Encouragement from a Friend, Part 1

My first bit of encouragement to revive this blog came on Monday, after I shared a video on Facebook of Marshall Rosenberg presenting his Nonviolent Communication (NVC) technique at a workshop.
I've read the Nonviolent communication book (highly recommended), and have been practicing NVC for a few years (in groups and on my own), but I was surprised and delighted by this video. Rosenberg's humor is really wonderful, and his clear, earnest presentation really got to me.

So, feeling zealous, I shared the video, and it got maybe two "likes" on Facebook all day, by friends who already knew about NVC. But that night one of my close friends, who has long been (albeit affectionately) leery of NVC and other "self help" sorts of things, mentioned in an email that she had listened to the first half of the 3-hour video I'd posted, and loved it. She called it "funny," "thought-provoking," "revealing," and "so REAL".

This was a sweet affirmation of the surprising power of Nonviolent Communication, and reminded me that this was not the first of my skeptical friends and family to be "converted" to NVC -- In fact, I'm pretty sure I myself was rather skeptical at the beginning, e.g. when I found out that a lady who had yelled irrationally at me at the health food store (as my pre-NVC self would have described the situation) turned out to be the instructor of my mom's NVC class.