Grief is often confused with anguish. Anguish is a painful feeling that comes along with deep resistance to an experience or truth. Grief that leads to healing is an expansive state. It is a willingness to be with an experience and truth. If you're not resisting grief, then it's a neutral-to-pleasant experience. Pleasant sensations can include a sense of space and relief as something is integrated and tense holding releases.

NVC is a process. It’s the willingness and effort to empathize with both sides of a conflict, encouraging each side to empathize with the other, and then seeing what solution can arise, working together to meet the needs of both sides. Empathy is the experience of being not separate as well as being an individual. It's seeing we're all part of the one ever-flowing consciousness of being, all unique expressions of this unity.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to talking about power and privilege. Context, purpose, who is present and why all play a part in how you can orient to these conversations. In this video, Miki describes the deep considerations she makes when discussing this topic with others and in her leadership training.

How to get past the sting of a painful comment? Get empathy from self or another. Then connect with the commenter's feelings and needs. The more you can do this the less personally you may take it. Then work together on specific, do-able, authentic agreement about doing something differently next time, the kind that will enable you both to shift out of reactivity. Three things need to be in place for that to work.

Confidence, flexibility, creativity and equanimity may become more possible when you would like someone to meet a particular need, can trust that you can meet that need with someone else, and can accept a “no” to your requests. You can allow grief or disappointment to arise, and naturally turn towards a relationship in which those needs can be met. In some cases this may lead to the dissolution of a partnership or friendship.

Whether privileged or not, its not easy to see the humanity of others in different social locations, especially if their actions have unwanted impacts and have left behind our humanity. Aiming for “both sides hearing each other” empathically, and to focus on effect rather than intent when we have more privilege, may theoretically lead to liberation. Yet, in practice it can reinforce rather than transcend power differences -- unless there's specific ways to focus attention and choice. Here, its important to transform expectations into working with willingness, and within our own terms and timetable.

The word "privilege" signifies the benefit to the person having it, and the relationship between that person’s benefit and others' lack of benefit. When privileged, there are incentives to not see this interdependent link. For instance, it's easier for the wealthy to think of the poverty of many and the wealth of some are unrelated. If the wealthy want to keep wealth they would need to continue with approaches rooted in this separation.

Part of making your relationship a priority while maintaining autonomy means you consider the impact your actions may have on your relationship and look to negotiate ways all needs can be honored. To do this while not losing yourself, practice writing down your needs and guessing their needs beforehand. Make an upfront request to create a shared understanding about what’s most important, before discussing strategies or decisions.

Whether we have more or less power and privilege, anything without liberation for all is within patriarchal separation, and will continue cycles of oppression. To liberate ourselves and one another we need to increase our collective capacity through developing related knowledge, skills, research; build an understanding of patriarchal roots; confront lovingly; co-hold dilemmas about privilege; co-shape outcomes; etc.

Anger is a sign that you're resisting what's happening because you perceive an overwhelming threat, not trusting yourself to handle what's happening directly. Vulnerable feelings under anger are usually fear, hurt, or grief. Experiencing and expressing these feelings and connecting them to your needs, gives you access to more skill, insight, compassion, and wisdom. Read on for 3 questions to ask yourself when angry.