Nonviolence: Commitment, Capacity and Community
In the mid 1990s I went on a backpacking trip with a friend that turned into a relational nightmare. Reverberating from the intense conflict, we set aside time to reweave intimacy and understanding. At a certain point, she expressed what seemed almost like anger directed at me for not protecting …
Interdependence in Action: How to Change Agreements with Care
In 2004, a few days into the first of four week-long retreats of a yearlong program I was co-leading, one participant, who I will call Barbara, informed the program leaders that she was intending to leave the program after the first retreat, because it wasn’t what she had signed up …
From Personal to Global Trauma: The Through-Line
A guest blog by Sarah Peyton
When Kim was a tiny person, maybe three years old, just when our human sense of actually existing-as-a-separate-being-with-a-self starts to emerge, Kim lived in a family where people were frightened, and angry, and sometimes kind, and sometimes scornful. When Kim would start to dance, …
Increasing Prospects for Collaboration Even before Starting
I’ve been in the collaboration “business” for about 20 years now, working on all levels, from the most internal inner conflicts, to the most ambitious efforts to create at least a model of what local to global collaboration could look like. Up until the last few years, the bulk of …
Matching Resources to Needs: Learning to Receive through Participating in “Money Piles”
Embracing the consciousness of togetherness, of caring for the whole, of interdependence, is immensely challenging in cultures that are not based on these values, regardless of where we are positioned on the power map of the world. Most especially, I find that those of us living in modern settings are …
Stepping off the Line into Freedom and Interdependence, Part 2: How
In my last blog post, I introduced the idea of stepping off the line we all live on, where most of us are constantly trying to get ahead, and described the value I see in aiming to step off the line and what we can gain by doing it: reclaiming …
Stepping off the Line into Freedom and Interdependence, Part One: Why
One of the potent images of our modern, competitive era is that of a long line we are all trying to get ahead in. Our spot in the line determines our access to resources to sustain our bodies, souls, and families. On a recent Facing Privilege call, one caller I …
Stepping into Leadership: the Magic of Self-Acceptance
A Hassidic story tells of a rabbi Zusha who summons his students on his deathbed and tells them that when he gets to the other side, he won’t be judged for not being a good Moses; he will only be judged for not being a good Zusha.
This story captures, …
Transcending Barriers while Life Meets Death
In this time, so full of pain and challenge, I was unexpectedly nourished by an email I received from someone who is consciously, purposefully trying to live applied NVC and Conflict Transformation in work and life, currently doing it in Eastern Sri Lanka. I am sharing an abridged version of …
#MeToo and Liberation for All
“I want to kiss you all over your smile.”
The poetic beauty struck me even while my entire body was contracting. The man speaking was drunk. I had asked him several times to stop calling me, at least not so late. He was married, with four children, 20 years my …
