Without Integrity, Nothing Works

a full-moon in Capricorn reflection

A few years ago, thirteen to be exact, I moved to Atlanta with a dollar and a dream, kidding. I moved to Atlanta to take on a new role as the National Director of Celebrity, Alumni, and Entertainment Partnerships at Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

It was certainly one of those quantum-shift moments: a clean slate, an increase in every area of my life, and brand-new everything.

My manager at the time and my two mentors in the organization took me under their wings, triangulated me, and introduced me to a program they had all attended and grown within: Landmark. In hindsight, I remember Dr. Phoebe Bailey, a Soror, Spelman graduate, and all-around inspiring force within the organization, inviting me to an Introduction to the Landmark Forum. Unbeknownst to me, they had already agreed that if I did the program, they would cover the cost.

I do not remember much detail about the introduction; I just remember feeling that the people in the space operated in a refreshing way. Everything was organized, and it just felt authentic. The work seemed to deliver real results for people in their lives. Phoebe turned to me at some point to gauge my interest, and I said I would be open to doing the Landmark Forum. It’s a 3-day inquiry into what it is to be human, which was my takeaway, but simply put, it’s personal and professional development. I had done something similar. Prior to my quantum shift, I worked in the music industry at a start-up management company founded by one of my music executive heroes, Kevin Liles. One of our company executives invited me to a similar course he had taken and got me a scholarship; it was called Momentum.

Long story short, I completed the Landmark Forum. Beatrice Woody came to my completion night and said, “You have to complete the curriculum, girl.” I laughed and agreed. She paid my fees for the Advanced Course. From there, I did the Self-Expression and Leadership Program, completing the curriculum for living. It did not stop there. After much work from both Beatrice and Phoebe, I ended up agreeing to do the Introduction Leaders Program, where I trained to lead introductions to the Landmark Forum, a full-circle moment. The Introduction Leaders Program was a game-changer and, honestly, some of the best training I have ever received. It shaped my values, my come from, my language, and my outlook more than I realized.

It was not a program you took; it was a way of being and showing up that you put your whole life into. In that season, Landmark was the chrysalis in which I prepared myself to fly.

One of the foundational methodologies in the coursework became a value in my own life: without integrity, nothing works.¹

In reflection on the incoming full moon in Capricorn on the 29th, I am revisiting personal integrity while exploring what I am carrying out of obligation instead of alignment. Where am I placing my word, and am I cognizant of the cost/benefit analysis involved in where I place my word? Am I practicing discernment?

I found myself thinking about this journey home and where I want to take it moving forward. To be fully transparent, my internal energy feels a bit scattered among projects, visions, relationships, and obligations. There is incoherence in what I want for myself and what I feel called to bring forth for the collective.

I started Welcome Ohm and have been struggling a bit to lock in my energy to build it out in alignment with the vision I hold for it. I can see the vision clearly, but becoming who I need to be to hold it feels a bit daunting in this season.

I am in tender territory, assessing what’s working and what isn’t. Not as an opportunity to lament or find error in the mundane, but to see what I am taking with me as I create my next quantum shift. This one, for whatever reason, is not being handed to me; it is asking me to build it, create it, and allow it.

Welcome Ohm is a space for the cycle-breakers moving through transition: birth, becoming, death, return. It is a place to be anchored while life rearranges you.

A cycle-breaker in the framework of Welcome Ohm is someone who consciously interrupts inherited wounds, unconscious agreements, and ancestral survival strategies so that a new lineage story can emerge.

Ohm stands for Other Healing Modalities, and it was birthed on a yoga mat, in savasana, after a 75-minute 26&2 yoga class on August 12, 2022, at Be Hot Yoga, the day I learned that my position at Calm.com was being eliminated. I didn’t call anyone; I didn’t share with anyone. I went to the mat so that I could hear.

It came through as a whisper: “I go to prepare a place for you.”, And it never let up, not the whisper, not the nudge, none of it.

It has been so many starts and stops on this journey home, pivots, partnerships, and recreations of the original vision.

In between then and now, I have experienced so many different healing modalities, some I revisited, others I learned anew. Some were one-off experiences that shifted something; others shifted me so profoundly that I trained and became certified as a practitioner to teach and/or administer.

I will use the remainder of this space to reflect on the healing modalities that have shaped my life and work, and the ways they intersect with the ordinary practice of being human.

Within the Welcome Ohm framework, the healing modalities I work with and guide others through include Somatic Healing, Energetic Healing, Storytelling as Medicine, Transformational Healing, Plant and Herbal Wisdom, Ancestral Healing, Divination and Spiritual Guidance.

Of these, transformational healing is extraordinarily foundational for me.

Transformational healing² is an ontological practice. It concerns itself with ways of being rather than simply what we do. It invites us into guided self-inquiry, pattern recognition, identity shifts, integration, and the often uncomfortable process of seeing ourselves clearly. At its core, it asks: Who am I being that produces the life I am living?

This is one of the greatest gifts Landmark gave me.

It is why it became so much more than just personal and professional development, for me. It did not promise success, happiness, or certainty. It revealed to me that the people whom I had initially encountered were practicing a way of being that I would later come to model, it was integrity.

Integrity as wholeness.

It was, perhaps, the first experience in a well-lived life in which I was fortified in the concept of being inherently perfect, whole, and complete, lacking nothing. Because morality was such a concept in religion, my come from had always been that I could be better, or I should and needed to be saved.

Integrity, however, was the foundation on which that knowing that I am perfect, whole, and complete rests.

Integrity was not morality.

Integrity was not about being a good person.

Integrity was not about perfection.

Integrity is honoring your word. Being complete with your word. Telling the truth when you cannot keep your word. Cleaning up what is incomplete. Restoring what has been broken. In every area of life, in every relationship, but most especially in the relationship you have with yourself.

Without integrity, nothing works.

It does not guarantee the opportunity, the relationship, the job, the financial breakthrough, the school acceptance, or the vision coming together according to plan.

What it does provide is a foundation strong enough to stand on when none of those things arrive.

I am writing this on the opening of a full moon, in a season that has asked me to reconsider plans I was certain would unfold differently.

And so I am left with the question many of us face at one threshold or another:

How do you hold the vision when nothing seems to be working out?

How do you know whether to stay the course or pivot entirely?

I don’t have a neat answer.

What I do have are practices. Integrity. Community. Reflection. Prayer. Ancestors. Honest conversations. The willingness to tell the truth about what is and what isn’t working. The courage to let go when something is complete. The faith to continue when it is not.

Perhaps integrity is being willing to stand in the question long enough for the answer to reveal itself.

If you’ve made it this far, I’d love to hear from you.

How do you know when it’s time to pivot and when it’s time to stay? What tools, healing modalities, practices, or processes help you discern the difference?

With all my love,

Falomo

1. Read the Harvard Research Paper, Integrity: Without It Nothing Works, co-authored by Landmark Founder, Werner Erhard

2. Read the previous article I wrote detailing Transformation: