HELLO
Jordan Maney
She/Her
Meet the Leader
Jordan is the Radical Joy Coach™ and creator of the RestLab. Through her facilitation and coaching she helps people who give a damn learn the radical practice of rest to reclaim their joy and sustain their advocacy. You can find her resting with friends, family, and her sassy pup Duchess in San Antonio, TX.
Restorative Leadership Interview Questions:
Question 1: What helps you stay creatively courageous when the world feels threatened/like it’s on fire?
Being rooted in the stories of the elders and ancestors. I look to my family tree and I look to the collective family tree of Black and Indigenous ancestors who survived and left something for us. Whether it’s a story, lesson, example, or something else. I plant my feet there. I look to their wisdom to give me balance when everything feels uncertain. I ground in the words of a mentor, Cheryl Russ, “I will never be without because I will always go within.” This helps me stay even in chaos. It helps me protect my curiosity, expression, and dreams.
Question 2: Describe a time when your imagination helped you move from fear into action.
In 2020 when the events industry stopped, I didn’t know what to do for work as an inclusive wedding planner. Something shifted. It was uncertain for so many people and at a time of great grief, but I felt calm about my direction because I let my imagination lead and not my fear. I was uninhibited by what other people would say or think because everyone was figuring it out. I made a summit happen, I went viral in the industry for calling major wedding media out for not highlighting Black joy. I rallied community together. I got into a state of creation and didn’t try to perfect it. Learning that was such a gift. When you can allow things to be imperfect, you can allow things to flow and grow. So long as you sit on your gifts, ideas, or dreams out of fear that they won’t be perfect, they’ll never grow. I found the strategy comes from creating first. That action always leads to something greater.
Question 3: What does growth and holding space look like for you after a loss or rupture?
After rupture there has to be time to be with the uncertainty. When things get shaky, uneven, unsure, and quiet, you gotta get quiet too. You have to make room for those things. The shock, the grief, the pain, the disorder. All of it. Because the world will not grant you that grace. So you have to grant it to yourself. I sit with the pieces for as long as I need before I can see the mosaic I can create from the broken bits of glass. But the quiet has to be honored first. The space has to be made. It is not easy nor is it clean. It doesn’t work in spreadsheets and guarantees. It often feels like roughing it in the wilderness. No one is going to make the trail out of there. Only you can do that.
Question 4: How do you protect space for imagination in your team or community?
Permission, boundaries, and reframes are how I protect my ability to imagine. I have to give myself permission to imagine better and bigger things beyond my or the world’s current circumstances. Then, I imagine how I can contribute to that bigger or better. Boundaries around processing my emotions and being places where I’m giving more emotional labor than I’m providing myself emotional rest, is important to track. Reframes and affirmations keep me rooted when I feel like I’m beginning to spin away from imagination into fear or destruction.
Question 5: What rituals or practices help you (and/or your team/community) name what hurts while still holding on to what’s possible?
Rest, time in nature, time with people I love, time to be and nothing else. Practices that conjure up joy for me include journaling, birdwatching, trail walks, art days, and performing in song or acting. I work hard to create space for levity, light, joy, and laughter to visit with me for a while.