"The word nuance is used every time someone wants to justify violence without naming it."

I felt these words from Patricia Duggan, a therapist, educator and disruptor I follow, in my chest before my mind fully processed them. It felt like that sudden recognition when someone puts into words something you've felt but haven’t been able to articulate.

The quote got me thinking about the root of the word nuance itself—from the French nuer, meaning to shade, to create subtle gradations of meaning. So much of my work focuses on how we're whole human beings. But nuance is cerebral—it’s our mind’s reaction to complexity, a way to find justification for contradictory actions, shades of gray in morally questionable situations where perhaps none should exist.

In this era of systemic gaslighting, most of us have heard "nuance" weaponized countless times, but probably didn't realize it. It's a form of intellectual violence common in traumatized systems where people raise legitimate concerns or questions and are met with phrases like, "it's more nuanced than that" when staff report feeling unsafe. "The situation is nuanced" when budgets prioritize everything except the people doing the work. "We need to consider the nuances" when harm is happening and leadership wants to avoid accountability.

"The word nuance is used every time someone wants to justify violence without naming it."

- Patricia Duggan

The thing is, our body doesn’t think in nuance—it feels in binaries. Safety or threat. Connection or disconnection. Integrity or deceit. While our mind uses stories as a way to consider multiple perspectives and complex variables, our nervous system responds to what it feels from one moment to the next. Does this feel like care or exploitation? Am I being seen as a person or used as a resource? Is this environment nourishing or depleting me?

Our mind may find ways to avoid moral clarity by soothing itself in the gray areas, but our body tells us the truth—we’ve just been taught not to believe it.

For generations, systems rooted in colonialism, capitalism and supremacy have conditioned us to distrust our most reliable source of information about our environment—ourselves. They’ve dismissed our embodied wisdom as unprofessional. They’ve labeled our somatic truth as lacking sophistication or too woo-woo (a term I loathe) for professional spaces. They’ve tied success within these systems to overriding the internal wisdom that kept our ancestors alive. Not because it’s inaccurate or wrong—but because turning inward and trusting our intuition or the signals our body is sending us threatens the foundation of the power structures that depend on external authority and compliance.

Our workplaces have perfected the art of override culture with phrases like, "don't take it personally." "Leave your emotions at the door." "Stay objective." These aren't neutral professional requests or boundaries—they're instructions for severing the connection to ourselves and making us complicit in our own fragmentation.

For most of us, this complicity has unfolded over the course of our careers, so unlearning takes time, intention, and compassion. Learning to trust our somatic wisdom requires unlearning generations of conditioning about power and compliance. We've been taught that good employees don't question authority, that professionals don't let their bodies inform their decisions, that critical thinkers can hold complexity without feeling disturbed by contradiction.

But that disturbance—it’s our data. The knot in our stomach when leadership announces another restructuring is intelligence, not weakness. The way our shoulders creep toward our ears in certain meetings is our nervous system's way of protecting us from psychological harm we can't yet name.

In spiritual ecology, we understand that disconnection from one part of a system creates ripples throughout the whole. In the same way, our bodies aren’t separate from the larger web of relationships that sustain us. When we honor our somatic wisdom, we're not just caring for ourselves—we're refusing to participate in systems that benefit from our disconnection. We're modeling a different way of being that says: our wholeness is not negotiable.

Our nervous system evolved over generations to detect threats our rational minds might miss. It knows the difference between authentic care and performative compassion. It recognizes when we're in spaces that truly see us versus those that merely use us as a means to an end. This isn't mystical thinking—it's survival intelligence that we've been conditioned to ignore.

I've spent years learning to distinguish between somatic wisdom and external conditioning—between the contraction that signals genuine danger and the contraction that echoes old patterns of fear. Both are valid information, but they require different responses. The key is developing the capacity to listen without being overwhelmed and to trust without becoming reactive.

For me, while I still question myself at times, now when someone tells me a situation is complicated and I feel my chest tighten and my breathing become shallow, I've learned to trust this feeling as my body's assessment that someone benefits from maintaining confusion. It informs my choices and keeps me from simply accepting the status quo.

The truth is that your body has never stopped knowing the difference between what serves life and what diminishes it. But after a lifetime of being trained to override your somatic intelligence, learning to listen again can feel overwhelming and uncomfortable. But this discomfort is the discomfort of reclaiming and reintegrating parts of ourselves we’ve been taught to devalue and push away.

In a world that has normalized the use of nuance to justify harm, our body remains uncompromisingly honest. It doesn't traffic in gray areas when our safety, our dignity—our humanity are at stake. Choosing to trust that honesty again, despite everything we've been conditioned to believe, that is where our power lies.

What signals does your nervous system send you that you've been trained to ignore?

workshops, circles + book events

FINAL REMINDER - FREE WORKSHOP - REGISTRATION CLOSES ON FRIDAY, JUNE 7

📍 Sunday, June 29 | 11am–12:15pm EST | online via zoom

from rupture to rising—an introduction to sacred resistance (workshop) | FREE

If you’re feeling called to explore a different way of moving through these challenging times, I hope you’ll join me in community on June 29th for a free workshop and collective care circle to practice sacred resistance and create a new path forward together.

tell me my story is now available as an audiobook!

I’m honored to share that the audiobook version of Tell Me My Story: Challenging the Narrative of Service Before Self is now available. If you or someone you love has struggled with what it means to serve without sacrificing your well-being, this book is for you. Part memoir, part manifesto, and 100% my heart. If you listen and find something that resonates, please drop me a line, or better yet, please consider leaving a review. Every review helps indie authors like me reach more people. You can read more about my experience with recording the book here and find links to get the audiobook below.