Conversations in Compassion

From looking inside of herself to providing patience and radical acceptance with people. Learning to be in love with social work and helping others from a place where she is not exhausted and can come from a place of love.

What can a heart-centered leader do in the face of exhaustion? How to hold the idea of rest when there is so much suffering?

A woman loves, for thirty-one years, a person who was attached to power and control over the destiny of his life. Her belief was that if she extended her power over him, somehow he would get better.

A conversation about one man’s experience in a men’s mutual support group.

Leaning into finding as much help as possible when confronted with the duality between the history of your trauma history with the desire to disassociate and the wish to connect even deeper with people, children, and partners.

Our own disease or distress can have meaning and be a kind of medicine that can help us better understand ourselves and what we have gone through.

We all lose when someone has to spend all of their time, energy, and personal resources on coping with scarcity.

Feeling the incredible hopelessness of doing all the right things and knowing that it’s not enough; that you need to find the courage and strength within yourself to take the journey of healing.

As you listen to this, take a breath and let it into your soul. A woman who is articulate and clear about her vision of a community where it holds individuals’ struggles. Listen to the dream.

How do we move out of our isolation and loneliness to welcome vulnerability and being in relationship with others?

From the dining room table to a support group to an AA meeting, sitting and saying hello and goodbye to each other to bring comfort, growth, and ‘magic moments’ to our lives.

A shared passion to be together mindfully, just feeling vulnerable in a world with others, all while the other part of us that wants to isolate and is vulnerable to any kind of substance use, nicotine, tobacco, and the way in which companies feed off of that vulnerability.

An exploration of heart-centered therapy and how to hold people with great integrity while also caring for yourself.

Exploring the duality of when you see the pain and suffering of another, you will either lean towards love, compassion, and understanding or you will lean towards fear and you will not want to see it anymore. We are in a community at a time when we are right in the middle of that question. I hope we resolve it towards love.

There are times I am touched by the power of love, the power of connectedness, of seeing underneath. I invite you to listen to Dani, as she has gone through the experience of loving so deeply and so well that she lost herself and is now recalibrating how to be present and still hold onto her own heart, her own self.

Start by taking 15 minutes a day and just listen deeply to another human being.

Am I being helpful? Am I helping the people I serve to move forward in their lives in a way which is meaningful to them?

From condo to camper to backpack; one woman’s path.

If we don’t invest in communities, especially in impoverished areas, to help people thrive, and not just survive, we won’t see much change.

Building places where women can take the next right step and walk a path in community with others.

In the face of tragedy, letting go of the need to control and surrendering to faith, to the courage to trust yourself and your community.

Giving a voice to the people who are also in recovery alongside their family members and the people they love.

A woman and mother sits with the issue of women’s reproductive health care in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Stephen checks in with his goddaughter, a now 32-year-old woman, on her journey.

A change of pace for this one. Stephen is a guest of Glenn Hinds & Sebastian Kaplan on their podcast "Talking to Change". You can hear more from them here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/talking-to-change-a-motivational-interviewing-podcast/id1395518686.

A tribute to Kari Morissette, and the path forward.

A break in or even an absence of empathy and how much work it takes to recover.

When grief internalizes all of the rage and anger that you grew up with and you find your own way to Spring, to quieting those personal demons and becoming who you were meant to be.

Don't see me as a victim in this life. See me as a human, who needs love.

When the cost of maintaining the facade finally becomes too overwhelming and it all comes crashing down, the whisper of our true inner self can guide us back to our authentic self.

Substance misuse being seen and treated as a health care and mental health issue, not a criminal justice issue. More treatment centers and less incarceration.

A Fathers’ Day conversation between two fathers who have invested much of their lives into shifting attitudes and actions to end male violence against self and others.

To catch a glimpse of someone in that moment when the real person shows through. The noise, their story fades away and the real, full human being is revealed.

Being listened to by another sincerely and compassionately can help us believe in ourselves, and in our better nature.

“If you have the chance to be compassionate with somebody or to do nothing at all, I hope that you choose compassion.”

And not on the righteousness of telling them what “they” should be doing, or not doing. "They" probably don't have all of the right answers, but then neither do we, or anyone. Affording everyone the dignity of having agency over their own lives.

Rehabilitation and rejuvenation thanks to the grace of those who remained supportive even when it felt undeserved. Holding onto the light of compassion through years of disappointment.

What if even in your worst moments, you could still love yourself and look upon your past behaviors not through the lens of shame, but accept that you were taking care of yourself in the best way that you could at the time? Could you expand and strengthen this practice by relating with others in your community not with judgment and shame but with compassion?

In a very personal conversation, Stephen talks to his son about the challenges facing the generation coming of age today. The ability to focus on their own passions and creativity has been so exhausted by ceaseless stimulation and endless anonymous streams of ambiguous uncertainty that they often “fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way”.

Early trauma can cause fear to become our first thought because we are afraid of getting hurt again and may feel that we don’t matter. Can we find the compassion and courage to focus on the memories and voices of those who believed in us more than on our fear, and anger, and negative self-talk?

A world-class athlete is struck down by injury due to an unknown genetic condition triggered early by the effects of childhood trauma. After a decade of missed diagnoses, abusive treatment, judgment, and self-doubt, she learns to harness her own tenacious determination to accept and have empathy for her body, herself, and others with struggles of their own.

How do we handle the shame that seems to keep derailing our own personal journey toward wellness? Every time we take a positive step forward, or sometimes even when we just contemplate taking that step, shame arises and we often retreat into our learned avoidance behavior: isolation, overeating, substance misuse, distracting ourselves with work, shopping, or other activity. Can we learn to sit with that sense of shame, share it with others, listen as they share their own? In that shared experience we can shift our shame to gratitude and allow ourselves to move toward wellness and embrace others on their journey.

The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the inequities experienced by many in our community. Access to the great equalizer that is public education is no longer a matter of heading down to the local school in the morning, but of technology and resources that are not always readily available to all. Even when access can be arranged, the lack of relationships fostered in the local school community can lead vulnerable students to remain silent and invisible.

The stories in our own head around shame can become so unbearable that it leads to avoidance; of family, of friends, of our own better self through addiction. Someone who can quietly listen to that story with empathy can allow us a path back. Exposing our vulnerable self to others and letting them do the same with us can be the hardest, but most valuable service we can perform.

Trauma, anxiety, shame. Sitting with ourselves when we couldn't imagine anyone wanting to. Sitting with someone who is in the midst of that struggle.

A brilliant young woman talks about the process of opening up to her own emotion life. Coming to terms with her childhood traumas, issues with alcohol, and motherhood lead her to examine her way of living and to consider breaking open to her long buried emotions.

Stephen talks with an old friend, Rodney Mashia. A Black man who grew up in the rural South in the fifties and sixties, Rodney reflects on his journey and his renewed desire to share his voice and his story.