I’m a practicing mediator (including as a volunteer with an East London mediation service, Common Ground – yes, I am making a flagrant pitch for the organisation!). Today I did some coaching. The objective of the coaching was to help a woman who had requested mediation, but the other party – who had initially said yes - pulled out before the scheduled meeting. The idea with coaching was to work through different options for moving forward. This case was unusual for me – the primary dispute and request for mediation was in relation to a husband and wife.  I suspect I will be thinking about this coaching session a lot over the next days – I was deeply touched by it. And I ended it thinking – and saying to the interpreter – “Wow. I bet there are so many women like this one. It’s heartbreaking.” And so it is, that I want to tell her story – making changes, so that her anonymity is guaranteed. I have no concrete purpose in telling it, except to bring visibility to women like her.  I say ‘women like her’ with a bit of reluctance – because I believe that ‘women like her’ aren’t all that different from ‘women like me’  - that the story I heard today unfolds in different forms everywhere – cutting across class, race, religion, ethnicity, educational background etc.

I also believe that the fact this woman is experiencing what she is experiencing is a damming statement about our society. Yes, our – not ‘society’, not ‘the society’ or ‘her community’ – our society.  I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again – we all have responsibility for the culture we live in and the destruction around us. Our contributions to and involvement in our society take many different forms including, silence and passive complicity, active encouragement, active challenge, and unconscious encouragement (by unwittingly behaving in ways that undermine ethical values).  But that’s enough of my soapboxing – here’s Sasha’s story (with a few bits and pieces about our exchange).

Sasha is thirty four year’s old. She’s been this country for sixteen years. When she came she spoke no English. She had come with her new husband who spoke English to a decent level. She was scared, but excited to go live in another country. Eventually her family would be coming, too. She soon realized that the man she married was not the kind, gentle individual she had seen when they met and got to know each other. When they arrived in this country, she started to see his need for control, his temper, his impatience and what she would call his ‘cleverness.’

Fast forward, she is thirty four years old and her husband has left her. She has three children who are nine, thirteen and fifteen .  She is taking classes and her English is slowly improving. She understands more than she speaks. Her children are bilingual though their English is better than their mother-tongue. This means, she has discovered, that they do not do a very good job at translating for her – for example, when she has to talk with their teachers.

Sasha has no friends.  Her family has been in this country for almost all of the sixteen years that she has been here. When she told them of her situation, they offered up advice on different people she should talk to – mainly, public agencies – but no one from her family would go with her to make inquiries, support her with language or emotionally.

Sasha feels totally alone.

She also feels angry, frustrated, sad, and powerless.  And tired. She’s very tired of going from place to place to sort out different issues. And often, she has to struggle with language and/or poor service. When she goes to the Job Centre to sign on, she cries the whole way there because she is afraid they will yell at her. Her experience has been that they like to yell and talk aggressively. She has bad knees and a bad shoulder (the shoulder problem, I once heard is a common female ailment – our rotator’s cuffs get worn away and I imagine by the time she is forty, she’ll need surgery). Physically she is tired. Emotionally she is tired.

And, I feel it is appropriate to add, that I imagine she is soulfully tired.

Her children aren’t much help.  The teenagers, likely many young people their age, like to talk back and feign aloofness. When she asks them to help with household chores they resist. They say they are tired or too busy. Same goes for when she asks them to help her on the computer.  She’s aware that learning English and using the computer could open up her world – but it is a very slow journey when she is getting no support at home. She fears her children cannot be changed. 

On that point, we had a lovely exchange where she remembered a time when they were very small and used to pull up chairs and stand on them and help her with the dishes. One day her husband said that she shouldn’t let them do that – it would be bad for their hands. He said he would help her. And sometimes he did. But more often than not he didn’t. One of his ‘clever’ approaches was to send the children upstairs and stay with them, only to go down and offer to help when she was pretty much finished with all the washing up.

As we talked about this I encouraged her to see that her children once –upon-a-time wanted to be very helpful. I suggested that that desire is still within them, only right now it’s hidden. It can, however, be uncovered again. They can change.

We also talked about how the children must be struggling. They are probably feeling all that she is feeling and must be very confused. She would like to talk with them about what is happening in their family – but when she asks them to talk (as is often the case with children and teenagers) they say ‘I’m fine.’ She gave examples of how the children have expressed their frustration with their father and how they do not like having to ask him for things on her behalf.  The children, at times, just seem fed up with both parents. She thinks that they go back and forth between blaming each parent – if they are having an argument with her, for example, they will blame her for the family breakdown. If they are having an argument with their father, they will blame him.  We agreed that they must be very confused.

And we talked about her. ‘What are you good at?” I asked. “I’m not good at anything” was the reply. “Everybody’s good at something.” was my response. Eventually, she told me that at holiday times, when people from her ethnic community would get together, she would often have ideas on what food to make and how to arrange the table. The other women usually loved her ideas and wanted to use them. There we had it, something she’s good at. I suggested to her that she is also good at being organized – after all she runs a house with three children on her own. She keeps it clean, she looks after her children (cooking, cleaning etc), she’s studying English three days a week. 

And how about making friends – I asked if she was interested in doing that. Well, it turns out that she is worried about what people will think when they find out her husband has left her. She feels ashamed.

Shame. Wow. Tough stuff. We talked about how she isn’t unique in having a bad marriage. About how having a bad marriage doesn’t make her a bad person. Eventually we talked about the importance of her connecting with her own strength, with her power  - even though right now it feels like she doesn’t have either.

We talked about going on strike. Could she, I wondered, send a message to her children by going on strike – not cooking or cleaning. She figures that wouldn’t work – they would just happily be messy and go live on junk food. Maybe. It was only an idea – an idea for someone who felt like she had no options – like she had done all she could. 

Throughout this conversation, Sasha cried periodically. Nothing dramatic. I would first see the water fill up her eyes. And then a few tears would trickle. Early on she had left the room to get a stack of tissues. When it was all over, I asked Sasha what she felt she had got – if anything – out of our conversation. She said she felt more confident that ‘social workers’ – though she knows I am not a social worker ‘ could come over and hear her story and listen without judging her.  She felt more confident that they wouldn’t simply take her children away from her. That was a light bulb moment – she’s scared that in seeking assistance, her children might be taken away.

We came up with a few steps she could take immediately. One included going to her GP and explaining that her language skills are not good enough to respond to the letter she received about a psychological consultation (for her depression). The letter was asking her to call for an initial consultation on the phone and had a form to fill out with a number of questions about her mental health. It has a two-week response deadline on it. Thankfully, this had come up in our conversation and we could point out to her that she needs to take action by the last day of October. 

She clearly needs an advocate – someone to bat for her with all the public agencies. Often, when she goes to talk with people they are not very nice and/or they are rushed. Her language constraints become even more constraining in this kind of environment.   She needs emotional support. We agreed that there are organisations that might be able to help her with all these things.

It wasn’t said out loud, but it was clear. Sasha also needs love, tenderness, caring, and affirmations of her worth as a human being.

When I asked her what she was looking forward to over the next couple of weeks, she started to cry. Nothing. She isn’t looking forward to anything. She cannot imagine anything that was going to happen in the next two weeks that would make her smile.

She asked us if we wanted a drink. Previously we had said ‘no, thank you.’ But I asked the interpreter if she had time to stay. When she yes, I said we would very much like to stay for a drink. And so Sasha brought out a tray of biscuits, candy bars, two glasses of soda. She was smiling when she did that.

So much more I can/want to say. But it seems best to end there…thinking about our society how alone, tired, frustrated and scared so many people feel within it.

I am leaving my half-drafted post about collaboration, which I started last week, aside for the moment. Still want to write about collaboration, but from a different angle than originally intended. Yesterday, I was on a countryside walk (yup, I like me walks!) courtesy of a meetup group - a connection made through a new friend. There I was on a walk with nine people, eight of whom I had never met before and one whom I had only met briefly a week before (at a movement workshop). One of these walkers is called Taylor and in a very unexpected way we ended up talking about collaboration. My conversation with Taylor particularly drew my attention to three ideas: (1) we are constantly in processes of collaboration - life is comprised of a series of collaborations (2) what might help us enrich our collaborations is to have greater awareness of of what we are bringing to them, e.g. our assumptions, prejudices, narratives (3) each of our collaborations goes through stages/cycles and so in times of challenge we might benefit from asking ourselves "Where are we at this collaboration?" rather than simply concluding "This isn't working and can't work" or "You are just impossible to work with!"  

Before lunch, Taylor had asked me that age-old question: "What do you do?" Though it is a pretty open question, people ask it wanting to know "What do you do for a living?' My answer: I support people involved in social change to work with conflict, engage with greater self-awareness, connect more deeply with their values and what's important to them. I do all of this wanting to help people strengthen their efforts to drive social change - helping people not only to get out of their own way, but to unleash their inner assets. After lunch, she walked up to me and said "I think there is something you can help me with" and then told me she recently committed herself to a project called 'Photography and Social Change'. As happens, I knew about this project - it had caught my eye in an email from GlobalNet21.  In any event, she started to say that she was interested in working with stills and video. That was the starting point from which we took a journey that went in all sorts of directions before explicitly finding its way to talk of collaboration.

Our dialogue pretty much involved me asking Taylor questions, e.g., What does the think of when she thinks social change? What does she think of when she thinks about working with photography? When she puts the two together? That's how we began and then my questions responded to what seemed to be alive in Taylor in any given moment. I also did a lot of reflecting - saying to her what I thought I was hearing from her in terms of what's important to her, what questions she's grappling with, her assumptions, her passions, and so on. One milestone in the journey was the discovery that Taylor sees herself and others as storytellers and she wants to capture people's stories. Another milestone was Taylor revealing that one idea which is really alive for her at the moment is that human beings are constantly on movement - that 'elusive moment' photographers sometimes say they want to capture is totally non-existent. That is, people are constantly in movement and having to adapt to the constant change around us. At the moment, when Taylor thinks social change, she thinks about this constant movement, adaptation, and flexibility. For her 'social change' is not something you do - it simply is how we are. And she also thinks about the stories of a particular group of people, when she thinks about social change. This includes this surprisingly varied relationships these people have with their identity – people’s stories can take us beneath what you see on (and often assume from) the surface.  

And so it is, that Taylor wants to get involved in this Photography and Social change project. She imagines that these two distinct ideas and topics will come together, though at this stage she doesn't know how. Realising this was also a milestone in our journey. Turns out, Taylor was wanting clarity on how to proceed with being involved in this project. Our dialogue helped her see more clearly what's important to her. Which brings me to yet another milestone - Taylor was in some ways reluctant to move forward on her involvement in this project because she had a fear of failing to be different. She figured this kind of work has been and redone before - that there was little point in doing something unless she could be original, unique, add something. She felt she had to try to come up with a new concept.

Well, we talked about this for a bit - really focusing on the idea that the best way for anyone to come out with something valuable is to connect with their own truth. Her valuable and unique contribution to the project will be the result of her sharing what is true for her - we each have our distinct, unique voice (rooted in our life experience, perspectives, and connections) and this is our gift. We talked about how artists whose work resonates widely have connected with their truth, and in doing so, connected also to a bigger, universal truth. Hugely successful movies and stories (I'm thinking Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and a whole host of fairy tales) draw upon archetypes. I doubt the artists are doing this consciously - it is more of a channeling that happens, a channeling of the universal that tends to arise when we connect deeply with our selves, our inner knowings. But I won't delve to deeply into this subject right now (maybe a future post!). The point is, another milestone for Taylor was to let go of this idea that she had to try and come up with something new. Instead - and it is likely to involve a lot less try - she could focus on expressing herself and what is truly alive within her. She liked this idea - it got her thinking of the journey ahead as a process of emergence and discovery. 

It was on this note we sort of wrapped up this dialogue. We both had enjoyed the exchange; I very much enjoy helping someone with their opening up/expansion  process and she felt relaxed and was pleased to have gained some clarity on what matters to her. At this point, Taylor mentioned that she was kind of surprised by our exchange, because she doesn't normally collaborate so easily. Yes, she really did use the word 'collaborate'  - not a word I would have chosen to describe what we had been doing. I just thought we were having a conversation. Mutual gratitude shared, we moved on to engaging with others. But when the opportunity arose, I re-connected with Taylor on this subject. I latched onto this idea - did she really see our dialogue as a form of collaboration? And what does she normally find are inhibitors to collaboration? She is, she explained, afraid of getting things wrong, only wanting to present ideas when she feels they are full developed, if not perfect. And she finds it difficult to trust people easily. 

And so from there we talked at length about the fear of getting things wrong, about trust, about silliness (sometimes, Taylor gets frustrated by the ways people connect with each other on-line only to be silly and jokey. She sees this as a waste of time. I suggested it might be part of their getting to know each other and trust-building process). We talked about collaboration. Eventually, we stumbled upon what felt like a big milestone for both of us. Taylor had said she isn't very good at collaborating. But is that true? We ended up weaving a different story/ painting another picture. Taylor is slow to trust people and sometimes quick to be dismissive of them.  She can't openly engage with people unless she trusts them, respects them. We took this information and created the following narrative: Taylor can collaborate and often does so - but usually it takes her a long time to feel free to open herself up with others. So, in some situations the collaboration process gets off to a very slow start. And sometimes, it never gets off the ground because she closes down, and decides she couldn't possibly open herself up with a certain person or group of people. As we talked, the idea came to me: life is a series of collaborations. And we agreed: Taylor is constantly collaborating with people; she's just at different stages in different contexts. 

And what followed is that a key stage for Taylor, in collaboration, is the building trust stage. But even that takes a certain amount of open-ness - a willingness to connect and engage, despite doubts and reservations. This led to her own admission - she likes to make assumptions and can be quick to do so - a big collaboration inhibitor. So, in the future, she might help the situation by asking 'Do I trust this person/these people? If not, why not and how can I come to trust them - what would it take on my part? On their part?' In doing so, she keeps the possibility of collaboration open.

And as for the perfectionist in her - well, we revisited that, too. If, as she now understands, we are in a state of constant flux and movement then it becomes hard to capture anything fully - including a concept or an idea. So, striving perfection is futile - everything is a work in progress. 

And so it is, that these three ideas about collaboration are very alive within me right now: (1) we are constantly in processes of collaboration - life is comprised of a series of collaborations (2) what might help us enrich our collaborations is to have greater awareness of what we are bringing to them, e.g. our assumptions, prejudices, narratives (3) each of our collaborations goes through stages/cycles and so in times of challenge we might benefit from asking ourselves "Where are we at this collaboration?" rather than simply concluding "This isn't working and can't work" or "You are just impossible to work with!"  

Thanks, Taylor (not her real name) - for collaborating with me on exploring the art of collaboration. We didn't plan it or force it - we just let it unfold as we walked a long. It was fun, light, thought-provoking and I thoroughly enjoyed it! 

Last weekend, I went on a four day, fifty mile walk along the Cotswold Way. My friend Olivia Sprinkel and I use these walks for exercise, connection with nature and connection with our selves through focused dialogue, awareness, and meditation. We also, social types that we are, tend to end up connecting with other people - people we meet randomly along the way. This trip seemed more social than other ones - we had quite a few lengthy conversations. We talked with farmers, a publican, B&B owners and the owner of a Cheltenham tea shop (the oldest one in town, I believe). The learning that stands out the most to me is not to assume and to be open - people are full of surprises and different perspectives . And so here I am, eager to report on a dinner conversation along the Cotswold Way.

Our first night we stayed in North Farmcote at a B&B run by David (we highly recommend it!). To our surprise, when he gave us a lift to a nearby pub for dinner, he intended for it to be a group event. So it is, that Olivia and I had dinner with David, Rowan and Michael, and Annie. David runs his B&B while also being a farmer - sheep, I believe (somehow, we didn't find out, only know that in the afternoon he has been baling - though what I'm not sure - could be hay, straw, silage....). Rowan and Michael are a retired farming couple from South Devon. Their farm was dairy. Rowan also runs a B&B (yes a shameless plug, though we have not stayed there!) on their property. Annie, well, Annie is a former professional singer-turned-voice coach. She grew up in the area and is a friend of David. 

That evening we were told that smallhold dairy farming - at least in Devon - is in a state of demise. Where Rowan and Michael come from, the number of smallhold (I think, but am not sure, this is the correct term to use) dairy farms have gone from 23 to 1. I've heard it said that dairy farming is bad for the environment - an argument usually made by vegetarians and vegans. If we use this as our springboard, we might think it a good thing - this demise of the dairy farmer in south England. However, the reality is that this is a country full of meat and dairy consumers. As independent dairy farms disappear, they are being replaced by factory/insdustrial farms: mass production for mass consumption. And as I understand it, factory farming is not good for the consumer, the animal or the environment. Where domestic factory farming is inadequate either David or Michael explained - and this was very much news to me - England imports its milk from Poland. Now, I'm neither expert environmentalist nor economist, but that just seems daft on both fronts. In fact, Olivia revealed that possibly my favourite yogurt producer - Yeo Valley, which I always assumed was end-to-end a domestic product (because of the claims it makes) - actually uses milk from Poland! Pah! Rather deceptive advertising if it is true...

We heard about how farming is hard work. A lot of farms disappear because the children of farmers grow up and think 'I'm not going to do this - slog it out day after day only to be in a precarious financial situation." A smallhold farm requires labour, but sometimes it is too small to be able to employ labour - so without family commitment, a farm goes down.Some people might argue this is 'progress' - industrialisation and no need for such hard, menial labour - it frees people up to pursue other, more enriching activities.  That's the subject of another conversation/post. What struck me most about our dinner chat was that these folks were very cross with Government.  

Our dinner companions shared the view that Government is ignoring the interests of small farmers. Government isn't actively doing anything to harm them, but also isn't doing anything to help them. Everyone around the table agreed that when it comes to food production in England, the large supermarkets are in control - not Government. Olivia and I  were surprised - and later discussed this- because we figured the Coalition is the type of government that would be out there supporting small farmholds and we assumed that the Cotswolds was diehard Tory territory. On the latter point, I'm still sure it is, but I am now curious to know how many of the folks out in the countryside are disenchanted with the Coaltion - and not just because of any Lib-Dem influence upon it...  And, of course, I enjoyed the idea that we lefty urbanites who are frustrated by chain supermarket domination of the high streets have common ground with large sections of rural folk who otherwise are likely to be Tory supporters.

There was one mention of governmental engagement with smallhold farmers: regulations requiring that farmers don't mess too much with surrounding environment. I think we're talking here about government wanting to ensure farmers are encouraging bio-diversity on their smallholds. Which, of course, a lot of lefties I know would be keen to support. I didn't get a clear sense of how much these regulations do or don't bug farmers... but, of course, it reminded me that there are Tory environmentalists - that perhaps the Green movement readily transcends other forms of political ideology. Again, subject of another post (one that I will never write, because I don't know huge amounts about the Green movement, though the Cotswold conversation has got me thinking more than I ever have about food production...). 

We moved on from the subject of farming to immigration. Yup, that old chestnut. Now, you might think, being the only non-White person at the table and possibly in the pub, I'd stay away from that topic. But for starters, when these folks think of immigration, they firstly think of Polish people. And, truth be told, they think of how wonderful they are. Michael told a story of how he went into a shop to get parts for some mechanical equipment. When he realised the person behind the counter was Polish, he was instinctively annoyed - assumed their English wouldn't be good and he wouldn't get the help he needed. He came in not sure about exactly what part he needed to fix what he wanted to fix. So, he didn't just want to buy a part, he wanted advice. Well, he described to the best of this ability what he thought he needed and what types of parts he might be looking for. After a little while, the woman - yes, I do believe it was a woman - behind the counter did that gesture of 'hang on, I know just the thing', grabbed the ladder, climbed up the shelves to a set of boxes and came down with a part. Lo and behold, when she showed him what she had brought down and why she chose that particular part, he knew he had exactly what he needed. 

Now Michael's conclusion to this story was that if an English person - probably in their late teens, early twenties - had been behind the counter, they would have just said, 'Nope, sorry, we can't help you.' In the run up to this story there had been a lot of head-nodding about the proposition that 'immigrants take the jobs nobody here seems to be willing to do.' And Michael's story seemed to be adding to that assumption: 'And they do a helluvabetter job than our people would.' Now, you are thinking that I'm dissing 'British Youth' and/or that the thing is these Polish people are undercutting wages - they work for less. And when I hear that I'm not going to say who is right or wrong. Rather, I start thinking: 'Yeh, this is a complex picture - which is why it is important to look at it from many different angles and perspectives, to explore deeply the different types of information and insight it gives us.'

We did talk a little bit about immigrants from elsewhere - courtesy of Annie who has been doing a lot of work lately up in Birmingham. Of course, the people we were probably calling immigrants were probably not 'immigrants' at all. Some were no doubt born and raised in this country. This is a bugbear of  mine - when do people stop becoming immigrants here? I mean, there is no such thing as a '2nd-generation immigrant' - you are either an immigrant or you aren't - and I wish we'd toss that phrase and others like it out of existence.  But that is by the by. Annie - like Michael - tended to associate immigrants with people who work hard. 

Now, this is potentially working up what is called a 'positive stereotype' - well, for the immigrants at least. And we have to be careful here - stereotypes (negative and positive) have a tendency to constrain dialogue as we put people in boxes, and take positions based on overly-simplified assumptions.That said, I was pleased to be in rural England, talking with farmers and locals about immigrants and hearing nothing but nice words said. And I told them this - I said, back in London one gets the idea that everyone outside of London is an immigrant-hating fiend, and I was glad we could be having a conversation where that wasn't the case. 

In response,  Michael added the point that immigrants were bringing new ideas to this country, including in farming. He had heard that in farmers in other parts of the country were growing all sorts of new types of vegetables in order to meet different food preferences. Am I now going to assume that the xenophobia we hear about and see signs of is exagerrated?  Well, a little bit. I do wonder sometimes if some politicians and media voices are stoking fires, trying to pit people against one another so they can come out as the heroes who save the day from the undesirable 'invaders.' At the same time, I know racism and prejudice exists in significant enough levels and forms (in and out of rural England) that we can't be complacent about. And I'm clear that one friendly dinner conversation in a rural pub isn't necessarily at all representative of what's out there.

Nevertheless, as a result of this conversation, I think I'm going to soften my armour a bit - soften that guard I put up, as a Brown-skinned person, outside of London or sometimes in London among certains groups of White people....I'll move through the world with greater attention to making no assumptions about people and instead being open when I engage with them. And even when something comes up where I think 'uh-oh, here we go....', I'll do my best to continue open and expansive conversation - because getting aggressive and defensive is unlikely to open up the other person to new perspectives. 

And that's my reporting on Olivia and Veena's dinner in North Farmcote....more reportage from the Cotswold Way coming soon!