Once Upon a Conversation

About Once Upon a Conversation

Let’s talk about . . . talking! Conversations are the heartbeat of relationships and yet we so often avoid the sensitive, difficult, intimate, emotional and scary ones. We play it safe and bit by bit our relationships become less intimate, less real, and less satisfying. Join my guests and I, as we explore what makes intimate conversations so scary and why we avoid them. We will talk about how to prepare for them, initiate them and participate in them in ways that deepen intimacy, clarify misunderstandings, repair disconnects, and resolve conflicts. We can learn to bravely ask for change, express our feelings, apologize with grace, see things from new perspectives, and invite growth into our relationships. We can build, repair and deepen our relationships, one conversation at a time. We get personal on this show. We talk about conversations we regret not having, the ones that we are forever grateful we had, the ones we wish we had done differently, and the ones we are currently avoiding.I have spent the last three decades learning, practicing, coaching, mediating and teaching how to effectively approach difficult conversations and conflicts and I still get butterflies before a tough conversation!. Join me . . . and let's get talking!

Publisher

Deborah Graham

Category

education · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

18 Mar 2023

Latest episode

17 Nov 2023

Latest episodes

11 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   17 Nov 2023

   Joyful Curiosity with Life Coach Sara Smeaton

   Join me and life coach Sara Smeaton as we talk about invitations to change, curiosity and judgement, what we can learn from snails (!) and how we can lean into joy even as we challenge ourselves to stretch and grow. Sara is a certified professional coach and facilitator who helps midlife women follow their dreams after forty."You have as much possibility in front of you as you have experience behind you. That's what gives you so much power."https://sarasmeaton.com/

2. 

   29 Sept 2023

   Loving after death with Mary-Anne Popescu

   Mary-Anne is the executive director of the Ontario Association of Family Mediators and has her own mediation practice as well. She brings her passion, love and joy to everything she does and everyone she meets. We talk about the conversations she is grateful she had with her brother who passed away five years ago and the ones she regrets not having. She wishes they had talked about if one of them died early or unexpectedly so that he would have known how much she would continue to love him af...

3. 

   7 Sept 2023

   Disrupting and Connecting with Bernie Mayer

   Bernie Mayer, an icon in the global mediation field, a scholar, a writer, a practitioner, a teacher, a mentor and a friend, joins me today to talk about his book The Neutrality Trap, Disrupting and Connecting for Social Change. Earlier books include: The Conflict Paradox, Seven Dilemmas at the Core of Disputes, The Dynamics of Conflict, Beyond Neutrality, and Staying With Conflict.We talk about disrupting and connecting around larger societal issues as well as in our families and intima...

4. 

   28 Jul 2023

   The Meaning of Money with Judith Stern Peck

5. 

   30 Jun 2023

   Nothing left to say with Radhiki Lakhani

   Radhika is an a lawyer turned inner wellness teacher and personal and business alignment coach. In today's episode, Radhika talks about bringing unconditional love to her work. "I love you when you're angry. I love you when you're sad. I love you when you're happy. Because I think as children, we didn't all get that. It was like, stop crying. Why are you so angry? What's wrong with you? Right? And we were conditioned to go, oh, okay. Those parts of me are not welcome. So as adults now, half o...

6. 

   16 Jun 2023

   Things get real with Victoria Smith

   Victoria Smith is a mediator, collaborative lawyer, author and teacher. She has been ten years ahead of me our whole lives, going to the same elementary school, junior high (winning the same awards), high school (being on student council) and law school! We discovered all of this on our first friendship date. Join us as we connect around the work we do, the conversations we have with our children and the profound end of life conversations Victoria and her family had with her mother-in-law."I ...

7. 

   2 Jun 2023

   Talking about Feeling Seen with Dr. Jody Carrington

   Dr. Jody Carrington, talks about her best selling book Feeling Seen, Reconnecting in a Disconnected World. We talk about boundaries being a pre-requisite for empathy and how sometimes we need to bump against or go past our boundaries to know where they are. We talk about finding 'our people,' the importance of a good belly laugh, and how "the most authentic parts of ourselves come out in moments of joy." We talk about the difference between grief and mourning and how to show up and supp...

8. 

   24 May 2023

   Listening from the Heart with Barbara Hummel

   Barbara Hummel, a couples and family counsellor and mediator from Cincinnati, Ohio, talks about how to stay present and listen from your heart. Paying attention to and getting curious about the differences between us can actual make us closer and more connected. She explores how to balance the need of the person who needs to process out loud in the moment with the need of the person who needs to step back and process internally. "But we do have different perspectives and we do hav...

9. 

   7 Apr 2023

   A Grandma's Lesson in Right and Wrong with Nicolle Kopping Pavers

   Nicolle is a mindfulness coach for lawyers having practiced law for 25 years both in South Africa and Canada. She talks about her journey from lawyer to mindfulness coach and her hopes for healing a wounded system. "And I just think that what we don't realize is sometimes we're not helping our clients because we aren't even aware of our own triggers, our own biases, our own stories that are impacting what's happening in front of us."She tells a story of being a small girl in South Afric...

10. 

    19 Mar 2023

    Bite Sized Conversations with Chef Pam

    Pam is a therapist and a chef and the founder of Fanjoy Culinary and Wellness Centre. In today's episode, she talks about using food as a therapeutic tool to start conversations in the kitchen that might be more difficult to have somewhere else. "So what we really do is provide an alternative way to have safe conversations while also looking at how food can bring people together to feed, connection and nourish the body at the same time."Pam talks about important conversations needing to be a ...

11. 

    18 Mar 2023

    A Poetic Conversation with Nancy Cameron

    Nancy is a mediator, collaborative family lawyer and author of Collaborative Practice, Deepening the Dialogue.In today's episode, she shares with us how she leaned on her strength in communicating through writing by sharing a poem with her father to begin a series of poignant conversations as he approached his assisted end of life date. She also shares the conversation she regrets not having and encourages all of us to tell the people in our lives how we feel about them. Nancy's favouri...

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.