08/08/2026
Yesterday I received a beautiful bouquet of sunflowers. It was the last session of a mediation process that had lasted a year and a half. Two young parents with a young child. Their little note said that my smile was like the sunflowers: a source of light and hope.
As mediators we don’t need compliments. I don’t want to prove that I’m good at what I do. We look for transformation. We look for openings in places where suffering has closed doors. And so we try… we try to connect to the obstacles that our clients face. We try to find the pain, name it and offer another perspective of what seems impossible to discuss, to solve. That chemistry is the magic. It’s not rational. My attitude, my words, my way of asking questions, my non-judgment, my decisions about the structure of the process suggesting individual meetings when communication is just too negative for too long… That’s not me, that’s them: it’s me filling the space they give me, the trust they grant me, the courage, patience and emotional generosity they can muster, their capacity to believe that things between them can improve and must improve for the sake of parenthood.
So yesterday we parted. And it wasn’t just me offering an encouraging smile when we said goodbye. Three human beings were smiling, feeling grateful and hopeful. And I was the lucky one returning home with the sunflowers and a cute drawing on the whiteboard in my office.
