Reflection: Dialogue Training with Anna Yeakley and Marjorie Trueblood
On Tuesday I wrapped a five-week intergroup dialogue course with Anna Yeakley and Marjorie Trueblood, and am still sitting with everything it surfaced.
We worked with the CARES model, which is a framework for listening that goes well beyond "wait for your turn to talk." It pushed me to notice the difference between hearing someone and attending to them: their words, their affect, and what's underneath what they're saying. It's simple in theory and hard in practice.
We also compared sympathetic versus empathetic listening. While sympathy says I feel for you, it holds the other person's experience at a bit of a distance, filtered through our own reactions and experiences to it. Empathy asks something harder: can we actually sit with another's experience without immediately translating it into our own frame of reference? This shift changes what's possible in conversation.
Next, we spent real time examining and sharing how our social identities shape what we notice, what we assume, and what we bring into the conversations that we have: dialogue isn't neutral. We each walk into a room shaped by history, positionality, and lived experience, and pretending otherwise hides where work still needs to happen.
From there, we engaged in a “hot topic dialogue” around bodily autonomy, exploring diverse viewpoints to broaden our perspectives.
We closed by exploring the Cycle of Liberation and the different ways people can move from awareness into action, depending on our own experiences and positions in the cycle. Taking action doesn't have to include organizing, lobbying, and protesting. It can also look like exploring and educating ourselves, speaking out, caring for ourselves and others, and spreading messages of hope.
In closing, participants practiced dialogue skills on our own before reflecting on our five weeks together and sharing group appreciations. One reflection about our dialogue sessions that resonated with me was a classmate’s statement, “I appreciate the space to be human, and not my title…Dialogue allows you to show up as you are, as a human.”
One of the most important messages for me from this course is that dialogue isn't just a tool for de-escalating conflict or improving communication. It can also be a lever for social justice. When done well, it creates the conditions for people to better understand each other's realities. Consequently, dialogue serves as a starting point for change.
I'm grateful to Anna and Marjorie for holding this space with such care, and to my fellow participants for their authenticity. Building trust and shared understanding makes meaningful action possible.
