Sessions with the Farmer’s Wife:
Conventional Wisdom for Contemporary Life
April 5, 2005: Partly sunny and the wind is still from the SE. Really warming up quickly. — Leona, Personal Journal
Have you been waiting around for 2 years for those “cheat sheets” for better communication that I promised? Wow! It’s hard to fathom that 2 entire years have passed since my last official blog! Let me try to catch you up on what’s been happening behind the scenes.
My 50th birthday was on St. Patrick’s Day. Well, actually all of my birthdays have been!
Last I posted, Anthony and Corinne had just gotten married, and Jim and I were in the throes of selling one house and buying another. That new house was a short sale which had been neglected for years. We spent months cleaning, scrubbing, painting, fixing, replacing…just to get it into livable condition. In that process, I burned out my arms and shoulders and was actually diagnosed with “overuse syndrome.” I am just now nearly fully recovered, after two years of physical therapy, chiropractic treatments, acupuncture, dry needling, muscle relaxers, pain relievers, exercise, and massage.
Three weeks after we moved, we had a big party at our new place celebrating Jozlyn’s high school graduation. We planted a garden, worked at getting settled, moved Andrea to a horse ranch and a new college, moved Jozlyn off to college — when it seemed we were already upon Thanksgiving and Christmas with lots of family and festivities going on. Andrea resigned her horse ranch job which meant moving back in with Mom and Dad and will be finishing up her business degree in a few weeks.
Monica said, “Yes!”
The morning of Marcus’ college graduation, he proposed to his lovely Monica. Marcus is an engineer in Texas and Monica is a kindergarten teacher in Texas, although not in the same city! They are looking forward to being married this June.
We gathered the whole gang at the beach for a few days!
We’ve also taken a couple family vacations together, made a few trips back and forth to Iowa to visit and care for our parents, and also made a couple trips to Alabama to hang out with Anthony and Corinne.
As if this hasn’t been enough, Jim and I both actually have jobs! Jim has been promoted to regional administrator and is now overseeing five home health care agencies from Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Denver, and up to Fort Collins. That’s a 3 hour drive from bottom to top, so he’s on the road more. I continue my private practice and have also launched Soul SafetyTM and created DVDs, a CD of my original songs, and some written resources to promote emotional well-being within faith communities. If this sounds interesting to you, you can check out www.soulsafety.com.
It seems that things have settled enough for me to get back to what we were doing here at Sessions, so let’s get going on Part 2 of Communicating with Care!
The 2012 fires were within view from our house. Good communication is imperative at a time like this!
When communicating, listening, rather than speaking, is oftentimes the bigger problem. No matter how well-spoken a person is, if the intended recipient does not listen well, communication does not happen. Many people interrupt, talk over, disqualify, ignore, or never even notice another person speaking to them. You’ve heard it said that many don’t hear what’s being said because they’re so busy formulating what they want to say to make their point. That doesn’t contribute to good listening and quality communication at all.
One of the best solutions to poor communication is called the Speaker-Listener Technique. With this approach, the Listener is not allowed to make his point until he has proven that he heard the Speaker by reflecting – accurately reflecting back to her what she said until she is satisfied that he is comprehending and understanding her point. At that time, the Listener becomes the Speaker and may make his point. While practicing this model of communication, it is very helpful for the person speaking (which is not always the Speaker), to hold an object that identifies that he or she has the floor. Some families have a Talking Stick, although any noticeable object would work. Additional rules of communication beneficial to any discussion are available at http://www.positive-way.com/family.htm. Although the slower pace of the Speaker-Listener Technique is frustrating for some, the benefits of slowing down the conversation, taking adequate time to be understood, and managing emotions that tend to escalate, far outweigh the previous manner of communicating which wasn’t really communication and oftentimes led to hours…days…weeks of hurt feelings and animosity between people.
An important aspect of this or any model of communicating is using “I Statements” or speaking for oneself. None of us actually knows what another person is thinking; we regularly have no idea what we’re thinking! Quality, effective communication requires that I take responsibility for my own thoughts and feelings, then endeavor to make them known outside of myself in an efficient manner. Here is fill-in-the-blank assistance to get you started:
I feel ____________
(when you do/do not __________)
because ____________
and I would like you to (stop) ____________.
If you give this a test run, I think you might be surprised what problems this little exercise solves, especially if you couple it with the Speaker-Listener Technique. I suspect it might prove to be like the south-east wind on a partially sunny April day that Leona mentions in her journal – things might really warm up quickly!
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