Love & Facilitation
One of the drawbacks of my work is that my mom doesn’t know how to talk about it. She doesn’t get to brag about what her kid does. And she wants to!
That’s because it’s not easy to talk about facilitation. How do you explain what facilitators do? Different facilitators do different things. You have to experience it. And when the stakes are high, you really have to trust someone’s reputation.
This is why I’m so excited to share this beautiful conversation with my friend Alia Lahlou, who is a magnificent, well-respected facilitator. She is also a mediator, and does excellent work with organizations. She definitely has the gift for what we do. And she knows what it takes to do it. To do this work and do it well you must commit to working deeply on yourself. This will become evident as you listen to the conversation.
I’m inviting you to listen to two facilitators talk shop. I’m calling this episode Love & Facilitation because facilitation is an act of love. But also because we spend the first part of the podcast talking about love. The love of partnership and relationship.
Alia is an immigrant from Morocco. She’s also queer. Queerness is not an easy thing to negotiate in many traditional cultures. We talk about how she found her way to live in truth and stay a part of her family. And we talk about the beautiful love between her and Alixa. Something that I can relate to, having found Tuesday (yes, that's her name), true love in this lifetime, myself.
You will feel how it all weaves through, how these things are not separate from each other. And hopefully you’ll end the episode inspired to live even more deeply into your own truth.
links
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alialahlou/
BIO
Alia Lahlou supports people working for social change and liberation around the world through facilitation, coaching, and training.
She grew up in Morocco and has degrees in international relations from Brown University and Al Akhawayn University; most meaningful things, however, she’s learned outside the classroom.
Her facilitation experience over the last 20 years as both student and guide includes conflict transformation and community building, traditional and social justice mediation, leadership development, Non Violent Communication, collaborative skill-building, anti-oppression and justice facilitation, circle work, somatics, and various healing modalities.
She loves, in no particular order: James Baldwin, babies, dancing, Women Who Run With the Wolves, salty chips, nerdy games, and imagining herself in the NBA or in outer space.