We try to keep the blog mostly to content pieces of interest. But every once in a while we need to make a living too, so we want to make sure you know about upcoming trainings…

Both these trainings are real opportunities for personal transformation. If you’re a therapist or coach, you will also be learning methods you can use in your work with others. Both are with exceptional trainers and training teams, and tend to draw a warm and friendly community of learners/explorers. If you haven’t been to one of our programs in Colorado, we invite you to find out for yourself.

Earlybird Discounts available until January 31, this coming Tuesday. (Note: Southwest Airlines often has the best fares to Denver, and you have to go to the southwest.com website to find them.)

Core Transformation 3-Day Training
with Tamara Andreas
March 2-4, 2012
Boulder, CO

People continue to find benefit from the simple yet profound Core Transformation process. You’re welcome whether you’re completely new to this method, or if you want an opportunity to deepen your experience and skills with this method. One can never have too much “inner peace,” “presence,” “love” or “oneness with all.”

There are many meditation practices for people seeking these qualities. What’s unique about Core Transformation is that it offers a dependable way to experience them directly and rapidly through the doorway of our difficulties. These “Core States of being” naturally transform troublesome areas of our life.

Note: you’ll also learn a second method, Aligning Perceptual Positions, that is rarely taught, yet also quite powerful. An unusual set of questions enables us to notice how we have unconsciously “set up” our experience of others and the world. The process leads to a natural integration/wholeness that increases our resourcefulness in relationships.

People usually tell us after doing this process, their inner perception is clearer and richer (their inner images are usually more accurate and also more “positive,” troublesome voices either melt away or transform.) Occasionally someone tells us they recover hearing, or their vision spontaneously improves.

“Great training…very useful. I noticed that I have stopped biting my fingernails…and have a great sense of being. I enjoyed the whole weekend.”
— Marge Perry

Click to read more from participants of Core Transformation trainings with Tamara…

Click Here For More Information or to Register
for Core Transformation

Metaphors of Movement: 4-Day Training
with Andrew T. Austin
April 20-23, 2012
Boulder, CO

Our last blog post gave you an example of Metaphors of Movement in action. However, there’s a LOT more to it than can be conveyed in a short blog. You’ll have the opportunity to explore the full terrain of this method as part of our friendly and diverse training group. You’ll observe Andy doing many demonstrations, and have lots of time for practice and discussion. Andy continues to refine how he uses this approach to get better and better results. It’s always fun to learn from/with Andy. Connirae, Mark & I are very excited to be participating again and deepening our own abilities to use the method.

“This training is certainly ‘leading-edge’ information. My money was well spent. I felt the marketing material did not do the training justice. Those who did not attend missed something very valuable.” — Jessie Milan, Denver

Click to read more from participants of last year’s Metaphors of Movement…

Click Here for More Information or to Register
for Metaphors of Movement

Free Client Sessions with Andrew Austin
On April 24 (Tuesday), Andy will be doing four client sessions in Boulder. This is an opportunity for a free session, in exchange for agreeing to having the session videotaped for possible use for a learning material or product. Andy will consider working with anybody, however is particularly interested in working with someone who has nightmares or depression. He will give priority to people who aren’t already familiar with his work. If you’re interested in one of these sessions (or you know someone else who might be) contact Andy directly by email to find out if it will be a fit.

Email: NLP [insert at symbol here] hotmail.co.uk

Include:

• Your outcome for the session (what you’d like to work with).
• When you’re available on April 24. Session times are expected to be 9 am, 10:30 am, 1 pm, 2:30 pm

Recently I was exasperated by someone who didn’t keep what I thought was an agreement between us. But “Exasperation” doesn’t fully express the intensity of the confusion and disorientation I felt when that happened, so I decided to explore it using Andy Austin’s Metaphors of Movement process. Connirae and I have been having a great time with this model, both as a way of helping others find solutions to difficulties, and also on occasion guiding each other.

I explained to Connirae, “It’s like they pulled the rug out from under me.” My image was that I was standing on a small rug, about 3 feet wide, and 6 feet long. Someone else was holding onto the end in front of me, and they jerked it literally out from under me. When that happened I tumbled backwards, flailing, into a tank of some kind of fluid that had been beneath the rug. The broken agreement was disappointing, but tumbling and flailing into the fluid was what created my confusion and disorientation.

Connirae said, “So you’re a person who stands on your agreements.” “Definitely!” I said. This was true both literally and figuratively. It’s always been important to me to keep my commitments.

At first I didn’t see a way out — except for the other person not to yank the rug!

At his last training, Andy Austin said, “We usually see clearly what other people can do to “solve” their metaphoric situation, but we often don’t see what we can do in our own.” This is the value of working with a partner, and it certainly held true for me in this situation. Connirae suggested that I explore taking a step to the left, or to the right, or back — just off the carpet — to see what that would be like. “You’ll be standing by your agreements instead of on them,” she said. Initially, I didn’t like the idea. It wasn’t being true to my commitments in the way I was familiar with, but I wanted to explore it.

What if I “stood behind” my agreements? What if I “stood by” my agreements? In my metaphor, there was just solid ground on all sides of the rug, so this had potential. As I tried out these different ways of “standing” within the metaphor, I decided that standing behind an agreement fit best for me. I could do this with integrity, and my position was definitely more stable. (I could also have explored what it would be like to “sit on an agreement” or be more ready to “leap aside” if the rug was pulled out, etc.)

When I tried out that new stance in the real-life context of the agreement that hadn’t been kept, it felt much better, because I remained standing when the rug was pulled out. Without the flailing and splashing, and the resulting disorientation and confusion, it was much easier to focus on what to do about the broken agreement itself.

As most of us do with our problems, I had been feeling like a victim, and focused on what someone else did, rather than on what I was doing. Within the metaphor, I could quickly realize what I was doing, and experiment with more useful alternatives. It is one thing to know, as a general principle, that I can only really change what I am doing, and that if I feel like a victim, I am probably missing what I can do in a situation. It is quite another to explore a metaphor, and find out what I can actually do differently.

One of the really lovely things about using Metaphors of Movement with a client is that I don’t have to know anything about the real-life event that the metaphor represents.

Full Disclosure: It’s not always as easy to find a metaphoric solution that works as in this example. But this time it was.

Have you ever experienced someone breaking an agreement with you? . . . If you ask the question, “What is that like?” what is your answer?. . .

And if you’d like to, you can go on to explore your metaphor in more detail as I did above. Does anything become clear to you that you might prefer to do differently?

You can share your answer by making a comment below.

Andrew T. Austin will be in Boulder, CO teaching Metaphors of Movement on April 20-23, 2012.
Click Here to learn more. Save $80 with Early Registration!

Milton Erickson — probably the greatest therapist who ever lived — described an interaction with a woman who had been in therapy with him for some time:

“This woman came in this morning, and she said, “I’ve got a very bad sinus. I know this is correct. My face is aching, and my face is hot. I’ve got a horrible headache. And I don’t think I have been behaving very well. My sexual behavior has been pretty bad. I don’t think I’m improving at all. I think I’m slipping. I think I’m going backwards.”

Imagine for a moment that this woman is your client, and you are wondering what might be the best focus for the session. Would you begin by asking more about her physical symptoms, her sexual or other behaviors, her sense that she is slipping, or going backwards? . . .

Erickson continues: “I don’t know what it was in her tone of voice, (later Erickson wrote, ‘There was that desperate note in her voice when she spoke about her face aches and her sinus. Haven’t you ever heard somebody speak irritably, and you know that this is it, they’ve had all the aggravation that they can take? How do you recognize that?’) but this frank, and open, and ready negative attitude; I said, ‘Well what do you really think?’ She said, ‘I wonder if I’m in pretty serious shape.’ I said “You wonder if you’re in pretty serious shape. Do you want to repeat that question again but change it slightly?’ She said, ‘I’m wondering if I’m going crazy.”

With this additional information, where would you focus your attention? . . .

Erickson continued: “I said, ‘That’s not your question at all, and you know it, and I know it. I think it’s about time you stopped all of that pretense. I’ve been trying for a long time to get you to face the facts. You’ve been afraid. You wouldn’t do it. You’ve gone in every direction. And you know your headaches have been increasing. Your body pains have been increasing. Everything. Now go ahead and ask that question.’ She said, ‘All right, is my husband an alcoholic?’ I said, ‘Would you ask that question if it weren’t true?’ She said, ‘No.’ ‘So what are you going to do about it?’ ” (1)

At this point, you have a specific behavioral outcome that is probably quite different from what you had thought of earlier. How much time could you have wasted trying to achieve one of the earlier possible outcomes? Since Erickson had been seeing this client for some time, he had a lot of background information that gave him the confidence to directly confront her (including her anger at other alcoholics whom she knew) which was probably necessary because of the strength of her denial. Usually a client’s denial won’t be as complete, and there will be no need to confront — an inquiry directed toward the client’s unconscious processing will be adequate.

Clarifying the Meaning of a Significant Word
Often a client says a word that is “marked out,” emphasized by a difference in volume, tonality, facial expression, or gesture, etc., as if it contained an important hidden message beyond its ordinary meaning. A client may be obsessed by a word, and yet be puzzled about its significance. Perhaps a client uses a word that seems strange in the context in which they use it. Sometimes a client uses a very general word, and you would like them to be more specific in order to understand their experience better. Or a client may have an ache or pain and wonder if it has a deeper meaning than the word they use to describe it.

In any such situation where you would like to explore the possibility that there is an additional or different meaning of a word, Erickson recommended offering the following instruction, preferably while the client has turned their attention inward and has their eyes closed, or is in some kind of trance or hypnosis:

“Spell the same word with another set of letters. So that it would read like a different word.”(2)

Take a few minutes to reread this interesting instruction, and then try it yourself. First think of a word you’ve used that has drawn your attention, or that you have been puzzling about, . . . and then close your eyes and follow this instruction, to find out what happens. . . .

If you have a puzzling emotional feeling, physical pain, image or sound (or smell or taste) you can find a word to describe it, and then use that word as a starting point to discover more about its meaning. . . .

Some people will find it easier to do this instruction using visual imagery for a deeper access to unconscious processing and information. For instance, “See the original word printed out in the air in front of you with each letter a different color.” . . . Pause, and then follow with, “Just watch as the word falls apart and the letters all scatter — perhaps like autumn leaves fluttering in the wind, turning over and over as they slowly fall from a tree. Watch as each letter changes color, and some of the letters themselves may separate and fall apart, or join together with other letters as they drift down, and then gradually come back together to spell a new word.” . . .

Instead of autumn leaves fluttering in the wind, you could use any other context that presupposes random movement, such as fish swimming in an aquarium, or birds flying in the sky, people walking in a crowded mall, etc.

You could do the same process in the auditory system. “Notice the sequence of sounds in the original word. Hear each of these sounds separately, one at a time, each coming from a different place in your personal space.” . . . Pause, and then follow with, “Now hear these sounds in reverse order, . . . and then in a different order, . . . and then hear them all at the same time. . . . Now listen as they all move from one location to another around you in your personal space. As the sounds move, some may change how they sound in some way — a sound might change in volume, or tonality, or change the way it is pronounced, one sound might split into two sounds, two sounds might blend into one sound, etc. Continue to listen to these sounds as they move around in space and finally arrange themselves in the same space as the original word to form a new sequence of sounds that creates a new word.” . . .

You could also combine visual and auditory by imagining, “What kind of animal or bird (real or imaginary) is making each of the sounds in the original word? Listen as these creatures move and scurry about, sometimes disappearing into an underground burrow or behind a bush, as other creatures with different sounds emerge, coming together or moving apart, etc.

Discussion
“Spell the same word” sets a frame of identity. “With another set of letters” gives the client the opportunity (or invitation) to think of how the “same” word could be spelled differently. “So that it would read like a different word,” implies that it is the same word, it just “reads” differently. The implications (processed primarily unconsciously) are that it will have the same or similar meaning as the original word. Of course, logically a word with different letters is actually a different word, but that is conscious-mind thinking, and this is a lovely example of Erickson using language in a way that tends to bypass conscious thinking.

This process is a very gentle roundabout way of asking, “What do you really mean by that word?” or “What else do you mean by that word.” However, if you ask a direct question, you will usually get a very logical conscious mind answer — or no answer — especially with someone who doesn’t have much awareness of their internal processes. The next time someone uses a word in some way that marks it out and draws attention to it, you can try out this intervention, and find out what happens.

Using visual or auditory imagery as outlined above usually makes it easier for unconscious processes to emerge, “take center stage,” and be recognized and acknowledged. If you do this with visual imagery, and nothing interesting emerges, you can try again with auditory imagery using the same word. If you use the process and the new word doesn’t offer a significant new meaning, you can start with that new word and do the process again — as many times as you find useful. Of course it is also possible that there may be no significant additional meaning to discover. “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

Finding a different word will recategorize the experience described by the original word. This recategorization will provide a different set of reference experiences, connotations, and meanings, and this will often be useful in clarifying or specifying a problem or outcome, and should help indicate what to do next that might be useful.

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1. Conversations with Milton H. Erickson, M.D. volume 1, by Jay Haley. NY, W.W Norton Inc. 1985, p. 209.)
2. Ibid, p. 9

Book Review. The Better Angels of Our Nature: why violence has declined. Stephen Pinker (NY, Viking Press, 2011)

If you have ever despaired of humanity because of all the violence and injustice in the world, this book is a lovely breath of fresh air and optimism. However, despite its clarity and fascinating thoroughness and detail, it is also a long breath. I think it’s likely that even those who buy the book may not find time to read the nearly 700 pages of small print. (I had the luxury of a vacation, and it still took me a week.) So I thought you might appreciate a brief sharing of a few of the books highlights. There are many reviews of this excellent book online; I will only add a few thoughts for those who may not get around to reading it.

Pinker first demonstrates that violence of all kinds — from tribal and national wars to infanticide — has declined steadily by a factor of 100 since Medieval times. This conclusion is based on analysis of hundreds of datasets, and the book includes a compelling array of figures and graphs showing this basic trend. This puts current violence into perspective, and holds out significant hope that the decline will continue.

After establishing the evidence for the decline, Pinker goes on to ask the question, “What accounts for the change?” He carefully examines many different factors that could have played a role, checking across cultures through time, and noticing where there are consistent correlations. I don’t have space for Pinker’s thorough and thoughtful reviews and analyses, only for a few interesting conclusions — and a couple of quotes from the book so you can sample the flavor of his writing.

One factor is the rise of democracies, which are based on periodic voter feedback. Democracy is based on the assumption that people with different ideas and desires can usually work things out without fighting and killing each other. Even when a “democracy” is deeply flawed or entirely bogus, the idea of democracy and universal rights has a near universal appeal, and sooner or later people are likely to demand some substance beneath the idea.

An increase in empathy (a word that is only a century old!) is clearly a major factor. One factor that surprised me with its simplicity and obviousness is the impact of the invention of the printing press. While initially it was used only for religious texts, after the late 17th century, books became more widespread, and the rise of the novel increased people’s experience of others’ viewpoints, and this was correlated with a further decrease in violence.

Reading is a technology for perspective-taking. When someone else’s thoughts are in your head, you are observing the world from that person’s vantage point. Not only are you taking in sights and sounds that you could not experience first-hand, but you have stepped inside that person’s mind and are temporarily sharing his or her attitudes and reactions.
. . .
Slipping even for a moment into the perspective of someone who is turning black in a pillory, or desperately pushing burning faggots away from her body or convulsing under the two hundredth stroke of the lash may give a person second thoughts as to whether these cruelties should ever be visited upon anyone. (p. 175)

Another factor was the rise of central governments with effective laws and enforcement. When you can reasonably hope that most criminals will be brought to justice, there is much less incentive to take matters into your own hands — and likely be brought to justice yourself. Pinker quotes a Croat who described the situation in pre-breakup Yugoslavia, “There was a policeman every hundred meters who made sure that we all loved each other very much.”

These are only a few examples of the many, many aspects of a fundamental shift in human consciousness that this book documents and explores, much of which has taken place within the last hundred years. Though Pinker is very careful not to make predictions, the trajectory is clear, and gives us hope for a future with even less violence. I would like to end this review with Pinker’s closing paragraphs:

To review the history of violence is to be repeatedly astounded by the waste of it all, and at times to be overcome with anger, disgust, and immeasurable sadness. I know that behind the graphs is a young man who feels a stab of pain and watches the life drain slowly out of him, knowing that he has been robbed of decades of existence. There is a victim of torture whose contents of consciousness have been replaced by unbearable agony, leaving room only for the desire that consciousness itself should cease. There is a woman who has learned that her husband, her father, and her brothers lie dead in a ditch, and who will soon ‘fall into the hand of hot and forcing violation.’ It would be terrible if these ordeals befell one person, or ten, or a hundred. But the numbers are not in the hundreds, the thousands, or even the millions, but in the hundreds of millions—an order of magnitude that the mind staggers to comprehend, with deepening horror as it comes to realize just how much suffering has been inflicted by the naked ape upon its own kind.

Yet while this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, that species has also found ways to bring the numbers down, and allow a greater and greater proportion of humanity to live in peace and die of natural causes. For all the tribulations in our lives, for all the troubles that remain in the world, the decline of violence is an accomplishment we can savor, and an impetus to cherish the forces of civilization and enlightenment that made it possible. (p. 696)

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined on Amazon.com

This is a passionate and moving story of courage and the influence of language. It’s a great example of entering another person’s world through mirroring — and much more — in an extremely dangerous situation.

We think you’ll enjoy this story, from Rosemary Lake-Liotta, sharing her experience working as an EMT in tough neighborhoods.

Her response was the opposite of the classic instructions in such situations. You are usually told to respond to conflict with placating words like “let’s all calm down and discuss this rationally.”  I think you can easily imagine how that would have worked here.

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From the new book, Sweet Fruit from the Bitter Tree: 61 stories of creative and compassionate ways out of conflict.  Available on Amazon.

Words Save Lives

After my training to become an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) I was given an opportunity to further my learning. I would participate in a 120-hour unpaid internship riding with Chicago Fire Department Paramedics to learn further crisis intervention techniques in the field.

One of the paramedics who mentored me during my field internship said some things on my first day that I will never forget. “You are going to be seeing and meeting people who may be very different than you. They may not look like you, may not act like you, they may not share the same values as you, they may use foul language, and they may not have the same personal hygiene habits that you have. They may be homeless or living in poverty. They may have had horrible life experiences that have shaped the way they act and what they do. They may be deaf or blind. They may be from another country and not speak English. You must treat every person you come in contact with, regardless of who they are, with RESPECT.”

He continued, “The words you use and how you use them convey many things in this work. First, they must always convey respect. Next, you must be able to communicate with others in terms that they use and understand. You will have to learn to be very flexible and change with the circumstances. In any situation, you must always protect yourself and protect your patient. When you take a person onto your stretcher, their life becomes your total responsibility. It makes no difference if you’re in a hospital or in the projects; if a person is on your stretcher, that person is your responsibility.

“When you are here with us in the field,” he said, “I want you to keep your mouth shut and watch everything we do, listen to what we say, and especially observe people’s expressions as we interact with them.”

During the months that followed, I watched hundreds of faces. Each transport provided a wealth of knowledge regarding human behavior, and taught me to choose my words with care. All that training prepared me for the day that was to change my life…

I had taken a job working for a private ambulance company that had contracts with hospitals and nursing homes all over the Chicago area. Each ambulance was assigned a two-person team that included a driver and an attendant, both certified EMTs. Long before the era of cell phone technology, the ambulances were equipped with stationary CB radios. (The only portable radios available were carried by the paramedics who staffed the four mobile intensive-care ambulance units.) This meant that when we left the ambulance to get a patient, we had no radio contact with dispatch.

My partner and I that day were assigned a routine transport that was dispatched as a “patient pick up” at one of the housing projects, Cabrini Green. The patient was to be transported to a local hospital for physical therapy. I had been to Cabrini Green many times during my internship with the fire department. As part of my training, I had a crash course on gangs and gang violence. In effect, I had learned to “speak gang.”

The cement walls of the high-rise buildings were covered with gang graffiti, much of it dominated by The Vice Lords and The Latin Kings. Graffiti was one way the gangs claimed their territories, letting others know that this was their turf. The hallways were also cement and open to the air, being covered by chain-link fencing from the first floor to the top floors to prevent people from falling to their deaths. The elevators were in poor repair. We never knew beforehand if the elevator we needed would be working or not. Today we were lucky. The elevator doors opened. I pulled the stretcher in and my partner Joe pushed the button for the 14th floor. The doors closed. As we lurched upward the light in the elevator kept flashing on and off, and the elevator would stop all together and then jerk upward again. Perhaps the wiring had been gnawed on by rats, which were a common problem here.

When we arrived at the 14th floor we both cautiously stuck our heads out to see if the scene was safe. It looked clear so we pulled the stretcher out of the elevator and proceeded down the hall to apartment number 1407. Joe stood on one side of the door and I stood on the other side. We knew not to stand directly in front of the door because you never knew if there was a person on the other side with a gun. Joe pounded hard on the door. A voice came from the other side.

“What the hell you want?”

Joe said, “We’re EMTs here for Jessie.”

The door opened and a little boy of about 10 was standing there. “C’mon,” he said, “Jessie’s in here.”

We followed the boy with our stretcher in tow, passing through a small living room and into a bedroom. Sitting upright on the bed was a young man with thick white casts on both legs. He was wearing shorts that had been cut up the sides to make room for the casts that started at his hips.

“Jessie can’t move himself at all,” the little boy said. “You have to lift him up.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“I’m Henry, Jessie’s my brother.”

Jessie told his brother to go next door and stay with a neighbor while he was at the hospital. After Henry left I asked Jessie what had happened to him. He said that the Lords had broken both of his legs with baseball bats because he would not join their gang. He and his family were Jehovah’s Witnesses. He said that due to his religious beliefs he would never join the gang. He asked that I give him his Bible so that he could read at the hospital while he waited for his physical therapy appointment. When we had Jessie safely secured on the stretcher, we headed back out into the hall.

I was at the front of the stretcher as we pulled Jessie along to the elevator. I pushed the down button and again the elevator doors opened. This time three men were standing there. The man in the middle was holding a gun. He looked down at me and said, “WHAT THE HELL do you think you’re DOING with MY BOY?”

I glanced back at Jessie and saw sheer terror on his face. In that split second I knew that these were some of the men that had done this violence to him. I straightened to my full height of exactly five feet, looked up at the man with the gun, and said, “He’s NOT your boy, he’s on my stretcher, he’s on MY TURF. He’s MY boy!”

Shocked, the man looked at the gun he was holding, looked back down at me, and said, “SAY WHAT?”

So I said, “Now I can see that you’re a man that demands RESPECT.”
“YOU GOT THAT RIGHT.”

“I give you that RESPECT.” I said. “Now let me tell you about my gang.”

He said, “YOU in a gang?”

“Yeah! All these EMTs and Paramedics that come here when you call 911 are all part of MY GANG. Now, let me ask you, has there ever been a time when you called 911 and someone from MY GANG didn’t come to help you?”

“No, they be there,” he said.

“THAT’S RIGHT. If you mess with me or you mess with anyone on MY TURF,” I pointed to Jessie, “or you mess with anyone in MY GANG, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK’S GOING TO HAPPEN THE NEXT TIME ONE OF YOUR BOYS IS BLEEDIN’ OUT BAD AND YOU CALL 911?”

He looked back down at the gun, then looked back at me and said, “DAMN, YOU A BITCH!”

“YOU GOT THAT RIGHT,” I yelled at him, “AND WHILE I GIVE YOU THAT RESPECT, I DON’T HAVE ALL DAY TO BE STANDIN’ HERE SHOOTIN’ THE SHIT WITH YOU!”

“Let the lady pass on by,” he said with a nod of his head.

I pulled the stretcher into the elevator, praying that he wouldn’t change his mind. Tears were streaming down Jessie’s face as the elevator doors closed. Joe and I took some deep breaths, doing our best to prepare for whatever might meet us on the ground floor. Thankfully, when the elevator doors opened again the scene was safe enough to proceed to the ambulance. We notified our dispatcher that an incident had occurred but that no injuries resulted and we would call him from the hospital. En route, I asked Jessie who the men were. He said he didn’t know their names. I asked him if they were some of the men that had broken his legs. He nodded and said, “If I tell anyone who they are, they will kill my family. I already talked to the police. What you don’t understand is that I have to live there.”

When I called my dispatcher, a meeting was arranged with the supervising field paramedic and the owner of the company to discuss what to do. Because the man with the gun did not actually point the gun directly at me and say he was going to kill me, and I did not know who the men were, filing a police report was not recommended. Thousands of people live in Chicago Housing Projects and many have guns. Paramedics and EMTs across the country face dangerous situations every single day. They continue to do their job. We were there to safely transport Jessie to physical therapy and back, not try to hunt down gang members. Following the meeting, I was promoted to become one of the company’s EMT trainers.

As a trainer, I went to pick up Jessie three times a week for the next six months with trainees under my charge. Every time I pulled up to Cabrini Green and got out of the ambulance, the gang scouts that were watching over their turf would say, “Hey, it’s that little white MEDIC BITCH again!” And then the call would come back, “He says let the lady pass on by.” I was never bothered by anyone there ever again.

~Rosemary Lake-Liotta

Excerpt from Sweet Fruit from the Bitter Tree: 61 stories of creative and compassionate ways out of conflict, by Mark Andreas. ©2011 Real People Press.

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To read the entire collection of remarkable true stories, order now at Amazon.com.

Available locally at The Tattered Cover and The Boulder Bookstore.

If you’d like to order this book as a gift for friends or family, contact us for quantity discounts: order [at] realpeoplepress.com or go to the official website for Sweet Fruit from the Bitter Tree.