A free exercise
When you’ve built the courage to face someone, meet the voices you’re bringing with you.
There’s something you need to say to someone — or write to them. You’ve rehearsed it more times than you can count. And still, somehow, it hasn’t been said.
Often what stops us isn’t the conversation itself. It’s the fear of the no — of how they will see us once it’s said.
If you’re frightened, you are not weak. Every difficult conversation has more people in it than you can see — including the versions of you that step in when it gets hard.
Whether it’s a friend, a family member, a manager, a professor or a lawyer, this exercise helps you find the words, and the courage, before you begin. The questions are the ones I would ask if we were sitting together.
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Thirty years of other people’s wars.
A lifetime of his own.
Marcus Anthony spent thirty years in peacebuilding in Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Colombia and Southeast Asia — talking with people who had been bereaved, and with people who had killed. He sat in kitchens with former combatants. He drove a white van across borders at 1 a.m. and learned to read a room before he opened his mouth.
Then he turned the tools inward. This exercise comes from that work.
This is not therapy. It’s education — from someone who has spent a lifetime sitting in the fire with people and places most of us cross the street to avoid.
I’m an educator, not a medical doctor, and nothing here is medical advice. If you’re ever worried about your mental health, or your safety in a conversation, please reach out to a professional or someone you trust.
Questions, or something you’d rather write than send through a form? info@drmarcusanthony.com