by Lorraine Segal | Feb 17, 2026
Jane Austen and the Power of a Different Story Stories have power. Whether it is a story we are telling ourselves, or the story of Pride and Prejudice, stories can educate, entertain, or transform. Story is a key concept in the conflict transformation work I do with...
by Lorraine Segal | Jun 17, 2024
Us versus Them “We have met the enemy and they are us.”—paraphrased from Walt Kelly in the Pogo comic strip. How inclusive is your “us”? And how can you expand it? I write a lot about the power of the stories we tell about ourselves and others to exacerbate or heal...
by Lorraine Segal | May 16, 2020
Amidst all the pandemic grief and fear, people step up in big ways to help each other Three years ago, I wrote a blog post called The Kindness of Strangers: Wildfires, Empathy and Conflict, about the many ways people helped each other during the devastating 2017...
by Lorraine Segal | Oct 16, 2017
The kindness of Strangers: Kindness and empathy can defuse conflict at work, or disagreements even in the midst of disasters. My beloved Sonoma County and Santa Rosa (California) have been engulfed in flames. As I write this, the worst of the fire danger seems to have...
by LorraineSegal | Aug 6, 2012
A novel approach to building empathy. I’ll start with a confession. I am utterly addicted to reading novels and have been since I was 9 years old. I am almost never without a novel to read, and when I have free time, I greedily devour more. My favorites include...
by LorraineSegal | May 8, 2012
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”—Winston Churchill What does it take to sit down and listen to someone we disagree with, instead of dismissing them as the enemy or turning to violence? First we...
