The Time is Now: Doing the Individual Work, an essay by Tory for Confluence Philanthropy
The following essay was written by Managing Partner Tory Dietel Hopps in response to Confluence Philanthropy’s 12th Annual Practitioner Gathering theme “The Time is Now”. It can be viewed on their website by clicking here.
I write from my perspective as a white woman, mother, financial inheritor, and social, environmental, and financial activist. ‘The Time Is Now’—the theme of this year’s Practitioners Gathering—really resonates with me. I believe 'The Time Is Now' for all of us in the Confluence community to understand that there is a force multiplier in each of us doing the individual work of getting our very own money in alignment with our values if we are to have a future as a people and a planet.
I have found that my own healing around money began on the other side of deep discomfort. It is uncomfortable to learn and acknowledge all the damage that the seeking of wealth accumulation has done to people, culture, and planet. It is painful to admit I have personally benefitted greatly from the current system and have spent nearly 50 years of my life truly unconscious about it. Facing into this darkness has called me to action and that has provided me with wildly unexpected surprises of opportunity, comradeship, and optimism.
I have spent the past eight years grappling with my own money story and the values, behaviors, and attitudes that shaped it. I am a work in progress, and it has not been without pain, but the process has caused me to be the most awake I’ve been in my life. Putting in the time and effort to understand the current systems at work, articulate my values and what is most important to me has propelled me take on strong forces that didn’t want me to move my money in very different ways that align with that articulation. I have had to find my voice and trust in it. I’ve had to hold tight to knowing that I am the only expert in what is important to me. I have chosen to tell my story publicly and to be vulnerable in doing so in the hope that others may find their own way to making very different decisions. I have done this to honor those who shared their stories with me and instigated my own awakening and courage.
The process of aligning my money with my values has fundamentally changed how I look at the world, how I do business, how I give of my time and money, where I spend my energy, and whom I choose to be in community with. While this has not been an easy process, it has been immensely rewarding and continues to push me to think in new ways and to open my soul to how things can be fundamentally different—it fuels me with hope. Walking this path has given me insight into the fear that controls so many of the decisions we make as humans and how we have been conditioned to not trust our own knowing. I didn’t think I had enough money to make a difference or for it to count—the accounts I worked on were so much larger than mine. I learned that by doing the work myself, I became better at accompanying others. This process has given me the gumption to have hard but deeply meaningful conversations with clients and the moxie to ask all of you, my professional colleagues, to do this very personal work no matter the size of your own bank account.
I have spent my 35+ year career in the nonprofit and philanthropic field. I believe that as professionals in this field we truly need to do this very personal work if we are to be authentic agents of change. When we have done the work ourselves (changing your credit cards to non-fossil fuel financing companies, changing where we bank to entities that are about building community, finding investments that are not extractive, truly creating a portfolio that reflects who we are and want to be, etc.) and can speak from the place of knowing what it takes to make personal changes, whether large or small, I believe we come to the table with clients standing on very different ground as change makers than if we have not done the work ourselves.
This is not an exercise for others to do; this is for us to do at a very individual level. We are the ones who are in position to help hold up the light and show a new way forward. If we stand in our own truth, honest experience, and honor the fact that our own change matters significantly, then I believe we will be the force multiplier that is necessary to bring about a future that is both sustainable and equitable.
I was pleased to see one of the opening sessions of this year’s Practitioners Gathering titled The Debt Can Never Be Repaid. This session offers us a chance to engage in what I believe to be a grounding conversation our own personal work and as professional colleagues.
- Tory Dietel Hopps, Managing Partner, Dietel & Partners