Description
"The need for civility has never been more critical than it is now. The social climate of contempt, animosity, hate, and retribution is depressing our collective spirit, degrading our mental health and spiritual well-being, tearing us apart, and impacting our families, workplaces and communities.
This book provides an antidote. It tells a story of eight people who came together out of frustration, and committed to making a "restorative difference" in their respective social environments.
Through this conversation, over three months, this group embraced a restorative worldview, and developed restorative communication principles, skills, and practices to help implement that worldview. The result was a reclamation of civility, and a restoration of hope about the future.
Building on over two decades of experience in restorative communication practices and programming, Dr. Will Bledsoe gives us a timeless heart-centric methodology to restore accountability, empathy, and dignity."
Review: Alistair Martin, Ph.D., Former Director; Program in Educational Theatre, New York University
Will Bledsoe’s The Restorative Way may well be one of the most important books of our time. It stands as a timely reminder that we have arrived at a critical time in the evolution of both humanity and our planet. Bledsoe is asking us to reflect on how we can change the dominant narratives of our time: to recognize the negative outcomes of retribution and punishment, which have been so fundamental to the Judeo-Christian tradition, and to transform them into forgiveness and healing. He asserts that the way to birth a new paradigm for the 21st century is by rebuilding our relationships. By sitting together in the liminal time and space of the restorative circle, we are weaving a technology to heal the rifts in our social fabric. Bledsoe envisages the application of the restorative way as a catalyst to heal and renew our institutions. While recognizing its roots in the Diné and other native systems of justice, Bledsoe argues that the application of his S.H.I.F.T. technique can change the culture of our corporations, schools, hospitals, and courts by resolving conflict from within.
Bledsoe points out that “one of the ways in which paradigms are established and maintained is through stories” (p.33). Far from offering an empty promise to heal our relationships, Bledsoe recounts story after story, offering the reader moving real-life accounts of how to repair broken interpersonal relationships. He identifies a three-stage ritual structure of social change: “break/breach, liminality, and reformulation/reincorporation” (p.117). When a breach occurs, the community has an opportunity to consider together the impact of the breach for each of the stakeholders (liminality), and then to create an accountable plan of “concrete action” so that the community can heal.
The Restorative Way is a delightful blend of theory and practice, based on years of research and experience helping people to resolve disputes. With this groundbreaking book, Will Bledsoe shares the stage with other esteemed change agents: Thomas Kuhn, Victor Turner, Elaine Scarry, and Bessel van der Kolk. He has given this reviewer hope that the restorative way can repair the torn fabric of our world, one conversation at a time.
