Don't let your schooling interfere with your education.
~ Pete Seeger

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Peace Conference: Day 2

I didn't even get into the EMU – the conference center – yesterday. Just ping-ponged back and forth to workshops in the various classrooms.

The first was Kristin's. Here I've been living with her for 17 years, and ever since she started teaching NVC four or five years ago, and this is the first class of hers I've ever been to. It was cool. It was impressive to see her get into the heads of kids and parents she's never met and role play the conflicts between them. You could feel the shift, as the parent realized – wow! A solution to this problem that's been destroying my relationship with my kid. Granted, I didn't take much new stuff from it – I've had lots and lots of one-on-one instruction, and know her pretty much like the back of my hand, maybe better because even though the back of my hand goes everywhere with me, she's more interesting. It was still well worth it, and I did get some new stuff from it – which is the really amazing part.

Then I met Bonnie Tinker, lesbian activist extraordinaire and co-founder of Love Makes A Family, an organization dedicated to marriage equality.

I think I'll take her workshop on effecting social change today.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Isn't Bonnie just terrific! I had a great time in the workshop with both of you. You have a very nice blog. My older site is tshofner.net, but I usually post my new entries to several, including the blogspot one.
Cheers!

Seda said...

Terri,
She's pretty awesome! I enjoyed it so much, too. Thanks for linking to my blog... and following it! I feel honored.

Anonymous said...

Sweeeeeet! I didn't know Kristin taught NVC. No wonder, that's seriously amazing. I'm so glad that you both share in that...and I love seeing it worked out in your lives.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
~Helen Keller

Reading List for Information about Transpeople

  • Becoming a Visible Man, by Jamison Green
  • Conundrum, by Jan Morris
  • Gender Outlaw, by Kate Bornstein
  • My Husband Betty, by Helen Boyd
  • Right Side Out, by Annah Moore
  • She's Not There, by Jennifer Boylan
  • The Riddle of Gender, by Deborah Rudacille
  • Trans Liberation, by Leslie Feinberg
  • Transgender Emergence, by Arlene Istar Lev
  • Transgender Warriors, by Leslie Feinberg
  • Transition and Beyond, by Reid Vanderburgh
  • True Selves, by Mildred Brown
  • What Becomes You, by Aaron Link Raz and Hilda Raz
  • Whipping Girl, by Julia Serano

I have come into this world to see this:
the sword drop from men's hands even at the height
of their arc of anger
because we have finally realized there is just one flesh to wound
and it is His - the Christ's, our
Beloved's.
~Hafiz