activism

Self care and world care in uncertain times

From my friend Deena Larsen: tools for resilient growth and action in uncertain times. Below I've described several ways I share these.

The website is free: http://selfcareworldcare.wikidot.com/

You can purchase the books from Amazon: World CareSelf Care 

Both covers

Below is information I'm using to share this. Questions and comments welcome via email. 

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my Amazon review for Self Care

Amazon review Jan 2025

I tried to explain that whenever you use one of these books, you write half of it, page by page. Also the delight of the way writing by hand has a special loop through my brain and back. Here's a video from LEUCHTTURM1917 with more about "thinking with the hand."

 

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a pitch I wrote to use super-plain language; Deena says this pitch lacks that words that she finds work best 

Our Communities, Ourselves

Self Care and World Care in Uncertain Times

We can use the Self Care sections to explore how we can change and grow.

Our communities can use examples and group exercises in the World Care section to focus our current work and develop options for further action.

 

Illustration

There is a website, and there are two workbooks, for individuals and groups. We can:

- Use self-care to ground ourselves

- Claim our power to make ourselves and our communities more resilient and effective

- Develop a continuum of options to act on, then choose from among them

- Get moving

 

Some of these techniques draw on Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty (DMDU), with plenty of examples and references.

Each of us cam decide how to use these tools for resilient growth in extremely uncertain times. Here we go!

Both covers

 

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Pitch to organizations, approved by Deena

Summary: Would [your org here] be interested in having a group of us learn about strategic decisionmaking under deep uncertainty (DMDU) tools, to develop plans that would work under a wide range of possible futures?

Details: My friend Deena Larsen has a website and accompanying workbook, World Care in Uncertain Times, that takes groups through the DMDU process. A small core group could meet regularly to understand change and how [your org] could work within different futures. We could then develop strategies to increase our community’s resilience in order to support our current work and/or plan another near term action or project.

The time commitment would depend on how in-depth we would like to go. We would ask each person to buy a workbook ($15) and I would buy one for anyone who would appreciate assistance.

Deena is willing to volunteer her time as needed to help the group. I am copying her on this letter - she is "Clearly Consistent."

Deena has provided these services for the U.S. government, where she worked for the Bureau of Reclamation for 30+ years, and is now offering this same expertise to non-profits.

 

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Deena and I have been collaborating since June 20, 1998

this is my work-related bio of Deena from a personal point of view

About Deena Larsen

For 31 years she worked at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation:

I originally met Deena because she is a pioneer of interactive electronic literature. In this and several other fields she has taught, mentored, and facilitated communication and group decision-making.

Deena and her wife MaJe Kindschuh developed Signals with Love, a vocabulary of gestures to help with interpersonal communication, especially among people who are neurodivergent or have difficulties reading faces. Click BEGIN on that page, or view the entire project. Her Rose Language shows a way of adding meaning to words by using letters with individual valences.

Deena has retired from Reclamation and is now consulting. She has been sharing this toolkit informally. It's time to get it out into the world.  


focus(ing)

  • The love of our neighbour in all its fullness simply means being able to say to them: “What are you going through?” ... it is enough, but it is indispensable, to know how to look at them in a certain way. This way of looking is first of all attentive. The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being it is looking at, just as they are, in all their truth. (Simone Weil + new pronouns)

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