Change you, change the world

We are not well positioned to tell anyone what change is being born. We are not well positioned to name all the ills. So maybe we can suggest how it’s a time that would seem opportune and reasonable to question everything. Every single thing. For those of us who freak out when the co-op sells …

Love as a guide during civil unrest

A message today to our neighbors, near and online: Some People feel unequal and some are resorting to violence. These are two separate things. We acknowledge feelings of inequality. Remember: Hatred never ends hatred but by love alone is healed. Gandhi learned it, Mandela learned it, MLK learned it. Peace alone doesn’t necessarily increase people’s …

creative vs delusional

Love gets confused. We forget how Older Child is related to us. Some of our me’s see Older Child as our parent, some see Older Child as our sibling, some as our friend, some as our offspring This awareness is itself startling and dispiriting. If we can notice and not judge, maybe we will have …

Liberate us while we are young, or now

It’s getting close to our worst right now We tried to help Younger Child. We see the suffering. And Younger Child thinks that fulfillment lies outside us This is what society teaches Young People: Your value is assigned by teachers as grades, by the number of followers and likes Do what adults say to you, …

What if there are no good or bad people?

What if there are no "bad people"? What if there are only people who try to get their needs met, most of whom have no experience connecting with other people so that the other people's needs are also met simultaneously? What if everyone was raised by human parents and everyone internalized ways of seeing and …

The hardest changes to make

Many people reading and writing blogs, and many people living human lives in relation with other humans, want to change things about themselves and their lives. Can we agree that this is a normal behavior? For us personally, in order for changes to occur, big things must eventually shift. We want to treat people with …

Clouds or silver linings?

What is alive in us right now is fear and shame and hope. Fear that the relationship with Therapists is broken or that we won't heal it. That we will focus on the clouds instead of the silver linings. It is so easy for us to find the fault lines and use them as excuses …

What is alive in us now?

Do you get bogged down in the details of your story? In the telling and retelling? We do! In life, we feel an emotion, such as anger or fear, with the shock and force of a paper cut, and we are off on a trail of actions/events that almost always lead back to a major …

Empathy for those who piss us off

Everyone and everything and all experiences are teachers if and when we are receptive to the lessons. We spent much of our working career in a college, which means we spent most of our life at school. This was by choice because we like learning and teaching. Here is what Nonviolent Communication (NVC) teaches about …

Take your time

"...take your time. Those three words give you the power to come from a spirituality of your own choosing, not the one you were programmed for... It's critical for me to be able to slow down, take my time, to come from an energy I choose, the one I believe that we were meant to …

No compromise.

Have you read _Nonviolent Communication_ by Marshall Rosenberg? The concept of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is not at all transparent. The reason NVC works as a mediation tool is because there is no compromise required: everyone gets their needs met. No one has to give up what they want because, when human beings truly listen to …