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Christmas Spirit: Resilience in the Pandemic

Posted on by Gesine Schrader
Christmas pine trees
How can we build a resilient Christmas spirit after a tough year? I have a close friend who is very creative. As Christmas approaches, she tells me that she feels anxious and depressed. She can only see what she's lost – a regular income, meeting friends, inspiration, and travel. These are the things that gave her a sense of richness and freedom of choice. I try to support her to mourn and con...
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Empathy Archery

Posted on by Shantigarbha
Empathy is a respectful understanding of another person’s experience. Since I’ve been learning how to empathize, I've often got it ‘wrong’. What I mean is that the person I was listening to told me, either by a shake of the head or by a ‘No’, that my empathy guess hadn’t landed. I had the sense of firing arrows towards a distant target, and most of them falling short or going wide. At those moment...
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NVC tips for surviving and thriving this Holiday Season

Posted on by Gesine Schrader
I met a friend one morning in early December. We talked about Christmas coming up, and about how many people find it stressful. I asked him what, if anything, he finds challenging about it? His response was that it's spending time with relatives, particularly those he's grown apart from. After I had empathized with his hopelessness and frustration, I asked him if he would like to hear some NVC ...
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Rehumanizing Trump

Posted on by Shantigarbha
  This is a hard post for me to write. Part of me resists the idea of seeing Donald Trump as a human being. It’s safer and easier to stay with the fear and derision I feel towards him. Shortly after Trump took office, I was on Skype to a liberal-leaning friend who lives on the East Coast. He was genuinely scared of what was happening to his country. I asked him, “Are you afraid that you’ll...
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