Let's dialogue together

This blog will be a place where we can talk together about all of the facets that relate to kindness. This will be a place where we can be vulnerable, recognizing we all have strengths and weaknesses.

What is the purpose in dialogue? It is not to come to an agreement. It is to learn from one another, to seek to understand viewpoints other than your own.
​
As you comment here, and as you engage anywhere online, please keep in mind these dialogue norms suggestions:

• Speak for Yourself: Each person who shares speaks from the “I.”  We each share our thoughts and feelings without talking about or for others. 
• Practice Empathic Listening: Listening (reading) for understanding instead of formulating arguments to counter.
• Safe and Brave Spaces: Strive to create a safe and brave space to share and be.  Here we accept the diversity of others and allow and strive to appreciate the variations - strive to see beauty in that diversity as we make all safe to be who they are right now.
• Seek Understanding: This time is not about trying to get others to change their minds and agree with our perceptions.
• Striving for Empathy: Putting ourselves in the shoes of others. 
• Accepting Ourselves: We own our humanity.  We own biases, imperfections, and that we each have things we want and ways we see and like to do things.  We agree that that is okay and even expected.
• Accepting Others: Allowing and even appreciating differences does not have to mean condoning or that one person likes the things another likes or does. We simply accept that there is difference between us and that is okay.
• Choose to Connect: We don’t assume here that we are or should be significantly the same - we choose to find ways to connect anyway.