Marlena Willis has been a practitioner of Nonviolent Communication (NVC), also known as Compassionate Communication, for over ten years. (Learn more about NVC here.) She completed BayNVC's leadership program in 2009. Marlena began teaching NVC by offering free classes in her church, starting in autumn 2009. She has also offered NVC workshops at her Buddhist meditation center periodically since then.
Marlena took the BayNVC leadership program a second time in 2010. She explains that she took the training program twice to feel confident that she would be able to teach people with disabilities and chronic illnesses even when feeling emotionally or physically unwell herself, due to her own chronic conditions.
Starting in 2010, Marlena has been teaching NVC teleclasses to people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. Each term, she offers a basics class for beginners, a deepening class for those who have taken one or more previous classes, and a weekly practice group. She also makes herself available to her students who have questions, concerns, or need support during the week. Marlena offers all classes on a sliding scale and turns no one away who cannot pay.
Marlena -- In Her Own Words
One of the NVC students who helped organize this fundraiser asked Marlena about her life with disabilities and chronic illnesses, living on the financial edge, and why she's chosen this demanding work, which she finds emotionally rewarding, despite its financial challenges.
Question: What is it like to live with your disabilities?
Answer: I struggled all my life with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), bipolar, and depression. There were times where I functioned well and times where I hardly functioned at all. Through the years, I've done a huge amount of personal and spiritual work, often just to keep my head above water, but with the hope of healing. I've finally come to a realization that I'll probably always be inconsistent and always struggle, so I have more acceptance of [my conditions]. But that doesn't mean I don't have sadness and mourning, because I want to be able to contribute in a more consistent way.
In the last ten years of physical illness -- multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) and fibromyalgia -- I think it's the repercussions of my body giving out after all the trauma. It's almost like dying without having died, in that it's like a loss of one's life or possibilities or abilities. However, teaching these classes is giving me meaning in my life. It allows me to have a sense of contribution, which is very important to me.
Q: Why did you decide to teach NVC to people with disabilities and chronic illnesses?
A: I can't imagine being chronically ill and not having these skills. It is so hard to be chronically ill. It is so hard to have to deal with people's ignorance around chemical sensitivity and to have to ask for accommodations. NVC has given me such a gift; it has not made [living with chemical sensitivity and other disabilities] easy, but it has made it doable.
I wanted these skills to be available to people with chronic illness and disability. I don't think they're readily available, and I wanted them to have these skills.
Q: What are the challenges of doing this work? What are the rewards?
A: The reward is just how much there is a sense of connection and companionship with our similar -- even though very diverse -- stories. I've really come to love everyone in the class. It's strange to love someone and not even know what they look like. [Editor's note: The love is definitely a two-way street! Read what Marlena's students have to say about her.]
The hard thing is that people have such difficult life circumstances, and the powerlessness I feel because I want to be able to help them more. They face such difficult situations, and I want them to be getting the supports they need. The classes give some support, but there's so much more that's needed. Also, there's so much to cover, and I've had to really learn to keep it simpler.
Q: Why did you decide to offer these classes with a sliding scale and the option of paying nothing if someone cannot afford it otherwise?
A: I really wanted to make it accessible to everybody. So when I do the sliding scale, I ask for what I'd like to get. In the first year-and-a-half of the classes, nobody gave more than the bottom of the scale, and most people gave nothing at all. But I'm really wanting to make it available.
BayNVC, my primary trainers, have been very generous in making classes available to me even though I have limited ability to pay. I paid no tuition for the leadership training program, which was very generous, but it was a real financial stretch to cover my own room and board. I have also donated work -- bookkeeping -- to them, when I have been able.
I come from a background where I grew up poor in a rich town, where I was surrounded by things I couldn't afford -- that I would have liked -- and then as I got involved in bodywork or meditation or personal growth, it was always a stretch to be able to do those things. There were 10 years of my life when I was able to do those things, because I worked in construction as a crane operator, so I could afford it. But that work probably contributed to my getting MCS. For a lot of my life, except when I worked construction, it was a stretch.
Even though I'm light skinned, I'm mixed Latino/white, so I'm really wanting these things to be available to working class people and people of color. In the early 1990s, I organized the first day-long Buddhist meditation that was all people of color. I've always had a passion for these things that I think can contribute to people's well-being -- to care for themselves and be empowered in the world -- to be available to them. Because often [these resources] are not available to them.
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| Marlena with her kitty, Xan. |
Q: How does living on Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) affect your life and your involvement with NVC?
A: Because I've dealt with PTSD, bipolar, and depression all my life, I alternately worked and didn't work and did healing things; so, when I was young, I didn't build a career. When I worked, I worked hard. I helped start a rape crisis line and women's clinic in the 1970s and made other choices in my life that have led to me having a relatively low SSDI amount. The spiritual practice was in some ways a choice, and in some ways I needed to do that to keep my head above water to deal with early trauma. I sometimes think I could have maybe built a career and then ended up killing myself. So, they were choices and not choices.
There's a certain tension or stress that I'm so on the [financial] edge. My glasses broke in the fall, and that's not covered by MediCal, and to get graduated lenses and all that, it cost $500. I borrowed the money so I'm in debt to a friend. Dental work is a really big issue, which is also not covered by insurance. I need a root canal and crowns that need replacing, which will cost $2,000 to $2,500, and that's at a clinic with a reduced rate!
I live very simply. I don't do first-run movies. I don't go out to eat, but I have a cell phone plan that costs a little more because I do these [NVC] telephone classes. I had car repair costs in the fall and still need to do some repairs for driving safety that I haven't been able to attend to.
And there are trainings I'd like to do that are just not a possibility for me. I've been doing a certain amount of self-retreat and meditation, but I can't afford to do retreats where I need to pay. Even though BayNVC has tried to make things available, there are a certain amount of things you have to pay for. There is a certain amount of equanimity about not being able to do things because of money, and other times I feel sad and grieve because I can't do things.
A major expense is dog food and cat food. After my old dog Mickey died, I was thinking that with young animals I could afford to have both a dog and a cat because I wouldn't have vet bills, so I adopted my dog, Quelyn, and my cat, Xan. But it turns out that most of the expense is food, and my young, energetic dog eats twice as much as my old dog did. They were both rescues. Quelyn was part of a litter that had been abused and abandoned at five weeks old and had to be nursed back to health. And Xan was scheduled to be put down because the shelter had a case of ringworm and they were going to put down all the cats. I think they both contribute to my mental well-being more than any of my antidepressants do. However, because of the cost of food, having a cat and dog has put me in financial crisis.
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| Quelyn, the big eater, lays some love on Marlena. |
I sometimes think the greatest sadness of being disabled is the loss of being able to contribute to others, whether through money or time. And at least one of these things that these classes do is to give me a sense that I'm contributing to others.
