake – for their wedding.
She survived the war and all the aftermath, but the cost of that survival stayed with her.
She went to her grave unable to fully acknowledge the Holocaust.
For many years, I judged her for that. I wanted history to make sense in clean lines, with clear heroes and clear villains. I wanted to believe the right response should have been obvious, and that I would have known what to do.
Later, through my own personal journey and my work as a trauma therapist, I came to understand her differently. She was living inside a totalitarian system where speaking, questioning, or resisting carried real danger—even death. Her nervous system adapted in the only ways available to it so she could stay alive.
She was not a hero, nor a villain. She was a human being surviving an unbearable reality.
She was one of the most loving and attuned people I have ever known. Her trauma shaped her world. Her love shaped mine. Both are true.
Remembering her has made me slower to judge and more cautious with certainty. It reminds me that from inside a threatening system, moral clarity is rarely simple, and survival often looks quieter and less visible than we want it to.
We tend to understand this way of survival when we’re talking about a child living in an abusive home – it is no less true for adults experiencing the weight of their powerlessness.
Choosing Our Role in a Complex Moment
There are people who are called to protest, organize, and confront systems directly. That role matters deeply, and it always has.
And for many, this is not a choice at all. When harm arrives at your doorstep, when your body, safety, or family is on the line, action is not a role you select — it is required for survival.
But it is not the role most people can realistically or sustainably take on. Many people cannot leave their jobs, risk arrest, or expose their families to instability. They are already holding critical roles—doing the slow, relational work that complexity requires, caring for children, elders, clients, and communities right where they are.
That does not make them disengaged or complicit. It means they are contributing from within the realities of their lives. Their presence, care, and steadiness are not a lesser form of action—they are a different and necessary one.
Complex systems require many roles. No single role carries the whole responsibility. For helpers and healers, our work is often not public or performative. It is relational and local, rooted in the spaces we already inhabit.
Where Influence Often Lives
In complex systems, influence does not come only from force, visibility, or activism. It also comes from steadiness.
It’s in the way we listen, the pace we bring into difficult conversations, and the care we take with differences. These things shape what becomes possible, even when they are not visible or celebrated.
This work happens in ordinary moments, when someone feels less alone, less rushed, or less threatened. It looks like allowing grief to exist without rushing to solutions, and staying connected even when agreement is not available.
Rather than asking what we should do to fix everything, a more honest question may be who we are in the middle of it, and what we are shaping through our presence in the world around us.
If you’re wondering how to stay grounded and responsive in the midst of complex systems—especially when your nervous system feels overwhelmed—our follow-up reflection, Our Compass in the Complexity: Mindfulness, Regulation, and the Path to Flow, explores practical tools like mindfulness, regulation, and flow that can help you stay present and aligned.
An Invitation
This is not a call to disengage or stay silent. Absolutely not. It is an invitation to recognize the kind of system we are living inside and to choose, intentionally, the role we will play today. We can choose again tomorrow. What matters is that our choices are made with an awareness of the complexity we are navigating.
Complex systems do not change through certainty alone. They change through sustained relationship, humility, and the willingness to stay human when answers are incomplete.
You are not required to carry the whole world.
You are asked to stay present in the part of it that is already in your care.
And to know that, for today, it is enough.
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