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As we walk this human road together .. 
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Upcoming 2019:


Speak A Language Of Life ..
Jan 12-13 | Quadra
Details (earlybird Dec 23)
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Speak A Language Of Life ..
Feb 16-17 | Salt Spring
Details (earlybird Jan 25)

Speak A Language Of Life ..
Mar 2-3 | Victoria
Details (earlybird Feb 8)
 

Going Deeper with NVC ..
Mar 9 | Salt Spring
Details (earlybird Feb 15)

Nonviolent Communication:
Speak A Language Of Life
May 17-22 | Cortes
Details 

Save 10% on room & meal packages when you pre-register for 2019 programs. 
Offer expires Jan 31st. 


View all events on my website >>

 

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"
 

 

Our lives are determined less by our childhood than by the traumatic way we have learned to remember our childhoods.

 
―James Hillman


 



When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home



—John O'Donohue















What the soul needs ..

Dear <<First Name>>,
I recently came across an article by author Parker Palmer: The Gift of Presence, The Perils of Advice. In it Palmer writes, "Here’s the deal. The human soul doesn’t want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed — to be seen, heard and companioned exactly as it is. When we make that kind of deep bow to the soul of a suffering person, our respect reinforces the soul’s healing resources, the only resources that can help the sufferer make it through." Such true and beautiful words!

In keeping with this reflection, I have written more than a few times on the subject of grief which is a dimension of soulfulness. For the past eight years, I have been studying with author Stephen Jenkinson in his Orphan Wisdom School based in Ontario Canada. Stephen is author of Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul and Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble as well as the subject of the documentary film Griefwalker. What I have learned from my time with Stephen has been utterly profound and unlike anything I have encountered before. He has brought me face to face with important and challenging questions, the kinds of questions that can alter the course of a person's life. I remain convinced at this point that we, in the western world, are living in a death phobic and grief illiterate culture and that the consequences of doing so reach deep into every aspect of our lives and impact every decision we make. I am now officially expanding my coaching services to include grief and dying. These sessions are for those who want to learn grief and want to learn dying. They are for those who recognize the deep wisdom in not collapsing into isolation when called upon by these deities. They are for those wanting to approach grief and dying not merely as psychological or metabolic events but as deep mysteries to be honoured and granted a place in one’s life. Are you that person? If you are I hope to hear from you soon ..

book a session with me >> 


Artwork by Deborah Koff-Chapin

KINDNESS

Etymology: "friendly, deliberately doing good to others," from Old English gecynde "natural, native, innate," originally "with the feeling of relatives for each other," from Proto-Germanic *gakundiz "natural, native," from *kunjam (kin), with collective prefix *ga- and abstract suffix *-iz. Sense development from "with natural feelings," to "well-disposed" (c.1300), "benign, compassionate" (c.1300).

Kindness is such a beautiful word .. a way of being that acts like abalm in our world. That "kin" is so evidently at its root, the word seems to beckon us to remember we are part of the human family. And yet as in families, it does not spare us from speaking up when doing so is necessary for the greater good, those times when the flames of conflict are typically fanned. Yet in those situations, even when kinship seems to come under threat, it is often in fact paradoxically strengthened, and it is most often our kindness that ensures it.

To cultivate kindness is to be regularly tested in one's ability to keep caring even when sharp edges appear. As the seductive speed car of cynicism and contempt stops at our doorstep inviting us in for a ride as it does from time to time, we eventually come to learn that we lose a piece of our humanity every time we agree to climb in. And so kindness becomes the beautiful grain of our humanness .. and is carved into us not on those occasions when it's easiest .. but at those very times when it isn't .. those times when we would be least inclined and it would be all too easy to resort to an "eye for an eye" thinking or evaluating another as unworthy of kindness.

Kindness is by no means a fool. It does not grant others opportunities to cause damage. Kindness has strength, firmness and dignity. It calls on a more magnificent version of ourselves. It requires that we be vigilant and not succumb to indifference or meanness. Over and over again kindness keeps whispering .. don't stop caring.

© Rachelle Lamb

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Thank you for reading. Until the next time, may you and your kin be well .. 


For information about what an in-house training can do for you and your group, simply email me.

To work with me individually:

https://orphanwisdom.com/griefwalker/
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Rachelle Lamb, Breakthrough Conversations · 7-1276 Ryan Street · Victoria, BC V8T 1Y3 · Canada

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