I was originally going to share with you a piece I’ve published here entitled the Skill of Love, about our beautiful capacity as humans to develop the qualities of care and good will. Given Valentines Day's heart-rending school shooting, it would feel out of step...
Valentine's Day can conjure feelings of angst, loneliness, or sadness—or it may simply echo like another commercial holiday full of candy, cards, and gifts. Peering beneath the commercial veneer, we do find a wholesome value at the core of Valentine’s Day. But it’s a value...
Roxy Manning, with Janey Skinner Nonviolent Communication (NVC) was developed, in part, because its founder, Marshall Rosenberg, was inspired by the work of Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. King and countless others who responded peacefully, yet powerfully, to vast systemic inequities and abuses. Dr. Rosenberg witnessed the transformative...
SO HERE WE ARE at the beginning of January and the annual question arises: Will we set personal goals for the new year—or just burrow into the sofa with a warm blanket? Resolutions are hard: we love them, we make them, sometimes we don’t keep...
As the calendar year draws to a close, it's natural time to reflect back and look forward. In Nonviolent Communication, we practice seeing life through the lens of human needs. Applying this awareness to our past actions and intentions is one way to develop wisdom,...
There’s a conversation you wish you could have, or that you are going to have, and versions of that conversation just keep spinning around and around in your mind. Perhaps you know that feeling? Maybe you already had a conversation with someone, and it did not go...
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. My parents tell me I was a gregarious child. “E-A-T-O-R-E-N,” they would spell aloud at the dinner table, trying to redirect the stream of questions that bubbled...
Does this seem familiar? You’re in a meeting. Maybe it’s a workshop around equity and social justice issues, maybe it’s your community group holding a planning meeting for their next event. Pat makes a suggestion, and folks keep talking, ignoring the suggestion, proposing others. When...
Recently I presented a workshop in Nonviolent Communication (NVC) to a group that wanted to learn how to talk across a political divide. During Q&A, the participants cut straight to the chase: “What is the one most important thing to know about NVC?” they asked....
When I first learned about the concept of needs at a local communication workshop in my early 20s, I was astounded. I remember thinking, “Oh my gosh -- I have needs!” However, my ensuing attempts to use NVC with family and friends didn’t always go...
The events that have unfolded since the election continue to stimulate a huge amount of fear in me and those around me. I’ve had many sleepless nights since November, stemming from my children wondering if Trump’s election meant half the country did not like people...