The art of listening deeply, and thus helping different voices to be heard, is the common thread that has run through the many different kinds of work I’ve done. It’s a thread that connects what I do now, helping people transform unproductive workplace friction into creative collaboration, to the parent empowerment work with immigrant parents from my early years as a classroom teacher. This thread surfaces whenever I am engaging with self and others in Focusing, the “listening inside” process that creates a space for greater wholeness and healing to emerge… and also, whenever I am translating children’s books and poetry.
I am a connector at heart! The fields of organization development, clinical social work, community organizing, educational reform have each offered valuable gifts and much learning, as well as real opportunities to contribute. Yet separately, they have each feel too narrow to contain the wider connections that call to me. And so I’ve accumulated multiple master’s degrees along with varied work experiences.* As an “early adopter”, I’ve also felt called to explore “the growing edge of the growing edge”, which has at times been lonelier and less romantic than one might imagine. Yet I am now discovering ways to build greater connections with other connectors and edge-dwellers, and this blog is a step in that direction! If you are interested in more of my writing, you may want to read the essay that I wrote some time ago for the Collective Wisdom Initiative.
*Update: As of fall of 2014, I am proud to be enrolled in Fielding Graduate University, in the process of becoming a PhD in Human and Organizational Systems, along with an awesome cohort of professionals from all over the world…
And, I am delighted to be collaborating with Focusing International, which has been pioneering the integration of “inner listening practices” with “outer listening practices”; exploring the rich connections between Focusing and Dynamic Facilitation, as part of their public health work in Pakistan, Liberia, and Mexico…
**Update: As of spring of 2023, soon to be completing this looong process of doctoral studies, I am launching a new email newsletter. So if you’d like to hear from me a bit more frequently, I invite you to sign up!
The Listening Arts blog 
Rosa, Your last name appears nowhere on your blog text, THE LISTENING ARTS, and I almost deleted the email, tho saw the word “listening” — important subject for me — and read text and puzzled out that this was YOUR blog. Perhaps consider posting your last name somewhere obvious so people realize this text is coming from ROSA Z, which makes it of value to people like me. Your friends know it is yours — but I am a distant acquaintance who gets too much email and thus appreciates help knowing it is YOU.
Thank you for this doorway. A friend of mine sent this blog out….I read it and it resonated through my being because of its honesty and rightness….of course that is part of inner listening; to what I believe and value..yet to hear it reflected with such clarity is a gift…it lead me to checking out who you were which lead me to “About” which took me to your Alma Mater….which has brought me to considering what next….as an educator, as a counselor, as a community developer, as bridge between individuals, cultures and the earth we walk on…I am moved in a way that I thought was passed….I am appearing before our City Council in 4 days; ..your words will be there….
all best wishes, Ron!