Remembering Our Way Home — Ecological Belonging & the Collapse of Impact w/ Shawn Westcott
Some things carry you for years before you realize they were also holding you back.
Shawn Westcott spent two decades building what looked like a life of purpose: Marine Corps, Al Gore's presidential campaign, co-founding the first impact investor network in Scandinavia. From every angle, it was the right story. And underneath it, a quiet hollowness he didn't know how to name.
When COVID slowed everything down, he finally had to listen to it.
Shawn and Milan trace the arc from performing purpose to actually living it — through fatherhood, through the collapse of impact investing as he knew it, through a Zen Buddhist practice and a slow return to body, land, and community. Shawn now leads Ecological Belonging at The Wellbeing Project (active in 80+ countries) and is finishing his book Remembering Our Way Home.
In this conversation:
* How meaningful work can still be a mask for deep disconnection
* What fatherhood revealed that decades of purpose-driven work couldn't
* Paul Kingsnorth, modern monasteries, and what it means to slow down in an accelerating world
* Why the work of reconnection has always been done in community — and what that means right now
* The one practice that holds under any pressure: breathing
The path forward is by walking, is by listening to your body.
Links:
- Shawn on Substack: [shawnwestcott.substack.com](http://shawnwestcott.substack.com)
- The Wellbeing Project: [wellbeing-project.org](http://wellbeing-project.org)
- Ecological Belonging: [ecologicalbelonging.org](http://ecologicalbelonging.org)
- Future is Fungi Award: [futureisfungi.org](http://futureisfungi.org)
- Join Spore Society: https://joinsporesociety.myceliumhub.org/
