The ABCs of Healing
In our work, we keep coming back to an ever-fluctuating collection of words and phrases that typify our values and practices for restorative mindfulness. These words and phrases are not a rigid method or a prescription. Rather, they guide us as we first listen to the communities with whom we work and then offer facilitation based on the community’s needs and traditions. Think of these “ABCs” as the prompts and phrases that stimulate our work.
Accountability: Encouraging taking responsibility for harm and making amends.
Acculturation: Engaging in a culturally responsive, culturally sensitive, and culturally fluent manner.
Affirmation: Creating and reifying positive, encouraging expression and systems.
Affect: Stating feelings or sharing questions about emotions in a mediating process.
Agreement: Making amends, reconciling, and deliberatively contracting to remedy for justice.
Apology: Expressing, owning, valuing, and taking responsibility for one’s role in harm.
Behold: Feeling fearless, inquisitive, or open to new possibilities (contrasted with “behave”).
Big Time: Demonstrably prompting (e.g.: calling out “Stop!”) to move another to safety.
Boundaries: Setting and recognizing limits to knowledge and action for humility and safety.
Breath: Actively breathing to regulate one’s bodily and thoughtful response to stimuli.
Calm: The flowing, ongoing state of serenity required for compassion and contemplation.
Care: Demonstrating and maintaining authentic, positive regard for others.
Circle: Gathering equitably—facing each other—to share feelings and manage conflicts.
Community: Centered, whole, and integrated groupings in which everyone is uplifted.
Conference (1): Group or individual discussions that give space and time to work through problems.
Conference (2): Advanced circles to share feelings, manage conflicts, make agreements, and make amends.
Connect: Fostering positive relationships that recognize the specialness of another.
Consequences: Recognizing the role that natural and imposed outcomes play in accountability.
Consult: Offering advice and support to empower others to do the same (occurring before “critique”).
Contemplation: Mindfulness—meditation using breath and visualization to behold self and the world.
Compassion: Demonstrating the highest form of sensitivity and kindness for others.
De-escalation: Fostering a calm, focused, peaceful, and mitigating state in the face of provocation.
Empathy: Valuing and caring for others.
Flow: Encouraging ongoing, reifying, ever-deepening states for affirming engagement.
Focus: Attention, clarity, or pinpointing the center or height of importance.
Forgiveness: Demonstrating the highest form of accountability, apology, and agreement.
High Road: Making an ethically just decision even when another does not.
Let Go: Relinquishing the need to focus on a matter for the sake of de-escalation.
Listen: Giving full attention and honor while connecting with others (contrasted with “label”).
Model: Exemplifying the best of what can and should be to others.
Peace: The highest, most nonviolent state of compassion and contemplation.
Represent: Embodying the best values and practices of self and community.
Respond: Controlling one’s impulses contemplatively (contrasted with “react”).
Sensitivity: Being aware of contexts, responses, feelings, and needs.
Story: An authentic delineation of who, what, where, when and how to support a view.
Trust: The highest form of self-reliance and reliance on another.
In our work, we keep coming back to an ever-fluctuating collection of words and phrases that typify our values and practices for restorative mindfulness. These words and phrases are not a rigid method or a prescription. Rather, they guide us as we first listen to the communities with whom we work and then offer facilitation based on the community’s needs and traditions. Think of these “ABCs” as the prompts and phrases that stimulate our work.
Accountability: Encouraging taking responsibility for harm and making amends.
Acculturation: Engaging in a culturally responsive, culturally sensitive, and culturally fluent manner.
Affirmation: Creating and reifying positive, encouraging expression and systems.
Affect: Stating feelings or sharing questions about emotions in a mediating process.
Agreement: Making amends, reconciling, and deliberatively contracting to remedy for justice.
Apology: Expressing, owning, valuing, and taking responsibility for one’s role in harm.
Behold: Feeling fearless, inquisitive, or open to new possibilities (contrasted with “behave”).
Big Time: Demonstrably prompting (e.g.: calling out “Stop!”) to move another to safety.
Boundaries: Setting and recognizing limits to knowledge and action for humility and safety.
Breath: Actively breathing to regulate one’s bodily and thoughtful response to stimuli.
Calm: The flowing, ongoing state of serenity required for compassion and contemplation.
Care: Demonstrating and maintaining authentic, positive regard for others.
Circle: Gathering equitably—facing each other—to share feelings and manage conflicts.
Community: Centered, whole, and integrated groupings in which everyone is uplifted.
Conference (1): Group or individual discussions that give space and time to work through problems.
Conference (2): Advanced circles to share feelings, manage conflicts, make agreements, and make amends.
Connect: Fostering positive relationships that recognize the specialness of another.
Consequences: Recognizing the role that natural and imposed outcomes play in accountability.
Consult: Offering advice and support to empower others to do the same (occurring before “critique”).
Contemplation: Mindfulness—meditation using breath and visualization to behold self and the world.
Compassion: Demonstrating the highest form of sensitivity and kindness for others.
De-escalation: Fostering a calm, focused, peaceful, and mitigating state in the face of provocation.
Empathy: Valuing and caring for others.
Flow: Encouraging ongoing, reifying, ever-deepening states for affirming engagement.
Focus: Attention, clarity, or pinpointing the center or height of importance.
Forgiveness: Demonstrating the highest form of accountability, apology, and agreement.
High Road: Making an ethically just decision even when another does not.
Let Go: Relinquishing the need to focus on a matter for the sake of de-escalation.
Listen: Giving full attention and honor while connecting with others (contrasted with “label”).
Model: Exemplifying the best of what can and should be to others.
Peace: The highest, most nonviolent state of compassion and contemplation.
Represent: Embodying the best values and practices of self and community.
Respond: Controlling one’s impulses contemplatively (contrasted with “react”).
Sensitivity: Being aware of contexts, responses, feelings, and needs.
Story: An authentic delineation of who, what, where, when and how to support a view.
Trust: The highest form of self-reliance and reliance on another.