Solutions Through Compassionate Communication.
Bring Flowers, Not AssumptionsWhat’s easier than holding preconceived notions about others? They can parade through our minds as if on auto-pilot. Try to erase your set notions about those who will join you for the festivity. Instead, attend the event with a clean slate… and a bouquet of flowers for the host.
[My last post reflected on my training in Reintegration Support Circles. This post continues to track my experience, especially in role-plays where we practiced how to conduct a Reintegration Support Circle with a returning citizen, his or her family members, and perhaps a clergy person or a community member.]
iStock.com/AlexMax
After reaching consensus on Guidelines, a Keeper asked us to write on 3 x 5 cards a Value that we wanted to bring to the Circle and explain why the value is important to us. According to author Kay Pranis*, values “help people remember who they want to be in their best selves before they want to work together.”* I wrote “generosity.” Others wrote honesty, compassion, commitment, and authenticity. And so on.
The process deepened my engagement. I knew I was on to something very special and different from my experience mediating.
Next came Story Telling: Beginning with the Keeper, participants shared stories about a life experience. Examples ranged from what it was like to return home after a long absence to a how we felt when someone gave us unexpected but needed support.
Imagine how this process was intensifying: From identifying ourselves and sharing our feelings about taking part in the circle, to our relationship with the RC, to suggesting guidelines and sharing values, to telling a personal story, I felt an ever deeper connection with those in my circle. (And this was only a role-play!)
iStock.com/AlexMax
Since my January 4th blog “Surmounting Tough Conversations After Incarceration,” I took a 30-hour training in Reintegration Support Circles. Support Circles are a means to resolve issues without shame or blame or winners or losers. Reintegration Support Circles seek, among other things, to re-unite Returning Citizens (RCs)* with family members, friends, clergy, social workers, and maybe other supportive members of the RC’s community (usually 6 or 7 persons) in a structured and circular setting. The aim is to generate a shared, positive vision for a Returning Citizen.
Circles are one of many processes associated with Restorative Justice, a conflict resolution process, philosophy, and set of practices, that is fast finding its way into schools, juvenile justice systems, and even adult criminal proceedings. Circles have their source among the ways of Indigenous peoples in North America, New Zealand, South Pacific, Africa, Alaska, and elsewhere.
It takes guts to start – and sometimes to stick with – a tough conversation. We’re afraid of triggering anger or hurt. Or being misunderstood. But some conversations are necessary.
Let’s say I’m wondering whether Mom and Dad have a will. And who’s the Executor? And who is getting what? Here’s the parade of horribles that might be going through my head:
My parents might think I want them to hurry up and die.
They might think I’m greedy.
They might think I’m trying to curry favor over my sister to get more than she does.
They might think I’m trying to trying to control what they do with their own money, as if it’s already mine.
They might think it’s none of my business. And say so!
For several years, our Tough Conversations blogs have mainly focused on families and aging. Sig’s current blog explores a different but equally challenging area of family interaction: namely, how families and returning citizens can prepare to reunite after the latter’s release from incarceration.
One of the toughest conversations I can think of is that of a returning citizen (ex-offender) with his or her family members prior to or after release from prison. After years of incarceration, how does an individual re-unite with his or her family?
Maintaining family contact while incarcerated is challenging. It’s said that when a person enters prison, the entire family (figuratively) accompanies him or her. Imagine a Dad not seeing his kids grow up for 15 years. Or a Mom, sentenced to 10 years behind bars and separated from her baby before its first birthday. This happens constantly.
These days we hear a lot about people living in ‘bubbles.’ In mediation I often encounter parties whose positions are encased in a bubble, reinforced by an interior monologue that strengthens their conviction that they are right and the opposing party is wrong. In time it’s possible to pierce these bubbles and engage in conversations about mutual concerns and interests they share with the other party.
In politics bubbles have taken a more sinister significance. Living just 12 blocks from the U.S. Capitol, I’m sure many think I not only live in a bubble, but in ‘The Swamp’ as well.
If I live in a bubble, don’t an unemployed factory worker in Youngstown, Ohio, or a rancher in Oklahoma live in bubbles as well? One could argue we all live in bubbles.
Bubbles can be perilous places. While they may provide a protective ‘skin’ to keep out opposing, even ‘dangerous’ ideas, and exposure to the ‘other,’ they also prevent us from enlarging our understanding of the world beyond us.
What if we neglect to tell a family member something that we feel is unimportant or even trivial, but they think IS important and not trivial? Is that lying? Or behaving falsely?
For example……
What if a family member, a care-giving sibling (CGS), uses her parents’ money to purchase a first-alert device or a home security system so she knows whether the parent has been in an accident or has a medical emergency? The other siblings live a several hundred miles away. Why bother? They’re not involved, right?
As Carolyn and I consider our next steps with Tough Conversations we’d like to share some of the lessons learned mediating adult family issues. Among the most salient is that mediation is ‘issue focused.’
How many times have we been asked to mediate toxic relationships among family members who over the years have become increasingly embittered? That, we reply, is for therapists or family counselors who can help families traverse the divides that have overtaken their relationships. Often toxicity deepens when families confront an older adult member who may need care or medical help.
In these cases it’s our charge to tease out of our discussions with family members the issues or disputes that impelled them to reach out to us. In some cases no dispute exists, only decades-old enmity that needs professional counseling. [Read more…]
Like Paris, Washington, DC is a city of outdoor cafes. One of my favorite things to do while sipping a margarita at Guapo’s is to make up stories about the people passing by. It’s fun to do with a friend.
Recently, for instance, a clean-shaven, neatly dressed brown-skinned man with straight hair walked by. He wore a blue dress shirt, open at the neck, with his sleeves rolled up. He looked 30-ish, serious, focused as he entered Starbucks next door. [Read more…]
Some people think small talk is a waste of time.
I disagree.
In fact, we need more of it.
Anybody can do it. At any time. It crosses boundaries of race and age and class. My late husband, Jerry, used to wait by the curb on Monday mornings just to talk Redskins with our trash collector.
You can do it anywhere. In a supermarket, restaurant or beauty shop. Across the fence with your neighbor.
And small talk offers big benefits for a very small investment.
When my friend, Jim, visits his cousin in a nursing home, he always stops to speak to the other residents as well. [Read more…]