When you hear the word conflict, what happens?

Does your heart race?

Palms sweat?

Do you think of the words anxiety, fear, frustration, yelling, war, fruitless, or hurt?

You wouldn't be alone. In my experience over 80% of people have a negative association with the word conflict. These associations come with good reason. They are very real and lived experiences. Our culture has failed us. We have centered success, capitalism, and power over connection. Healthy conflict skills are NOT inherent. They need to be taught.

If we did not have healthy conflict modeled to us as a child, or got nerdy and decided to do a deep study of conflict tools through school or therapy… we never got the skills to make conflict generative.

Now here we are, adults trying to adult, sweating over the text from our bestie saying “can we talk”. I like to think you have begun to follow Of Earth and Sea because it offers you the space to explore new and empowering skills.

Cultivating these skills as an adult is an honorable path. I am here to walk it with you. And it is a path of deep deconstruction. Deconstruction of misplaced values, trauma, and lived experience to embody something new. This is a step to healing personally and collectively.

Many scholars argue that a true culture shift, from a world filled with violence and harm, will come when children AND adults are able to embody these skills. Imagine every child from the moment they stepped into a school were taught by expert conflict practitioners how to communicate their inner feelings, embrace accountability, wonder about others actions, know what safe dialogue felt like and more… in 18 years or so we have a generation of young adults who embrace conflict peacefully as a place to grow closer to one another.

This is the vision my new nature program for kids, Good Earth was born out of. Wonder, interconnection, and generative conflict skills as foundational building blocks in children's understanding in the world. The field of conflict resolution is new and while it is cutting edge to be practicing these skills with young people, it is so very needed.

Children need to learn things like:

• How to say no, so you can authentically say yes.
• How to use your voice to express needs, and use your ears to hear the needs of their peers.
• How to navigate risk, sit in the unknown, and cultivate trust
• How to embrace accountability and offer meaningful feedback
• How to build a safe container for dialogue
• How to embrace curiosity about our own and others behaviors
• How empathy paired with boundaries produce the strongest communities.
• How our hearts can hold many truths at once.

The world our littles are about to inherit will demand that they have these abilities. We cannot continue in this fast paced oppressive lifestyle that has led to wars, senseless violence and the desecration of the planet that is so good to us. We desperately need a group of leaders who know how to find the middle ground in a sea of differing perspectives.

Our time together in nature will provide us with daily opportunities to cultivate peacebuilding prowess and witness them in action. With the right questioning, guidance, and consistency, a foundation of generative conflict artistry will be built. Littles will embody the understanding that in differences lie our greatest strengths and in conflict lies our greatest opportunities for the world of our dreams.

It is my hope that this next generation of children will hear the word conflict and think of words like

Love

Possibility

Connection

Equity

Growth

If this is your hope too, I invite you and your family to join me on this journey to a new way of being. For families with young ones in the SOMD area, please join me at our open house on June 11. For others, please remain connected as we deconstruct misconstrued beliefs and begin to pave the way for these brave littles.