My Council of Elders
October 1, 2026
Three people have been on my mind lately, because their deaths all occurred in the last few weeks: Wendell Berry, Dolly Parton, and Gloria Steinem.
You wouldn’t necessarily lump them together as a group headed out to dinner, but I can imagine they’d have the best time together.
(And maybe they are.)
When people I deeply admire pass away, I put them on my Council of Elders. Each of these individuals leaves a legacy I want to live into.
Wendell reminds me to pay attention. To notice what we sacrifice in the name of efficiency, speed, growth, and getting more done. Boy, oh boy, does he challenge me to connect with others and to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n. In my own frantic urgency and worry about what will happen to our world, his words have brought me calm and rest. His poem, The Peace of Wild Things, makes me breathe and center myself again and again.
Dolly reminds me not to be so judgmental. Your way is a way, not the only way. She was loved by such a wide range of people around the world — there are Dolly cover bands in Africa, drag queens wearing her wigs in San Francisco, and the Band of the Coldstream Guards played “9 to 5” during the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace to honor her passing. And that glitter! Dolly was totally herself in appearance – and she was so humble and generous (her Imagination Library!). What a legacy.
And Gloria. What a force. Well, Ms. Gloria Steinem reminds me to use my voice. To question traditional power structures and patriarchal systems of inequality. To notice who gets heard, and whose discomfort gets taken seriously. She was a role model for me to speak up, to find my voice around what matters, and to stand up for those who feel they don’t have a voice at all. (And she married after 60!)
I could simply admire these three extraordinary individuals, yet I want their lives to do more than inspire my admiration.
I want their lives to be an exhortation.
To ask me to stretch at my edges.
So much of adult development begins with noticing the distance between the person I want to be and the person I currently am.
What I say I value and how I actually behave aren’t always exactly the same thing. That’s being a human. I fall short. A LOT.
So that’s where my stretching begins. DAILY.
I imagine Wendell, Dolly, and Gloria asking me:
- When are you making yourself smaller than you need to be?
- Are you being as generous as you want to believe you are?
- Are you questioning things that need questioning?
- Where do your behaviors not yet match the values you say matter to you?
Wendell, Dolly, and Gloria now join Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Lewis, Mary Oliver, and others on my Council of Elders. May their memories be a blessing.
Question to you:
- Who sits on your Council of Elders — and what would they ask you to do in this world even more fully right now?
- What might someone on your Council of Elders encourage you to pay more attention to — or perhaps to stop giving so much attention to?
- What is one small behavior that would make one of your values more visible in the way you work and live this week?
Who is looking down on you and exhorting you to stretch?
Questions, comments, or suggestions? Feel free to email me at jennifer@jenniferabrams.com.
Cool Resources
Courageous Wholeness App created by Max Klau, Ph.D. Max has created an app where we put down in writing what we believe to be our mission in this world (mine is to embody the compassion and boldness of a fierce crone and a caring auntie as I help others find their voice and transform K-12 education globally) and then asks us to write about our shadow – the being we’d be if we did the exact opposite of that mission. (self-centered, comparative and spiritually constipated) Each one of us holds both light and shadow. This app helps us be more compassionate and understanding and also more courageous as we work to bring out even more light and less shadow on a daily basis. Check it out.
The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder by Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao. “The definitive guide to eliminating the forces that make it harder, more complicated, or downright impossible to get things done in organizations. Find out why Adam Grant says “If every leader took the ideas in this book seriously, the world would be a less miserable, more productive place.”
The Art of Fighting by Priya Parker. “As she did in the now-classic The Art of Gathering, Parker draws on her far-reaching experience as a conflict facilitator, her own detailed research, and real-world examples to lay out the ways that people can identify disputes, determine how to address them, and what to do if they are insurmountable. Whether people disagree in the boardroom or the locker room, on a playground or in church, online or in person, conflict is a part of life, and understanding healthy conflict and how to harness its power is more important than ever. The Art of Fighting is a vital primer to help all of us understand how to do that.”
