Dear CMM Community,

I am so honored to share that after 3 years of working closely with the CMM Institute—hosting the Stories Lived. Stories Told. podcast, creating the CosmoParenting podcast (coming soon!), designing the new CosmoActivities website, crafting CMM resources, and participating in many other projects—I am now taking on the role of Executive Director of Collaborative Innovations for CMMi! As you know, we are not a traditional organization, and traditional roles don’t accurately reflect our values and ways of being. In this title alone, I trust that you will recognize the great care with which we have co-constructed this role to be grounded in a cosmopolitan sensibility with a posture that remains open to emergence and mystery.

From my first introduction to CMM and CMMi, I have been keenly aware of the role of Mystery. I’d love to take this opportunity to share with you what my journey has been:

I first learned of Coordinated Management of Meaning in Em Griffin’s “A First Glance at Communication Theory” textbook in my Communication Theory class at Ball State University in the spring of 2020. (For those of you who teach, I hope this story serves as a reminder of the influence you have on your students, and how the classroom shapes their lives.

From the start, the emphasis on stories within CMM stuck with me. During that same spring semester, I was also working as a resident assistant and was tasked with planning a campus wide event. I, of course, planned an event in which we would invite people from across campus to share their stories. With a less than complete grasp on CMM, I named the event “Stories Lived. Stories Told.” In fact, here is the flyer I made for the event.

If you are looking at that date and feeling like something doesn’t add up here… you would be correct. All of this was happening in the spring of 2020. The event was scheduled for April. We were sent home to complete the semester online in March. So, the event never happened. But, I didn’t let this idea go.

Almost two years later, in the fall semester of my senior year as an Interpersonal Communication major, I began thinking about my senior thesis project. In addition to my major, I was a student in the Honors College, and was tasked with completing a creative project during my last year. The only stipulation was that it had to be related to my major. As an avid podcast listener and as a competitor on both my high school and college speech teams, it seemed like an obvious choice to create a three-part podcast series rooted in one of the theories of communication I learned about. So, I returned to my communication theory textbook (one of the only textbooks I bought instead of rented ) and started to refresh my memory. Something about CMM clearly spoke to me from the start, but I still couldn’t tell you exactly what possessed me to choose it to be the foundation of the podcast. Personally, I am content to attribute it to Mystery.

It was in re-reading the chapter on CMM where I learned about the CMM Institute and was able to find the website. I used the contact form to simply ask if Kim Pearce or anyone else would be interested in being a guest on my small podcast project. I was pleasantly surprised (and, honestly, a little starstruck) to receive an email straight from Kim 20 minutes later. Eventually, Kim asked if I would consider continuing the podcast as a CMM Institute Initiative, and here we are 3 years, 128 episodes, and 16,808 downloads (and counting!) later.

 Every single day I take a moment to revel in the awe I feel that I was lucky enough to cross paths with Kim and the CMM Institute when I did. I do not take for granted the joy I get out of this work. I can picture myself sitting in those undergraduate communication classes, loving what I was studying, but unsure of what I wanted to do with my degree. All I wanted was to keep talking about communication, and now I get to do that.

 For me, this work has always been about empowering people—all people—in their communication. I believe with my whole being that we have the power to create our social worlds through our communication and the responsibility to make them better. A lot of the time, that doesn’t happen. But, I don’t think it is for lack of want. I think it is a lack of the right tools, languages, and ideas. It’s a lack of stories, imagination, and mindfulness. If you have ever listened to an episode of Stories Lived. Stories Told. then you will likely have heard me talk about how ridiculous I find it that we are expected to stumble our way into healthy communication, since unless you are dedicating your academic life to studying communication, you are never explicitly taught how to look at communication. The language, tools, and theories that I learned in my communication classes changed my relationships and my life. Everyone deserves the same chance.

As I step into a more central role within the CMM Institute, my north star continues to be the goal and the dream of better social worlds. We, and CMM, have something to offer the world that is truly transformative. We have something to teach, and we have so much to learn.

Speaking of learning, over these past 3 years, I have had the opportunity to work closely with Kim and many of the Stewards, learning A LOT along the way. I am thrilled to get to keep learning from them (and all of you!) and making more of my own contributions as well. With complete certainty, I can say that learning to embody CMM has changed me in deeply meaningful ways. I am committed to CMM and to this community. I am confident in our ability to create change in the world. And I am growing more and more content each day to let go of tightly held plans and embrace emergence.

I have high hopes for what we can create together. Above all, I want to be in conversation with you. So, please reach out to me at abbievanmeter@gmail.com if you would like to connect directly.

Yours,

Abbie VanMeter