Hello, fellow human!

I am Paige, a Greek/U.S. American living in the Netherlands. I currently work at an international school where I co-create restorative community across our three campuses, sharing Nonviolent Communication (NVC) through student and staff trainings, restorative circles for classrooms, mentor groups, and teachers and students, as well as workshops on topics like friend communication, befriending anxiety, and befriending anger. I work with a team of secondary students who named the program AICSCONNECT and offer support to their fellow students. I also teach English Language Acquisition to students who recently moved to Amsterdam, and coordinate an enthusiastic student council consisting of our youngest students, ages 4 to 11.

My NVC journey began twenty years ago when I bought a boxed audio set of Marshall Rosenberg’s book, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. I listened to the CDs until I could recite them by heart, and I had a sense of being home and feeling a deep resonance with this way of looking at the world, particularly the world of young people. I felt waves and waves of gratitude for all the learning and concrete steps that fostered nonviolent consciousness in my relationship with myself, with those around me, and with the wider world.

Throughout the years since, I have shared NVC with assorted audiences from individuals, couples and families, to schools, prisons, restorative justice programs, teams, and organizations. Before the pandemic, I taught conflict management to leaders and managers attending a U.S. college in Vermont.

While the settings, my audience, and approach vary, the principles remain constant. I feel hope knowing that so many people are seeking alternatives to what the current systems provide.

A current goal of mine is in the broad realm of inclusion, both in my own thoughts (unconscious and conscious) and in the systems in which I operate. I need a continually growing awareness, from a wide variety of voices and viewpoints, about how our current systems are not meeting everyone’s needs and I also seek concrete strategies that contribute to slowly shifting the paradigm.

What I see as a bonus, a gift that delights me, is the widespread NVC community I have attached myself to throughout the years. My fellow NVCers from certification communities both in the U.S. and E.U., and in various weaves, including a trauma healing group, a handful of empathy buddies, and collaborators, are a vital part of my life and my work, offering inspiration, support, companionship, learning, growth, nurturing, love, fun, and so much more.

At this point, I know I will never fully “master” NVC, accessing the consciousness in every single moment. I aim to balance an acceptance of my humanity and my limitations with my desire to integrate the consciousness into deeper and deeper levels of my being. This is where community plays a fundamental role, providing acceptance as well as feedback, supporting both my humanity and my growth with love.