Living Love

Episode 30: In times of fear and uncertainty, we need spaces where people can connect and offer peer support. In this episode, Beth Tener talks with Andrea Martin, also a facilitator, about an in-person space they’re creating called the Peer Power Hour, that allows people to help each other with our ideas, projects, and challenges. Andrea also shares about an initiative she started called Give and Gather, which creates local gatherings for mutual support and community connections. You’ll get ...

How can we restore a sense of feeling at home with nature? In this podcast, we explore the sense of disconnection between humans and nature in modern Western cultures and contrast that to indigenous worldview that values interconnectedness. Four Arrows, a.k.a, Donald Trent Jacobs, shares stories from indigenous cultures, and his new book "Restoring the Kinship Worldview" which offers 28 precepts for rebalancing life on Earth. You’ll appreciate the richness of how a kinship worldview can help ...

In many communities, we are in a crisis where many people cannot access affordable stable housing. Andrea Pickett shares her experience as a housing advocate who is also navigating the housing crisis herself. She's passionate about giving those with lived experience a voice on these issues. Janne Flisrand shares how the City of Minneapolis, with broad citizen engagement, created a systemic scale of change towards homes for all. You’ll learn about how the group Neighbors for More Neighbors ral...

Conflict is a part of life. Instead of avoiding conflict or allowing it to split communities into polarized sides, how can we transform tension and conflict into creative responses and unity? My guest, Rosa Zubizarreta, author of From Conflict to Creative Collaboration, shares examples of innovative citizen engagement processes that allow people to feel a sense of psychological safety in speaking up and feeling heard. We learn about how Citizen Councils were used in Austria to address complex...

If you’re hungry to find ways that groups can adapt to change in fluid, collaborative ways, this podcast conversation with Ria Baeck provides the nourishment of inspiration. She’s a facilitator and author of Collective Presencing, a book and web site exploring how groups can co-create. We explore specific ways that enable people to feel safe to speak and to be themselves in a group. Drawing on learning from The Art of Hosting and circle process, Ria shares how to hold a container for the grou...

Welcome back to Season 3 of the Living Love podcast! One of our listeners said “This podcast reminds me that human relationships are the core of social change.” Sadly, in too many workplaces, classrooms and communities, we have people feeling isolated, unsafe, or not welcome. When people lack this warm connection with others, they can enter a state called “alarmed aloneness.” Whereas when people are in healthy social connection, this allows them to relax, think creatively, and learn togeth...

Episode 9: Season 2 - Community and friendship can provide the support and comfort to cope with the death of a loved one. In this podcast episode, Beth shares personal stories of how her community created meaningful rituals to honor her husband after he died of cancer. She is joined by her friend, Adam, who brings insights from his training in hospice and Buddhist practices relating to dying and grieving. They explore the challenges of how to make sense of a big loss and how to journey throug...

Episode 7: Season 2. How can kinship and community support us in the most challenging times, such as when we suddenly face the cancer journey? Beth shares the story of how she and her community supported her fiance, Rick, as he went through cancer. Her guest is Margie Zohn, a leadership coach, who was a close friend in those times. They share stories of how Rick brought humor and humanity into every hospital room and how caregiving can be a profound experience of love. As they reflect on how ...

Join Beth and Nancy Gabriel as they reflect on highlights and learning from episodes 1 to 4 in Season 2. The fast pace of our lives gives us little time to slow down and feel. Yet, part of why we move so fast is we don’t want to feel. In our conversation, we discuss how the way out of this dilemma is to have kinship and support, to be with people who create space for us to be ourselves and discern what we need and feel in the moment. We explore the ways that friendship and peer support in sma...

When the world around us is on overdrive and we are working to make positive change, we can end up in overdrive - and overwhelm. This episode explores how we can find strength and balance through connection with healers, meditation, and the spiritual path. My guest is Greta Bro, a psycho-spiritual guide who I worked with; she coached me to mimic nature’s cycles with times of action and growth and times of rest and stillness. Part of why we get over-busy is to avoid feeling. Working with a&nbs...

This first episode of Season 2 explores how we navigate the change when we are called to leave the status quo. Sometimes the need to change arises from exhaustion or heartache, other times it’s your choice. Katherine Golub of the Center for Callings and Courage and Nancy Gabriel talk with Beth Tener about the tensions of making the decision to make a big change, the big callings and the little gates of small steps, and listening to your inner guidance amidst the waters of self-doubt. Resourc...

Join Beth and Nancy Gabriel as they reflect on highlights and learning from the podcast episodes 6 through 9. They explore themes of how to create conferences which create transformational moments, the power of intergenerational collaboration, generosity, and how we can weave the arts into how we gather and work together. In this final episode for Season 1 on The Spaces Where We Come Together, they reflect on highlights of the podcasting experience. Kinship: A Hub to Amplify the Power of Co...