Gross. Domestic. Love.
After my talk at the conference, a fellow speaker named Steve and I were chatting. I had quoted Marshall Rosenberg on my slides, with the quote: “Any anger is a tragic expression of an unmet need.”
He had snapped a picture of the slide and texted it to his wife. “This is our kids,” he texted. He was saying: “It’s crazy; our kids can go from zero to freak-out in two seconds, and it’s exactly that: a need that wasn’t met.
“Right?” I said. “And we’re learning it all alongside our kids. Is it any easier for us, even as adults?” I asked. “I mean, were you taught how to be aware of your needs and express them, in your upbringing?”
Steve shook his head emphatically no. “That was not us, not in our house,” he said. The sense of emotional literacy, a fluency in naming our own emotions, didn’t come from our families of origin in this generation, or the generation before.
I gestured at the towers of Atlanta’s skyline visible through the windows behind Steve. “None of these founders of any of these…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Kevan Gilbert Notes🎶📝 to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.