January 19, 2023

I hope that 2023 has already brought you some lightness. And I'm bringing you a few thoughts I've recently added to the blog:

• Endings: I find myself grateful for not only making it to the end of this chapter, but for being able to enjoy the space between it and whatever happens next.

• Start again: When I think about the systems and structures that have gotten us into what feels like an endless global quagmire of conflict and emergency, "start again” feels more within reach than “start over.”

• How can funders better collaborate?: A bit of shameless self promotion for my recent article with the Transparency and Accountability Initiative (TAI), sharing our ideas on how funders working together on similar issues can do it better.

October 20, 2022

I hope this finds you well and safe, wherever you are. I'm sharing some new content I've put on the blog these last few months:

• Home: The idea that, as an American, I may never want to return to the U.S. is a hard one to reconcile.

• Home (again): Our trip back to the U.S. was, in some senses, an unmitigated disaster - but not for the existential, philosophical reasons I was brooding over last year.

• What if you had nothing to prove?: I’m over 20 years into my career and I still feel like I’m proving myself to someone most days.

July 21, 2022

Midnight Oil's Beds are Burning is a great anthem for when it feels like the end of days...which, recently, is most days. I just hope all the war, pestilence and rollbacks in rights signal an end to the systems that aren't serving us - and a beginning of something new and better.

New stuff on the blog follows that thread:

• None of us are safe until all of us are safe: For my entire reproductive life, I have known that I could access safe and legal abortion services, should I need or want them. And as much as I tried not to, I have taken my autonomy over my own body for granted all these years.

• Was there ever any doubt?: It feels simultaneously devastating and gratifying to see the January 6 coup attempt laid out so clearly, by Trump’s staunchest supporters no less.

• Oligarchs & patriarchs: Why not extend our newfound rage towards Russian oligarchs to the UK, Saudi Arabia, China - America?

• When diplomacy surprises: I found myself revisiting Martin Kimani's Security Council address, and figured it was worth sharing here for those who may have missed it.

April 20, 2022

This blog and I are another year older, so it felt like time to streamline. 

For starters, the purpose of this message has always and only been to connect with you by sharing new content on the blog. So here - without any extra commentary or fanfare - are the titles and brief descriptions of the pieces I've put up since I last wrote to you in January:

• Stories as resistance, connection as power - I see sharing stories as a form of resistance - it creates a solidarity that makes outside forces (patriarchy, capitalism, you name it) seem less absolute.

• "We shall not cease from exploration..." - I do feel I’m arriving where I started after decades - a lifetime, even - of exploration. And, while beautiful, it’s also unsettling.

• "Our endless numbered days..." - Not surprising that I feel and interpret the Russian onslaught through other people’s music and poetry, since none of my own words seem up to the task.

• That took a minute - File these under things that - while I’m grateful they’ve occurred - I can’t believe hadn’t happened yet.

Secondly: many of these blog entries contain my responses to particular moments in time, so I'm wondering if it would make sense to just let you know you each time I publish a new one. That quick heads up could take the place of this message.

I'd love to hear your feedback: do you want to stick with this digest email every three months, or would you prefer a more frequent - but briefer - message?

Hit me up with your thoughts! And, most importantly, take good care of yourself :)

January 20, 2022

...it only took Thanksgiving, 10 days of silence, 100+ hours of seated meditation, and some serious rest over Christmas - but the top of 2022 has me feeling lighter. More at ease, even with the continued chaos swirling all around us.

Accordingly, the last few months of the blog bring you somewhat brighter posts of immense gratitude, reflections on those many hours of silence and meditation, and a call for kinder, more considered words.

Because it feels like there really might be a reason to believe, maybe this year will be better than the last (cue Adam Duritz).

Much love from Cape Town.

October 21, 2021

It's been a rough few months, so I'm serving up three dark blog pieces, probably paired best with another cup of coffee.

I talk about how impossibly bleak things seem - until Bob Dylan makes them worse. How the withdrawal from Afghanistan leaves me wondering: what do we even think we're doing? And then we get to have some real experts remind us why decoloniality is so damn urgent.

Not gonna lie - it feels a bit like I'm crawling on hands and knees to the end of this year.

But while not light, these observations do still come from the heart. It may - at the moment - be a heavy heart, but it's one that's still in the fight.

Yours in solidarity.

July 15, 2021

For the first time, I'm writing to you from the U.S.

Chad and I decided to make a trip since it's unlikely our age group will be vaccinated in South Africa before the end of the year. I'm relieved and ecstatic to see family for the first time in 18 months. I'm incredibly grateful - and still a bit in disbelief - that it was so easy to get the jab of my choice.

I'm also furious. 

The almost aggressive Covid amnesia I've encountered in many Americans is enough to send me back into quarantine in the SoCal woods. Mask wearing aside (that would be a whole other rant), it feels like people here are "moving on," while much of the rest of the world is in the worst phase of the pandemic yet, with vaccines in short supply precisely because countries like this one bought them all up.

So much for build back better, together.

The past few months of blog posts reflect this frustration with vaccine inequity, low expectations, and inertia.

Yours in solidarity - and consternation.

April 15, 2021

I hope you are reading this with fresh and optimistic eyes.

I must admit, I'm pretty bleary-eyed. That may explain why my most recent blog pieces contain references to Wu-Tang, Will Ferrell and Modern English.

The posts deal with not traveling and yet still somehow being exhausted, perverse incentives in development, and thoughts a year into the blog. With a little sprinkling of hop hop, SNL and new wave punk. Of course.

On that last note: THANK YOU for opening these emails and reading these posts for the past 12 months. It’s an ongoing experiment, one that is clearly evolving. Your encouragement definitely keeps me going.

Thanks for coming along for the ride!

January 14, 2021

I was just reading over my last three blog posts while drafting this.

Man...

Can you believe that the last time I wrote you, the U.S. Presidential election hadn't yet taken place?

Trump hadn't yet denied Biden's victory, incited a mob to carry out a deadly attack on the U.S. capitol, and then been impeached for a second time.

We didn't know about the new Corona virus strain, but on the other hand - vaccine roll-out hadn't begun. And Georgia hadn't yet been flipped!

It truly is insane how much can change in a few short months, and the blog follows that arc: emotional collapse after Biden's win, 2020's hard-fought lessons learned, and, yes - the (unsurprising) self-coup.

Buckle up. Who knows what I'll be writing you about in April...

October 15, 2020

How you holding up over there, Chantal?

Shocker: front of mind for me these days is the literal disaster area that is the United States. 

My past few months of blog posts reflect this frustration. From authenticity, to numbing, to Macklemore (natch), I've been turning over thoughts and holding them up to the light. 

But, while I'm depressed and infuriated by the collapse of democracy in my home country, it hasn't brought on the existential crisis I see in many friends and family. I was wondering aloud to Chad the other night: why is that? am I a bad person? have I become that cynical?

I'm starting to think it has more to do with daily exposure to exactly this kind of behavior through decades of human rights work. 

Undermining freedom of the press, fomenting violence and fear, suppressing votes - these are classics from the authoritarian playbook. And the result is a pretty typical failed state. There's nothing new, or even particularly inventive, here. The difference is that it's all playing out in a place many thought of as immune. And that continued astonishment is, in itself, part of the problem.

I share these thoughts with you because I'm now more convinced than ever that we owe it to ourselves and to each other to connect from a place of raw honesty - while maintaining compassion for ourselves and for each other.

I'd love to hear what you think.

p.s. bonus points if you caught my Judy Blume reference :)

July 16, 2020

I don't know about you, but the one thing I've felt consistently these past few months is overwhelmed.

My emotional pendulum swings sharply from melancholy to elation, from kind of fine to fury, sometimes within a morning. Sometimes within an hour, depending on how often I check my feed.

That's why the three new posts I've added to the blog might look bit different than you expect. They certainly felt different to write, and the result is more raw - more visceral - than I had planned. The tone swings from pure anger to confronting racism to questions about power.

But isn't that kind of how everything feels right now?

When my adrenaline spikes at the latest story of violence and impunity, I try to breathe and tell myself: just do the next right thing.

One, possibly small, right thing at a time.

And right now, that's sending this out to you. Because I truly believe we need each other to bring about this change we're so desperately seeking.

In solidarity from blustery Cape Town.

April 16, 2020

Well...I turned 40 last week, and unlike those of you heroically homeschooling kids, adapting to working from home, or dealing with layoffs, I’ve been fortunate to use this newfound time and space to think and reflect. And so, a respectable 20 years behind the curve, I decided to publish a blog.

For years, I’ve been seriously questioning the way we do human rights and development. This is one of the reasons I started consulting four years ago: to explore how else do to this work. I can’t say I’ve come to any brilliant conclusions, but I do believe more than ever that we can improve social justice work through connection - breaking down walls, dismantling silos, getting disjointed parts to speak to each other and work together.

Right now, the blog is one short post with new thoughts, and 19 “throwback” posts in the form of mass emails my 22-29 year old self sent to friends and family from Togo, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. As scary as it is to offer this up for public consumption, it’s also my way to connect to you, to share memories, perspectives on human rights, development, our careers, what they mean, and why we do what we do. I’m really just telling stories, which I hope will connect and traverse periods of time and geography.

So here’s the plan: I’m committing to publishing a new post every three months, and I’ll let you know about it with a short email. That’s it.

Sending you lots of love at this challenging time.