I was out of state with my partner, his son had recently died unexpectedly. The fragile nature of life and the importance of family was in my breath and pulsing in my veins. Things that are important really find the surface in times of loss and grief. A breath of relief had arrived and funeral…
All posts in personal growth
Restorative Justice made me a better Rodeo Clown!
My friend wanted to have a birthday around her bucket list item of getting on a mechanical bull. So I helped by making a flyer, and rodeo numbers for party guests. As the day approached, I teased someone I was gonna have “Happy Birthday” on my bloomers, so when I fell off the bull that…
Finding your keepers heart, encouraging the heart of others.
It has been an emotional and powerful season of work. A group of practitioners met to begin a deeper look at healing not only the incident of harm, but deeper wounds and trauma when additional deeper harm is present. That means looking at differences in race, power, gender, any status differences between people participating. Not…
Circle with diverse members, harmed, harmer and community role models.
What a fortunate place I have, having kept 1,000’s of Circles in a range of contexts. I’ve also been fortunate to train a few hundred in the process, allowing me to hear stories back on what worked well, and what was a lesson. It is soo important that Circles have a diverse mix of perspectives.…
Restorative Justice: holding people accountable, holding them with heart, 3 steps.
St Croix Valley Restorative Justice Program (scvrjp), has specialized in Restorative Justice Circles. Link here to see session descriptions. Each Circle is attended by 4-5 volunteers, a keeper, a storyteller and few community mentors to help support the process. We spend time training our volunteers in the philosophy and approach of Restorative Justice, we offer…
Restorative Justice work as art and being. Three experiences one blog post.
An artist in the show, invited me to the reception. Twice, so I knew it was important, and relationships are built by going out of our way. Since I like art, it wasn’t THAT out of the way, so I attended. Since I know the artist in a totally different context, I didn’t really connect…