EXPERIENTIAL CONVERSATIONS – An Uncommon Lens

Each of the following presentations takes place on a Saturday and Sunday (11:00-1:00 EST). The cost of each 2-day presentation is $129. As we look in the mirror, and to our clients, these are the elements that arise again and again. More than diagnosis, they are aspects of a response vocabulary, which is often nested in the language of the generations.

Each presentation will be recorded. Participants will have access to the recording for two (2) weeks following the presentation dates. If you can’t attend the full live presentation, you can still register as normal to receive access to the recording for the following week.

Grief, Always Grief March 8-9, 2025

Grief walks hand in hand with loss. It is the natural call-and-response among individuals and sometimes across generations. The measure of loss is known only by those who are navigating it.  When an individual experiences overwhelming personal loss, grief may emerge as a placeholder for love no longer expressed. And when a force cracks open the natural emotional landscape of a people – war, natural disaster, famine, political terror – grief may become part of the language of all who were touched.  Everyone drinks from the river of grief, including descendants who feel its impact but know nothing of the origin. Together, we’ll explore some of grief's meanings, manifestations, and movements. Together, we’ll look for ways to give it a place so that it doesn’t take every place.

In the Company of Siblings April 19-20, 2025

Are you close to your siblings? Are you drifting or even estranged? Through the systemic lens, we see that siblings often carry disorders from the previous generation forward, whether caused by displacement of responsibility, favoritism, or shunning. In other words, siblings unconsciously take on parts of the legacy that then put them at odds with each other. Together, we will look at some of the dynamics that separate siblings and why it is almost impossible to find peaceful resolution when the sources of division are underground. More important, we’ll consider how surfacing hidden allegiances to the past can free up possibilities for the future.

Navigating the Stages of Parenting May 17-18, 2025

We are out of sync with our children – as it should be. They are growing out as we are settling in. We are coming in for a landing from the wild fields of our youth or the extenuating obligations forged in childhood. They are taking off. The question is one of balance overall. How do we allow them to explore while teaching them tools for self-care? How do we discern faltering from falling? How do we take care without taking over? How do we navigate our relational and professional conditions, neither hiding from them nor leaning into them? Together, we’ll explore what growth means at any stage for parents and children, especially how our growing wide supports them growing up. Together, we’ll look at practical matters such as single parenting, stepparenting, and whatever else is a part of our circle.

Money June 28-29, 2025

If Money were a friend, how would you say you tend to the relationship? Do you take it for granted? Do you feel undeserving or perhaps entitled? Are you ashamed of the relationship, or is it simple and flowing? How this relationship looked in our family of origin and through the generations has a powerful impact on current circumstances. Historical forces may have initiated a great imbalance in the relationship with money as self-care. Where, for example,  scarcity was a matter of life and death, and desperation was the language of survival, what continues to be carried in our somatic awareness? Think enslavement, famine, the whims of despots, war, stolen lands, natural disasters, the gamblers and the cheats  … what did our forebears learn, and how does the residue still shape our lens?

Mother, May I? July 19-20, 2025

Some will recognize this title, as I have used it since the first series of Experiential Conversations. I believe we leave our mothers a thousand times. If we are lucky, it’s not redundant, it’s progressive. Each time, we understand a little better, and each time we get to take a bit more with us. Together, we will look at where we are in our journey. Are we still caught in the double bind of servitude and anger? Do we continue rejecting and simultaneously becoming? Are we still waiting for her to be different so we can be?  Self-compassion for wherever we are is essential. We must remember that everything we learned about the world and the most important people in it, we learned in the womb. Our birth was the first leave-taking. The question remains,   Mother, may I …

Go Ask Your Father September 13-14, 2025

We would not be who we are without Father – stay-at-home dad or sperm donor or anything in between. And yet he did not carry us into life. His place is essential and peripheral. This natural paradox sometimes holds sway over an entire lifetime. How do we account for him, and do we? We may be on a secret quest to find him “out there” and “in here.” We may have never forged a relationship with him that wasn’t through her. We may not have the whole picture, including that he left because there wasn’t room for him to stay.  Together, we try to reveal more of the nuances of the sometimes-complex relationship between Father and children – and some of the ways deeper content shapes current connection.

Partners and Other Strangers October 25-26, 2025

Initially, we tend to connect through fragmentation. Whether with intimate loves or business partners, aspects of us sync up with aspects of them. And it can feel so real …because it is. It may not, however, be whole. In fact, orienting toward wholeness – our own burgeoning or theirs – may destroy the relationship.  Sometimes, these shifts were simply not part of the original agreement. Our first agreement may have said (usually between the lines): “I will remain small, dependent, and even incompetent.” Or, perhaps, “I will stay no matter how you treat me.” Or maybe, “I will be the big one who rescues you, when necessary, carries you when asked, and endlessly forgives you whatever happens.” Together, we’ll explore why relationships end – and how they begin.