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Hello friends. I’m Roxy Manning. When Mary invited me to write this letter, I could not help but reflect on what has been most alive for me recently… the way many of us will easily help someone else, but fear to ask for help for ourselves. On December 4, I had an operation. My doctor predicted my recovery would take three weeks. As I prepared for the time off, I rushed to complete all of my work and personal commitments. I prepped and froze dishes so I would have things to eat after and arranged meal deliveries. Very few people knew I was having an operation and I reached out to only one person for support after. In hindsight, I was doing everything I could so...

According to this article, what we do before we move into the NVC dance profoundly influences the outcome and everyone involved.  This "before" step increases the likelihood of living compassionately, and our support openness to outcome.  It can also make our NVC practice less connecting, and more evaluative.  The article addresses these points and talks about ways to move beyond the dead past, and the imagined future, to step into the the only “time and place” that both NVC operates and that the connection we so fervently want actually exists (ie. the present moment).

A chosen, interdependent world… In most cases, that's sure not the world we live in today, is it.  But it could be the world we live in tomorrow. And you can choose to be part of bringing that better world to life – to be part of a gradual, joyful transformation – simply by using the dynamic, living power of Dialogue.

Trust, flow, information sharing, and learning is reduced in conflict. Conflict can indicate incapacity in at least one of five systems that every group, community, or organization needs to function. Attending to conflict at systems-level helps reduce over relying on momentary connection that isn’t anchored in decisions about what comes next. When there's enough agreed upon systems within capacity, that attend to enough kinds of situations, we're likely to have little conflict.

As we head towards impending collapse the relative ease, comfort and freedom of the global north will be harder to maintain. Because of growing anxiety including from people with systemic power, we can anticipate increasing attempts at authoritarian control over the population. We can see what's occurring now as dry run practice for what's coming soon. What may help us: finding choice, knowing when to choose death, and walking towards community and life.

Untethering from dominant culture and internalized oppression takes releasing attachments and persistence inspite upheavals -- all with insufficient support. Even in community building we can bring oppression into our efforts to untether. The more we walk towards vision, the more tethers of patriarchy we undo, the more the cost. By exacting such high cost, patriarchal societies reproduce and sustain themselves. To untether we need fortitude.

Duke Duchscherer shares what the role of the facilitator is in a restorative circle.