A conversation we've all been wanting to have - today I'm delighted to be talking with Keri Jarvis on the blog.
As well as the membership Composting - a place to meet the moment in deep discussions, conversational coaching, and relational richness - Keri also runs Exploring Economies for Re-enchantment - a year long study group to develop thinking and deepen knowledge around capitalism.
As well as the membership Composting - a place to meet the moment in deep discussions, conversational coaching, and relational richness - Keri also runs Exploring Economies for Re-enchantment - a year long study group to develop thinking and deepen knowledge around capitalism.
One year of conversational coaching
On a Saturday sometime in April last year, I received a voice note from Keri - ‘I’m thinking of starting a membership and I thought we could do it together on The Portal Collective.’
‘Ok, let’s do it!’ I replied without hesitation.
It was hands down one of the best decisions I’ve made.
Composting recently turned one and today I’m delighted to share more about Keri and her work on the blog.
Eyes wide open to inequality
Co-founder of The Southend Care Bank and co-ordinator of Southend’s branch of Parents for Future UK - where Keri hopes to support more ‘community resilience, skill sharing and cohesion’ - these irl community building projects are big influences in Keri’s work today.
"I might be a ‘radical’ leftist now but up until then, I didn’t even think we really needed feminism any more since I earned more money than my husband.
I had loved my job in retail management selling sprouts and knickers, especially the people part of it, but I couldn’t make sense of going back to that role when I felt like a completely different person.
"My work on The Portal emerges from a combination of all of this, plus my chaos gardening, my attempts at reclamation of the Irish language, parenting, long covid and a million other things."
But it wasn’t until Keri had her first baby in 2013 that she began to question what feminism actually meant.
I had loved my job in retail management selling sprouts and knickers, especially the people part of it, but I couldn’t make sense of going back to that role when I felt like a completely different person.
And also- CHILDCARE COSTS."
Keri retrained as a hypnobirthing teacher before founding Do It Like A Mother - a studio space and community for new and expectant parents.
"It was a way for me to bring people together to share the knowledge, resources and connection that I felt had been missing in my own experience of isolation in early motherhood."
Over time, other birth workers started asking Keri for mentoring.
"I began drawing on my skills from my former life, coaching and advising people about marketing and managing their businesses.
I also got super swept up in the online spiritual girlboss coaching sphere along the way.
I always had internal objections to the bypassing but allowed myself to be lulled along as I navigated PND, a loss of identity, needing to feel like part of something and craving a ‘better way’."
These experiences were the other big pieces in what Keri has created with her work.
"I’m reclaiming coaching as an expression of healthy relation, oriented towards wholeness rather than encouraging hierarchies, domination and authority over others."
In 2019, The Southend Care Bank emerged as a response to the then Tory government’s policies. As Co-Founder, Keri works with a small group of friends supporting over 400 families to alleviate the impacts of hygiene poverty.
"This is a huge part of my life, a labour of loving care for everyone involved."
Rehearsing healthy relation in the face of the Polycrisis
Keri’s Composting membership is a much-loved offer on The Portal Collective that has grown organically through referrals.
"The conversational coaching approach is spacious, dynamic, and allows for people to become different collectively. It’s a rehearsal space for the kinds of healthy relation we need in order to be equipped for the polycrisis."
She believes this space on The Portal is necessary for these times.
"Complexity is high and belonging is low. There is so much to get to grips with in terms of how we relate to one another and the Earth, and there are so few spaces where it feels safe enough to think aloud and make sense of things together…We sometimes refer to it as a “fortification chamber”. Whilst we don’t all agree on everything, there’s a shared commitment to the notion that everyone deserves, liveable, dignified, satisfying lives - agreement on this seems unavailable in a lot of other spaces."
Capitalism is a death cult that is stealing our future.
Following the success of the membership and the conversations that were emerging from it, Keri dreamed up Exploring Economies for Re-Enchantment.
"I noticed that the term anti-capitalist is thrown around a lot online and honestly, it often feels extremely surface level.
"I noticed that the term anti-capitalist is thrown around a lot online and honestly, it often feels extremely surface level.
I’m not saying it’s bad for people to get involved in the conversation from a point of view of how the systems affect them personally - after all, that’s probably how most of us come to these realisations.
It’s not bad, but it’s insufficient.
Knowing that it’s the reason you attach your worth to productivity, or why no amount of money ever feels enough is one thing, but developing an understanding of how Capitalism destroys our eco-systems materially, relationally, spiritually, and centring the people and beings who are impacted most is something else.
Knowing that it’s the reason you attach your worth to productivity, or why no amount of money ever feels enough is one thing, but developing an understanding of how Capitalism destroys our eco-systems materially, relationally, spiritually, and centring the people and beings who are impacted most is something else.
I also observed that many people yearning to participate in building alternative ways were overwhelmed by the literature and the scale of the undoing that’s required."
Perfectly aligned with The Portal
Keri’s beliefs, work and approach aligned perfectly with The Portal.
"If The Portal has a number one fan, I am her! (Even though we don’t believe in hierarchies here, ha)!
I suppose echoing some of what I’ve shared above - many of us are talking about having anti-capitalist values and the deep desire to disconnect from huge corporations and their billionaire owners who are exploiting our needs for ad revenue and stealing our precious attention.
We must put our money where our mouths are and be willing to risk some inconvenience or discomfort in navigating something new to us and fledgling in itself.
Who do we expect to build alternatives for us, and at what personal cost?
PLUS- eco-systems of learning, cross pollination, permaculture principles, improving the quality of experience for our clients because we care deeply about how they interact with our work - it’s ticking so many boxes for me.
And Sally can say Free Palestine - I can’t think of any other tech platforms I’ve engaged with for my business that can affirm that a genocide is unacceptable. It’s a low bar out there and The Portal is leaping miles above it when it comes to integrity."
Through all this, community building remains key.
"I believe that my role in the space is to offer resonant, stimulating materials and to hold a safe enough space for people to explore their relationships with them together.
I’d encourage anyone to consider - who can I be unsure around? Where are the places where I can acknowledge my struggles to embody my values? Where is my confusion welcomed? How do I improve my access to my wholeness?
Being with one another in this stuff is how we build community in Composting."
“Our separateness is a delusion. We cannot and do not develop outside of relation. It’s absolutely essential in my opinion for us to relax into a sense of belonging as a foundation for making changes in our lives."
Missing the point
Most mainstream coaching approaches for Keri miss the point.
"I wish we were more ready to confront the limitations and the ways in which they fail to include our aliveness.
I wish we were talking more about collective applications of some beautiful ideas, rather than acknowledging the harms of these systems and concluding that the logical response is to use coaching to climb the ladders within them.
I wish we were talking about the inequality that’s inherent in our society and cannot be offset by making donations to charities on one hand whilst exploiting people’s lack of belonging to get them to pay you on the other.
I wish that we were talking about how the polycrisis demands that we confront how de-skilled we are in being human together.
So you know, just a few minor things!"
“Our online lives are robbing us of our wholeness.”
As with so many today, Keri has had enough of social media as we know it.
"I’ve met so many incredible humans through Instagram. I originally built my business on Facebook over a decade ago - I know I’ve benefitted hugely from these platforms.
AND I recognise that my relationship with them has sometimes been extremely unhealthy.
As my children turn 9 and 12 this year, I have a new wave of anxiety and concern about how our online lives are robbing us of our wholeness.
I’d love to be completely off Instagram by the end of this year - we could all be so human on The Portal!”
Holding the vision
Keri has big dreams for the world she wishes us to build.
"I want every pathway to lead us towards liveable, dignified, satisfying lives for EVERYONE.
Want to join us in building a more connected, regenerative world?
Sign up for early access to Portal 2.0 - offer ends very soon.
Community building that grows like a forest, not a factory
