Just in time for family holiday meals: Communications skills for veg*ns

The fall and winter holiday season is upon us.

Vegan/vegetarian advocacy (or even simple social "defense") can be challenging throughout the year. But when turkey and ham dinners with family, friends, or coworkers start happening, it can be especially stressful and frustrating.

Whether you expect to be dodging snide remarks or jokes from relatives around the turkey, or you'd like to talk persuasively about veg*anism to your co-celebrants to encourage others to give it a try, this workshop can help. We'll be talking about using Nonviolent Communication (NVC)* tools to build connection, rather than divisiveness, when talking about these charged topics.

We won't be talking about fact-based, point-by-point rebuttals to anti-veg*n statements, since there are plenty of online resources for that. We'll be talking instead about how to get in touch with our own feelings and needs around animal rights, environmental concerns, and/or health, and conveying them--if and when we choose to--in a way that is more likely to encourage openness in our listeners, rather than argument or defensiveness. The goal of the workshop is to increase the potential effectiveness of our persuasive conversations, while also decreasing our own risk for the anger, bitterness, depression, and burnout that sometimes go along with living by a certain set of beliefs that many of our loved ones may not share.

The venue is small, so attendance will be capped at six participants. However, I plan to host another such event during December.

*Disclaimer: I am not a certified NVC instructor. However, I have been involved in studying, using, and facilitating the learning of NVC for the past twelve years, in a variety of online and in-person capacities.