A big part of restorative justice, is relationships. I have storytellers (or those I am helping to become storytellers) start with talking about themselves, their relationships. So . . . this blog post is about me and my relationships! The first person that needs mentioning is my daughter Kylie
. She and I live with our cat “Olive”. Olive maybe the subject of an entirely seperate blog! She’s cat-riffic! Being Kylie’s Mom has been the most rewarding, challenging, wonderful and dynamic relationships of my life. She really is a good kid and I’m amazed at her wit, humor and bold attitude towards life.
I’m the oldest child, my Dad’s a third generation rancher out in South Dakota, still on the farm today. He’s a great guy and if you’ve heard me speak you’ve probably seen his picture. I even got him to a Circle – and I hope some of those teachers post a comment about that! I’ll save that story for another post!
I’ll keep my close friends close, by not blogging about them before I ask permission! The next GREAT relationship of my life is the one I have to my work. I LOVE MY JOB! I feel so fortunate that I found my “calling” I love what I do. The work of Restorative Justice just makes such sense to me. It vibrates to the core of my being. It’s helped me be a better human being. I know that lives have been touched if not altered dramatically by this process. I get big and little rewards every day for doing this. I can’t say enough about how meaningful it is to see people heal themselves and each other.
So I work on my relationship to my work constantly. I look for ways to improve the message of SCVRJP, or services. I read all I can on Restorative Justice and related subjects. I heard you know a topic better really when you teach it. So I teach at the University of WI – River Falls. I REALLY LOVE that too! Of course I teach “Introduction to Restorative Justice”. We have our class in Circle. I bet those of you that know me can’t believe I am 344 words into a post and haven’t mentioned Circles yet! Next post!
I dedided to start the blog to give more away. To share stories, to connect Circlekeepers and practitioners together. So let me get to the task of announcing this!
