Curious, Healing

Books about healing, business, and fun

communication

“Courageous Conversations About Race” by Glenn E. Singleton and Curtis Linton

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Subtitle: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools

Recommended to me by: Donna Maxey, at Race Talks.

A carefully crafted, practical how-to manual for school systems to dismantle racism and equitably teach all children well. Co-written by Glenn Singleton, a Black man from Baltimore, and Curtis Linton, a White man from Salt Lake City, this book includes their personal experiences with race and racism as well as materials to implement their program and some historical information on U.S. racism.

Slowly, carefully, clearly, the topic of race and how to talk about it safely is introduced. Each point is supported with studies and stories. Terms are defined and repeated to foster understanding.

Four Agreements:

  1. stay engaged.
  2. speak your truth.
  3. experience discomfort.
  4. expect and accept non-closure.

Six Conditions of Courageous Conversation

  1. Establish a racial context that is personal, local and immediate – speak from your own experience.
  2. Isolate race while acknowledging other factors – don’t avoid the topic of race.
  3. Listen to others’ experiences of race. Expect disagreement in viewpoints.
  4. Notice White Talk vs. Color Commentary. Notice perspective of all participants: intellectual, emotional, moral, or social.
  5. Establish agreement on a contemporary working definition of race.
  6. Examine the presence and role of Whiteness and its impact on the conversation and problem being addressed.

The book advocates passion, practice, and persistence to address the racial achievement gap. It calls on teachers and administrators to take personal responsibility for learning the skills required to reach each student and help them all succeed.

I would love to see this book used in all school systems. The awareness and communication it fosters are healing for the adults involved in the process as well as for the children in their care.

Available at biblio.com.

“Crucial Conversations” by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, Switzler

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Subtitle: Tools for talking when stakes are high

Recommended to me by: Pair Programming is Built on Crucial Conversations

The first chapter made me wary, trying too hard to convince me that dialogue is important. I already knew that. But then the book started offering new ideas.

Crucial conversations have opposing opinions, strong emotions, and high stakes. It’s important to notice when one is happening.

We don’t have to accept the Fool’s Choice: stay silent or create a blow up.

The first goal is to fill the pool of shared meaning, encouraging everyone to share their facts and opinions. Important questions:

  • What do I really want for myself?
  • What do I really want for others?
  • What do I really want for the relationship?

When someone becomes silent or violent, they no longer feel safe. The goal changes to increasing safety. Notice how people are responding, not just the content of the conversation. Silence: masking, avoiding, withdrawing. Violence: controlling, labeling, attacking.

Safety requires mutual purpose to start the conversation and mutual respect to continue it.

  • Do others believe I care about their goals in this conversation?
  • Do they trust my motives?
  • Do they believe I respect them? (Look for ways we are similar.)

To fix safety: apologize, contrast misunderstandings with actual purpose, create a mutual purpose.

Question your stories, start with facts, state interpretations tentatively, encourage the other person to add their viewpoint. Ask, mirror, paraphrase, prime/guess. Why would a reasonable, rational, decent person act that way?

Decide how to decide: command, consult, vote, consensus. Who cares? Who knows? Who must agree? How many people is it worth involving? Who does what by when, followup.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Radical Acceptance of Everything” by Ann Weiser Cornell

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Subtitle: Living a Focusing Life

Recommended to me by: Ann Weiser Cornell’s website

I bought this book because of my excitement about The Power of Focusing. I was not disappointed.

These essays by Ann Weiser Cornell and her working partner Barbara McGavin describe both the theory and practice of Inner Relationship Focusing, as well as some of the history behind its development. They show specific, concrete ways to radically accept everything, including Inner Critics, exiled parts, internal conflicts, and non-response.

I started reading the book on the train, but stopped because I was embarrassed to cry next to my seatmate. The tears came from recognition and longing. This is how I want to be heard, and how I want to hear others. This is how I want exiled parts of me to be welcomed home.

Highly recommended.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Mother’s Voice” by Kathy Weingarten

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Subtitle: Strengthening Intimacy in Families

I read this by coincidence, and it fits perfectly with themes I’ve been thinking about lately. Kathy Weingarten, a family therapist, addresses double binds that society creates for women around acceptable roles and definitions of success. She talks about dominating behaviors in men and how to address them. She weaves her personal story of motherhood, illness, and family together with societal trends. Throughout, she maintains awareness of intersectional issues of race, class, sexual orientation, and gender.

When she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she realized that her need to focus on her health conflicted directly with her need to be a “good mother” by focusing wholly on her pre-adolescent children. This contrast brought to light the invisible constraints society placed on her thoughts about mothering. She includes thoughts about the roles of wives and fathers as well.

At age 7, her son bullied her daughter, then 3 years old. She withdrew from his dominating behavior, and had to consciously reconnect with him. As she connects with him as “like her” rather than disconnecting as “alien, unlike her,” she has leverage to change the roles society prescribes for boys, sons, and men, as well as for mothers.

When she shares her true feelings and thoughts with her children in age-appropriate ways rather than maintaining a perfectly serene front, she builds real connections with them and allows them to see her as a separate person.

I appreciate how much consciousness and intention Weingarten brings to her mothering.

Some passages become repetitive, perhaps in an attempt to convince the reader, but that is a minor flaw. Overall, this is a beautifully written, carefully thought out, intimate gift of a book. Highly recommended.

Available at biblio.com

“I Thought We’d Never Speak Again” by Laura Davis

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Subtitle: The Road from Estrangement to Reconciliation

Recommended to me by: Laura Davis’s website

Laura Davis is co-author of the classic book about healing from incest, “The Courage to Heal.”

This book is written with compassionate awareness that not all stories have happy endings and not all estrangements can be reconciled. Nevertheless, I cried while reading it, for all the estrangements I have been unable to reconcile, and for all the reconciliations that turned out to be grave mistakes, and for all the fears that I should have been able to do it all better.

It has concrete suggestions for how to evaluate the possibility of reconciliation and take steps toward it, as well as a variety of gritty, beautiful stories about others’ attempts and successes. Davis’ reconciliation with her mother is woven through the book.

Recommended, if you have the time and energy to work through the feelings it might bring up.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Undefended Love” by Jett Psaris and Marlena Lyons

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A thought-provoking book, more profound than I expected. Refreshingly, both same-gender and opposite-gender couples are used for the examples.

The authors warn several times to be sure a relationship is not abusive before using it as a crucible for personal work. This is a warning that’s missing from most relationship books I’ve read, which instead blithely assure the reader that one-sided work can fix everything.

The requirements for a close relationship are covered first: Reciprocity, Entitlement, Approval, Consensus, and Trustworthiness, conveniently abbreviated REACT.

In an non-abusive, close relationship, conflicts can help the partners look inward to discover their “Cracked Identity,” pass through the agony of the Black Hole instead of defending against it, and emerge into peaceful, joyous essence on the other side.

This is similar to the process of accepting and integrating past trauma, so that all made sense to me.

I was less comfortable with the hierarchy of needs, wants, desires, preferences, and no preferences. It’s too easy for me to pretend my needs aren’t important when I know it’s “more enlightened” not to have preferences at all. At the same time, I know that an issue will be much less urgent for me if I have processed past associations with it.

Despite the much-needed warnings about abusive relationships, I am still uneasy about the power dynamics that aren’t addressed. Calmly witnessing someone’s deep personal work takes training, and it’s not necessarily healthy for couples to act as therapists for each other. Also, saying that it’s better to act from essence than from personality is yet another judgment of ourselves and each other.

That said, the more people healing their inner wounds, the better!

Available at bookshop.org.