Studying Nonviolence

"Inner peace begins the moment you choose not to allow another person or event to control your emotions"

I've been studying Nonviolent Communication now for 4 years. So far I think that the teacher who has contributed the most to my growth so far has been Miki Kashtan.

I have read her book Spinning Threads of Radical Aliveness and have been meditating on the 17 Core Commitments with a goal of one per day. As a part of my practice I am going to take one commitment and write about it openly here as part of  my vulnerability practice

Core Commitment #1

Openness to Myself: even when I act in ways I really don’t like, I want to keep my heart open to myself. If I find myself in self-judgment, I want to seek support to reconnect with myself and hold with compassion the needs that motivate my actions.

I like that it starts this way one of the most profound things about studying Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg is that I had needs, I was allowed to have needs, and my needs made me human.  I had lived most of my life putting everyone's needs before mine. I had lived my life trying to be needless. I wasn't working I was judging myself all over the place for having needs and not being able to overcome them. It was incredibly painful. 

Some days keeping my heart open to myself is the hardest thing I do all day long. But after practicing NVC for the last 4 years it is slowing getting easier. Having the ablity to connect with myself is perhaps the greatest gift that I have received from my practice.  As Miki talks about in her book Spinning Threads living in our society we go through a process of socialization which is to teach us to not have needs since our needs won't be met anyway.  Learning that I was not created as less than has been so helpful knowing that this is the product of the society that I live in and not a flaw inside of me for not being able to comply has been empowering.   In someways reading Miki's book was such validation of what had been going on inside of me for years but that I had not trusted my own experience.  It gave me a place to start that maybe I could trust myself and my own feelings. Another aspect of nvc is that our emotions are connected to our needs either met or unmet and there are 2 sets of emotions that we can expect to experience. Feeling sad, mad, or scared is not good or bad they are only the gauge for which to help me recognize that my needs are unmet. On the reverse so is feeling  happiness neither good nor bad but only a gauge to tell me that my needs are more met than unmet. Pulling myself out of judging myself for feeling so called negative feelings has been very freeing for me. Allowing me to keep my heart open to myself even when I am feeling sad or mad. Grounding myself in the knowledge that my need is unmet pointing me in the direction of focusing on my need rather than my feeling.  Focusing on how it is my having the need that makes me a beautiful HUMAN rather than if the need is met or unmet . This is what brings me back to reconnecting with myself rather than disconnecting over having a negative feeling. 


Oceana SisterMoon is currently living her dream of a sustainable life, raising chickens, and growing food with her 4 children. She seeks to help women unearth their power through sisterhood and healing through self-connection , interdependence, power in vulnerability, and authenticity.

A Journey to Self Love

“I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.”
― Rita Mae Brown

I finished building my own home at the end of October 2014. It has been an amazing experience.

This journey began in May of 2013 when  I held my breathe and applied to Habitat for Humanity to see if I qualified. I found out that I did, but I had a mistake on my credit that I had to clear up first.

All the horror stories of fixing misinformed credit bureaus information were true. It took me until October of 2013 - six months - to make my credit accurate.

During that time often I wanted to give up, but I had had a dream of owning my own house for over 15 years and I knew I couldn't give up on myself. So I stayed committed. I was accepted in my local program at the end of October almost exactly a year ago.

Little did I know that it was going to get harder. Now I started my sweat equity hours, going to other people’s houses being built and learning how to build houses.

All of my fears about making mistakes came up for me. Often I would ask the same questions over and over or do tasks with my heart pounding and perhaps my hands shaking. And I often did make mistakes but this amazing group of volunteers and staff who build all of the homes would teach and explain as many times as I needed until I found myself looking forward to going and learning new things.

It was quite the shock to me that I was enjoying myself more than feeling awkward and  afraid. This is how I realized that the journey  to self-love I had begun years ago had taken another leap.

I suppose for some self-love comes easy, but I think those people are few and far between I think the rest of us have to work toward it. I know I have. I thought I loved myself when I was younger. I floated through my childhood into college never really having to try very hard. Never realizing that I only did things half assed because indeed I was afraid, deeply afraid of failing.

In order to really love ourselves we have to admit to ourselves that we have dreams and if we really allow ourselves to want/desire then we might fail. This can be too terrifying, it was for me for a long long time.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. - Anais Nin

Around 9 years ago I read a book called Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg Phd. This was the beginning of some serious change brewing in my life.  I was reading the book as a conflict resolution manual (but have since learned it is so much more) I was mostly focused on trying to communicate with my children better.

The first thing I remember being in awe about was the idea that “negative” feelings are related to having unmet need rather than personal failings and all people have these unmet needs This was an aha moment for me in that I had needs. I realized I had been living my life trying to not have needs.

I was trying to meet everyone’s need all around me only to deplete myself of all reserves and be unable to give anymore. Often leading to feelings of resentment inside of me that the people around me were not more attentive to my needs. Even though truly I was training them to not care about my needs by how I took care of myself.

When I finally realized my needs matter and even though the info was coming from outside of myself I had something I could work with. But as life often goes I got busy with the life of being a single parent with two young girls and little support so focusing on myself was hard.

Time passed things changed. I had twin sons and many other things changed in my life. One of those things was I started to learn how to ask for my needs to be met. Slowly. I was able to attend a Nonviolent Communication workshop in my area. This was a truly EYE OPENING experience. I was in a room with 50-60 other people with all of us learning to think in a new way. Learning to view relationships and communication in a much different way than our society trains us.

I continued on this journey immersing myself by attending workshops and reading as much free info as I could. I also found recordings of teleclasses I could listen to over and over and great videos on YouTube that I could learn from. I read Marshall’s book again as well as other books like Connecting Across Differences.

Many things continued to change in my life.

My relationships changed because I changed. I was stronger. I had something I could turn to that required no one else to help me when something was wrong. I could turn to my materials and find the need that was unmet. And even when there is no answer right now just knowing what my need is can relieve so much of the pain of it being unmet.

I am learning to stop thinking that the problem was others around me or a failed part of my being and I started to connect with my feelings and my needs. This is an amazing feeling to move the focus from out there to inside myself.

Self-Love has been and continues to be an amazing journey of self discovery in part by learning to embrace and love deeply my shadow side and equally embrace and learn to claim out loud my positive qualities. It means for me learning to ask out loud for things that will help me meet my needs rather than suffer in silence or make demands for others to meet my needs.

I am learning to participate in the world in a more compassionate way for me and all of humanity. I am getting to know myself in deeper and deeper ways. I am becoming more and more consciously here in the moment. I am able to say no without feeling guilty more often. I may have further to go on this path of self-love but I have already traveled far and learned much.



Oceana SisterMoon is currently living her dream of a sustainable life, raising chickens, and growing food with her 4 children. She seeks to help women unearth their power through sisterhood and healing through self-connection , interdependence, power in vulnerability, and authenticity.