2001 my life was in chaos. I was working in Information Technology, in a high demand project with a US company in Nova Scotia. My father was dying, my 18 year marriage was ending and I was at a loss as to how to ‘fix’ any of it. The twin towers went down one year after a project I had been working on in New York got cancelled and the same year a beloved friend, choir director and teacher died of cancer. I was being hit by bad news on every front when a friend I had met through Authentic Leadership in Action in Nova Scotia (ALIA) invited me to a training on Open Space Technology at a campus which was most beloved to me. The moment I stepped into the container of Whole Person Process Facilitation, which provided a container for the Open Space Technology Training (which is it’s own container), I felt a deep recognition of process meeting action and embarked on a 20+ year journey in Genuine Contact. I found myself alone in a session and asking the deep questions of what it takes to affect ‘real’ change in an organization. During a convergence exercise, I was surprised to find that my solo topic was the one everyone wanted to discuss. Another ‘aha’ moment for me was when someone asked me how not to see everything in terms of ‘relationship’ and I realized that, for me, nothing existed outside of relationship :). Twenty years later, I am still learning and growing in Genuine Contact and have deepened into my understanding of the interconnectedness of life and the appreciation of my place in it.
I will be forever grateful for that first moment of Genuine Contact.