I have shared before that my mother was fractured by trauma. Her reflections of me shifted every time she blinked. I had the luck in college to receive four consecutive letters from her, each about the same subject: what she thought about me and friendship. In the first, she wrote, “Sarah, you have no friends.” In the second, she wrote, “You have so many friends.” In the third, “You are a person who only has one friend at a time.” And in the fourth, “I don’t understand how you can have so many close friends at once.”

Strange though it may seem, this particular series of letters was...

At a recent practice group the metaphor of a tennis court came up during an exploration of someone’s feelings and needs about a particular relationship. We drew a picture of a tennis court on our white board and used it to get clarity about which side of the court is ours to play in a relationship.

It brought me back to when I was first learning NVC. The workshop facilitator asked me about my needs in a situation. I said something like, “I just want to understand why he’s angry and says such nasty things to me.” And the facilitator tried again, “and when that happens, what needs do...

Long ago, when I was 19 years old, I was in my college cafeteria, going through the buffet line with my tray. A young man in my German class, a person that I had admired, asked if he could speak with me for a moment. My heart leapt. Now maybe the experience of making friends, maybe even of having a boyfriend, would begin. I liked him. Maybe he liked me.

I took my tray to his table, anticipating good things. Instead, the young man told me that I was difficult to have in class, that I was moving too fast, taking too much of the teacher’s attention, and hindering the rest of the class...

There are many ways to make the world a better place and you likely have one or two favorites. For your favorite cause you have likely researched the topic, attended groups or workshops, and done your best to live by the tenets of that cause.

Perhaps the more you learn, the more you see how extensive the problem is and how important change is if we are to avoid disaster. You may feel angry, frightened, grief stricken, and desperate wanting to make the world safe and healthy. Hopefully you receive empathy for your pain around the situation and seek the wisdom of others about what...