Month: February 2026

My son has learned the ‘h’ word, hate, and he uses it like this: When things don’t go his way or he doesn’t get what he wants, he casually proclaims ‘well then I hate you’. Not getting TV until after bathtime? Well then I hate you. Being told to stop doing something annoying? Hate you. At first it really bothered me, and I tried to rationalize my statements, “but you can’t just come and hit me”. Rationalizing to a 5 year old.. Eh, doesn’t really work. Then I tried to explain how harsh the ‘h’ word is. Then how untrue it is. Then the good old fashioned acceptance and ignoring for the 5 minutes he needs to hate until he loves again.

But one day something else came out of me, and that is to ask him – are you sure that you hate me, or is it that you don’t like the feeling you’re having? And we talked about how maybe a feeling comes up that I don’t like having and I blame the person who made me have that feeling. But it’s really the feeling that I am fighting, not the person. Maybe the feeling is “I did something wrong”, and it’s no fun to feel that way, or “I’m not getting what I want”, also no fun. He thought about it, and we left it there.

In last Saturday’s SEED event that I’m co-organizing, we started with a very simple little ice-breaker where a person has their hand on your back, and you have your hand on someone’s back, and for 5 minutes, you just receive their love and support. I realized how rare it is to sit in a space and just receive total love and support. We live in such a harsh world, where you are always up for critique. Self-critique, other-critique, job-critique, government-critique, world-critique. Not that these are not valid, and there is a certain amount of critique needed to change things, but I feel as a society we are off balance. The critique is not really helping us change anything, because we rarely address the feelings inside us that the critique helps us avoid.

Our natural state is to love and be at peace, but to think of a work meeting done in the spirit of love and peace, or a political meeting, seems so out of touch with reality. Why? Is it just because we’ve gotten used to it? At-least in the NGO sector, with people trying to make a difference in the world, this should be the case, no? It seems it’s quite the opposite, with the same power issues that exist in any corporation. The same pressure to perform, to be productive, not to expose any vulnerability.

In the last training that I facilitated, I made an evaluation sheet asking a few questions about the training. But I didn’t ask what could be improved or for them to rate on a scale how good were different parts (although, vegetarian food is not for everyone, message delivered . This is not because I don’t want to hear critical feedback or get out of taking responsibility, but it’s because I wanted to operate at a different level – not what could be improved but what did you learn? Instead of the movement to evaluate and judge, what about finding the learning opportunity for yourself? Even and especially with parts that people didn’t like, or that didn’t go so smoothly. We tend to immediately try to find the culprit instead of the learning opportunity.

Now for you critical readers – don’t take this to the extremes. Critique is a valid mechanism that can help us grow and improve. And people need to be called out for harming others. But there are also ways that we give up on our own learning because the movement to critique is a habit. Probably formed when we were 5, when we got in trouble for doing something wrong and our parents reacted. We were honest back then with our ‘h’ word, now it’s covered in rational and intellectual reasoning.

The feeling of being wrong still holds many of us in an emotional prison and shapes our social and political world. We’re still the same 5 year olds sitting in those board rooms, fighting instead of feeling…

I have been writing a lot about my preferred form of activism, which has more to do with being yourself than fighting the system. But I want to clarify something, because I know this stance can be off-putting to those who are beyond frustrated with the current affairs and are desperate for change. Or for those who, without standing up to the machine, would feel they enable it to keep going.

I’m not against these forms of activism, and I think they have their place. I admire people who can get out on the streets of Minneapolis and stand up to ICE patrols, basically risking their lives, as proven. Or the people of Iran, desperate for change, dying in masses to protest their regime. Or the people of Israel and Palestine, out on the streets calling for a much needed regime change. You have to have serious balls to put yourself against the power of people in uniform. I don’t have that kind of courage.

But at the same time, my courage finds its place in other ways. In exploring the darkness within. In taking responsibility for my projections on others. In not continuing wars, and to take it even further, creating alternative spaces where peace can flourish.

Who is to say which form of activism is the ‘right’ one? For one person, posting something on facebook that aligns with their moral compass is their expression of what they can do in the world. It’s what they feel they can do in the moment. For another, it might be a realization that their energy needs to go elsewhere in order to maintain their wellbeing.

I once gave a workshop that had to do with left and right politics, and one person stated they really were not interested in politics, they don’t follow it, they don’t like it, they don’t know anything about it. I didn’t see this as ignorance. I saw it as a brave person taking care of their energetic needs. Not everyone has the same role in our society, and each person has a unique contribution to it, many times experienced in their presence and being, not only in their doing.

We have plenty of wars and battles going on. If fighting about how to address these battles becomes another battle, then man, we’re digging ourselves deeper. Let’s give each other a little space to figure things out and grow, instead of boxing each other in to ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways to make a difference.

I spent this past Sunday at two beautiful interfaith events. The first, a celebration of the ending of Tro i Harmoni, an association for which I’ve been a board member for the last couple of years. I moderated a panel with a Rabbi and an Imam, and we spoke about the difficulties of interfaith work, both collectively and in personal relationships. We explored the question of whether coming to the table with anyone is the right step, or whether there are boundaries to this work. We talked about the different conditions people have in coming to the table, and how these conditions can be both protectors and barriers. We also talked about the alternative to always pointing to the problem, the role of empathy and visionary thinking that can imagine a different way to live. We had music, meditation, food and a presentation of different organizations that continue the work of inclusion and interconnection. It was a beautiful way to honor the work that Tro i Harmoni has done for the last decade.

The second event was also an interfaith event at the Church of Scientology. This included a series of speakers who spoke about their work with interfaith, inclusion, democracy and peace education, etc.

In both events, I ended up on the microphone, the first one moderating the event, including the panel (in Danish!), and the second one as an invited speaker. Both events were uplifting and unifying, highlighting the importance of interfaith work.

And this is where the ‘outward’ part of my post ends. I would also like to share some of my own behind-the-scenes inward journey. Continue reading if that’s interesting to you, otherwise you could stop here

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I wasn’t always so comfortable on microphones. As a kid I had quite some stage fright. In the 8th grade Passover seder that our class had to lead for the whole school, I had one line: “We eat bitter herbs to remind us of the bitterness that our ancestors had to endure while they were in Egypt”. Not only did I memorize it to the death, but I’m sure my close friends from then still remember that line on my behalf. There were a few other incidents of running to the bathroom to procrastinate giving a presentation. Or shakily delivering talks. Or wanting to be in the choir but not being able to stand the pressure of auditioning. A lot of stories that have turned into bedtime stories for my 5 year old

So the fact that I gave an improvised talk at the 2nd event was quite a feat. I challenged myself not to prepare anything and just speak from the heart. I did this last year, and I guess the church of Scientology is a comfortable enough place for me to practice this. I spoke about the need to meet each other’s pain, to be able to do that by meeting our own pain. I spoke about activism as something other than fighting the system. I spoke about the loud voices of power and the quieter movement happening in the background. And I spoke about peace. The peace that will really come to this planet. Imagining, feeling and knowing this, a crazy thing to say at this time.

I spent the previous day with my cacao sisters in a womb healing ceremony, where we connected with our womb centers and the deepest darkest parts of ourselves. Without going into too many details (too late?), I really experienced that it physically hurts not to be myself. Parts of my body are actually in pain from this. All those layers of shame and hiding from being exposed, when in fact all I was hiding is myself and a longing to live in a peaceful and loving world. What a world we live in that you can actually get slammed with critique for speaking this out. I talked about this in the Scientology church – not the womb cacao part – but the part where the need to be right and the seizing of power relies on another perspective being shut down. And beyond power, now we’re seeing that in the ‘high levels’, it’s also evil and very dark. And those people up there love to see us fighting among left and right politics, among different religions, different ideologies, we become their soldiers and let them work in the shadows.

But as those people in power come out of the shadows, so do the ones releasing their shame and daring to speak the truth. It’s an amazing combination. The microphones and the behind-the-scenes, working together. The performance being called out. The truth being spoken. Power doesn’t go down easy, so who knows what the next few months will bring. But I’m proud to be one of the many who are getting on the microphones, giving another voice to the peace calling us home.