Maybe we will meet because we will participate in a training course together, during a trainer meeting, or just because you are curious to read these lines. Learning NVC has changed my life, "for better or for worse."

When I was little, I hated the power that adults had over children—in the family, at school, on the street, in the movies, at the doctor's office... And now that I have become a mother, I found myself repeating attitudes that I had promised not to reproduce. To give myself the means to do things differently with my son, I took part in my first internship. This allowed me to remember that emotions are the gateway to what is important to me and to express it in a way that increases my chances of being heard.

I further strengthened my ability to listen to others—my family and friends, my colleagues, and especially the students I welcomed into my school nurse's office. With them, I carried out prevention and health education actions by developing their psychosocial skills. After 30 years of practicing the exciting profession of nursing, first in multi-skilled intensive care and then in school health, I could write a book full of anecdotes illustrating everything I missed before NVC and everything it brought me. The quality of presence to oneself and others, empathetic listening, attention to mutual needs, and authentic expression have all been transformative.

My thirst for learning led me to meet many people. I was sometimes captivated by the certified trainers I met. The discovery that Nonviolent Communication (NVC) was a way to contribute to profound social transformation and a better sharing of resources gave such meaning to its transmission that I entered the certification process to become a trainer in 2020.

In 2021, I realized that I had experienced a lack of respect for my consent, abuse, and denial of responsibility in a relationship—not so loving after all—with a certified trainer. I also learned that other women had similar experiences, either with this trainer or others. Several of us named what we had gone through: psychological, sexist, and sexual violence. This experience helped me understand the use and repetition of certain mechanisms of violence based on hierarchical ideologies, and I became aware of the systemic nature of violence.

Since then, I have been learning, questioning, researching, and discovering ways to teach NVC that take into account racism, sexism, ableism, classism, and adult domination. By naming sexist and sexual violence in the French NVC network, I quickly understood that, as elsewhere, acts of systemic oppression are possible because the structure in which they occur allows them to happen. I met and was accompanied by people who made a concrete commitment to me and helped me experience what it means to be an ally.

In the CNV network in France, I saw and experienced the mechanisms of systemic protection: minimization, denial of collective responsibility, superficial empathy that ignores context, the absence of contextualized empathy, an equivalence of the needs of perpetrators and victims, overprotection of perpetrators, confusion between conflict and aggression, invisibility, silencing, and the self-exclusion of victims to ensure their own safety.

Since then, I have continued to learn to name these universal mechanisms in power relations and to express conditions and limits. I have also recognized some of my own blind spots, learned to acknowledge them, and taken responsibility when I contribute to reproducing these societal patterns—especially when I am in a position of privilege. This has taught me humility and helped me see certification for what it represents to me: a step on a lifelong journey. It is not so much a trainer’s understanding of NVC that matters but the posture they embody in daily life.

I want to convey a committed NVC that empowers people to position themselves and act concretely—individually and collectively—for a real consideration of our mutual needs.