Announcement of 1:1 Free Gatherings

This is for everyone. I’ve wanted to make it happen for years: a one-time hour where strangers come together and have an experience with one other person unknown to them. Sort of like the magnificent StoryCorps, but different. Because you likely won’t have ever encountered your sharing/listening partner. It’s FREE. Let me just say that off the bat. I have an idea of doing it more than once, maybe even often. But I’m going to start with one.

Next one will be in February. Stay tuned!

Illumination comes often in reflection; my second-born and I in a 1:1 sharing/listening moment

Why do a 1:1 Gathering?

Our tech world has often absolved us modern mammals from “showing up.” On Zoom, we can go video off. We can listen while we cook dinner. We could even be pant-less. We have the option of leaving with one click. No grabbing a coat, or needing to excuse yourself. None of this is bad. It’s fantastic on many levels. Hiding in this way can be appropriate and needed. Having choice how we exist in a group is healing for sure.

AND, I wonder about accountability, in the best sense of the term. If you walk into a real room with 20 other people, you become accountable to the relational field. Within that space, you have to navigate, re-route, find your edges, make mistakes, and generally bounce up against other humans and against yourself. It’s a learning process. So rich! How can we translate this to our virtual world? Not to replace it but to use what is a powerful force of bridging people from many different worlds. I have both experienced and witnessed the magic of the breakout room in Zoom. It usually stimulates the ventral vagal part of our nervous system. It can be nourishing, connecting, heart-opening, stimulating, sometimes even activating in a healthy and safe way. So, let’s do it. Let’s walk into a room together and know that we are each to be in conversation with someone.

What it looks/feels like?

1 hour of your life.

I will facilitate our time together.

We will start with some warm-up free-writes and nervous system soothing exercises.

I then ask the ONE QUESTION/PROMPT we will work with that day. It will be juicy. You write for 6-8 minutes and afterwards are invited into a breakout room with one other person. You each share your write and respond to each other. (I will provide guidelines for that process). We come back to the main room, and you then go into a breakout with another new person. That gives you the opportunity to track yourself with two different people. It will give you incredible info about your own nervous system and even the story you share.

We then return to the main group and do some larger group processing on the experience and then wrap up with some closure. Writing and sharing in this way is ancient, deeply organizing and healing for humans. If you want to read more about why, check out my website where I speak to it.

We are all hungry.

It’s okay that we are hungry.

I guarantee this experience will feed you on some level.

Please share it widely! You can bring friends because it’s likely, in the random sorting, you won’t end up paired with a friend. If you do, well then that match-up is part of a larger orchestration beyond me.

We could have 20 people there or 200 or maybe one day 2000. I don’t know. I trust it will unfold as it needs to. If you haven’t worked with me before, please know that I’ve facilitated groups large and small for 14 years, can hold space for whatever surfaces and am comfortable in the uncomfortable.

This gathering is for ANYONE. As an FYI: I have historically attracted majority female-bodied people to my workshops. Not by design. I want to extend the invitation out to anyone who doesn’t fit in that category and wonders whether they are welcome. Come one, come all! You are welcome, welcome, welcome. All are welcome.

It will NOT be recorded. It’s an ephemeral one-time moment.

For the mystery of it all,

For our relational selves,