Recently, NVC Nashville offered a workshop with Sarah Peyton as our guest trainer. Here, I'd like to share my celebrations that are connected to my own personal healing.
Last year, our community went through a transition in leadership on our NVC Nashville board. The year of transitioning that occurred impacted some of my relationships with community members, conversations and connections with family members, and how I began to assess whether this NVC stuff really worked or not! As if taking an impressive swan dive off a cliff, I literally fell into a depth of blame and shame I've experienced only one other time in my life as I evaluated the words and actions of myself and others as dead wrong. Quite frankly, I lived in and out of anger and shame for over a year. The one consistent practice accessed from years of learning and living NVC was the practice of self compassion; a specific practice I learned in my L.I.F.E. Program provided by CNVC trainer Robert Gonzales. Making the practice my own through a few adaptions, I practiced it for those many months, every day, and often several times a day! The practice became a buoy as I surfaced to find breath. Today, when I find sharing transparently from my own life supports the content of my workshops, I'll speak of the depth of healing that becomes available when a compassionate space in ourselves FOR ourselves is actualized. Simply put, it's grace allowing me to lie in the field Rumi speaks of in his well known quote:
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there."
Yet, it's the rest of his quote that I'm celebrating.
"When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
― Jalal Ad-Din Rumi
Once in a training with Robert, I heard him explain his experience of a sunset. In the fogginess of my memory, I recall him saying that sometimes there just are no words to describe an experience. So, please, trust me when I say I'm luxuriating in the celebrations I'm listing here.
1. A workshop committee that joined the current board in the mission of NVC Nashville; to learn, practice, and share NVC in the world.
2. A board impacted by many challenges surviving and thriving through them together.
3. Welcoming new people into our NVC Nashville Family and watching contribution and ownership of responsibilities with joy.
4. Learning and experiencing shared power in leadership roles.
5. Experiencing pure 'Joy' watching people in the workshop enjoy and learn from Sarah's body of work, Your Resonant Self.
6. Touched by meaningful and rich connections with long time NVCN, CNVC, and experienced NVC contributors and the serendipitous pleasure of meeting new people from Nashville and around the country.
So as I lie in the beauty of lovely, fresh green, tall grass surrounding me while reflecting upon the joy of healing, I'm compelled to share:
This NVC Stuff?
It works.... if you work it!
and
"The world is too full to talk about."