Dear ISSTD Community,
Welcome to the November 2025 edition of ISSTD News, which you are reading in early December!
This will be my final ‘solo’ letter to you as ISSTD president. Next month, I will be accompanied here by incoming President Abigail Percifield and outgoing Immediate Past President Peter Maves for our respective reflections on 2025. However, I find myself wanting to get a bit ahead of the curve. I’ll speak more to systemic matters in that last missive. This month, I’d like to walk a more personal path.
According to King Henry IV (by way of Shakespeare), “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.” According to the oracle known as dictionary.com, this line of dialogue points to the fact that, “A person who has great responsibilities, such as a king, is constantly worried and therefore doesn’t sleep soundly.”
Alas, we have no crowns here at ISSTD. We do have a gavel, used ceremonially by the ISSTD president during the Board’s annual in-person meeting. Alas, this year, it was misplaced, so I just went through the motion of gaveling. I’d like to think that I did not just ‘go through the motions’ during my presidential year, however. You only get one year to inhabit that role, despite the three-year tenure. In the first year, one serves as President-Elect. In the third year, one transitions into the role of Immediate Past President. I will admit I’ve had more than my share of uneasy sleep over these past months. I pondered recently on whether my desire to ‘get it right’ this year naturally accompanies the president role, or whether that was something I brought along in my personal luggage, or whether it was a combination. (I’ll go with Option C.) According to an esteemed colleague, friend, and former president of ISSTD, they spent their presidential year “just trying to keep [their] head above water.” That didn’t make much sense to me when I first heard it, but only because this person made the role seem effortless.
This led me to think about how we often do not perceive ourselves as others do. And that led me to wonder whether you, dear reader, realize how important you are?
There is probably at least one entity in this world – a person, a pet, a plant – for whom/which you are the most valuable source of sustenance…even if you don’t realize it. The awareness of our responsibility, of our power, is a lot to sit with. Please know, though, that I do not point this out to bring you down. I highlight it because I hope that, for as many entities there may be who rely upon you, you also have someone to lean on, without explanation or qualification, when you need that.
I think that a fuller recognition that none of us stands alone, that we are unavoidably interdependent – even when we feel as if we are entirely on our own in an experience – may be one of the most valuable lessons I have drawn from my presidential year. (It’s not an entirely new lesson, to be sure, but, as I have never been here before, it is most certainly a new dimension of a well-worn one.) For many of us, our experiences with ISSTD – whether in a Special Interest Group, a Regional Online Community, the Member Forum, or (my favorite) at an in-person event – reinforce why our connectedness is so important. And without every one of us, there simply can be no connection. It’s not always easy to maintain cohesion (busy lives, etc.), and we don’t always get along (we’re human), to be sure. It takes time, openness, and ongoing effort to cultivate and maintain strong, healthy connections.
I was effusive in my praise of the recent Wellington Regional Conference (kia ora to all our Kiwi members!), in part because of how palpable the feelings of togetherness and connection were among attendees across those three conference days. I am equally excited for another, upcoming opportunity for connection next March at ISSTD’s 2026 Annual Conference in lovely (and weird!) Portland, Oregon, USA. Please, if you can, join us in Portland (registration is now open) so that we can remind one another, in person, face-to-face, how important we are to one another.
ISSTD News and I will be back to check in with you again next month. Please do stick around to read the other great articles this month. I’m sending warm, toasty thoughts to you all (and cool, breezy thoughts to those of you who happen to reside in a part of the world that is far from nippy right now). Thanks for taking the time to read.
Sincerely yours,
Michael