Today we’d like to introduce you to Devorah Medwin.

Hi Devorah, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.

As a playwright, cancer patient, family caregiver, and educator on life cycle issues, my perspectives vary – above all, I see how much need there is for practice, for rehearsal, for some semblance of sanity once the inevitabilities and the unexpected in life and death, hit the fan. Not just for the practical, but for the surprising “gifts of illness” which can be gleaned.

After years navigating health and wellness, my own, in my family, and with clients and colleagues, I feel I’ve returned from a very long journey, healthier than I’ve ever been, and with a bag full of cliches. It turns out, while cliches are very cliche, they are also very true – most journeys do take you right back to where you started, only with new eyes, and tools.

“Stop and smell the flowers.” “Laughter is the best medicine.” “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.”

All cliches, all true, all effective – if we use them and actually stop…take a breath, smell the rose. It’s like physical fitness – having a gym membership, or a book on exercise isn’t enough – if we want to build our biceps, our muscles, it takes consistent exercise and practice.

If we want to strengthen our authentic self, our “home frequency” as Penny Pierce brilliantly calls it, our unique to us core, it takes practice, a change to develop and rehearse. As a playwright I think of it as our character, nature, the part we play, when we play our Selves. Of all the roles available, being our Self turns out to be the one we’re best suited to play!

In the same way a gym helps us keep fit, Collaboration Play Labs, develops the places for our clients to practice, prepare, and play – with a purpose. With my colleagues, we’ve created educational content and immersive experiences with doctors, lawyers, mediators, and meditators, online and in person, to help others playfully and deeply, exercise and amplify their most authentic centered selves.

Fast forward and now we’re consciously practicing everything we teach, with each other. Like many organizations, we can often be better at sharing the work than doing it ourselves, with our colleagues…actually and intentionally exercising our vulnerability, and being real, in our work relationships. This is no easy task, but wow the return on investment is giant.

There’s the cliche of the cobbler’s daughter having no shoes…and many of us know communication organizations, or family systems, which are completely dysfunctional and never use any of the tools they teach…so we’re practicing the practice, and I invite you to join us. It’s a bold brave journey, but who better to play you, than you?

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?

In the movie Monsters Inc, the laughter turns out to have more power than the screams. In Inside Out, there is no Joy, without Sadness, and in all the Hero’s Journey movies like Star Wars and Harry Potter, rough roads are the coarse grade sandpaper polishing our hearts, the incidences which turned the soil over, and bring the oxygen and the worms to surface. I would rather not have had cancer, twice, or my sister Leukemia, father, uncle, grandparent all die of cancer. I wanted Happily Ever After, just like Disney promised – but roses have thorns, hills have valleys, and humans have grief. I cannot change that, but I can have tenderness, compassion, the soft shammy wow cloth to balance the coarse grade sandpaper of life, that I can cultivate. The trick is in the trying, endeavoring, even if we fail so many times a day, that’s the practice. That’s the purpose of meditation, of centering, to become intimately familiar with you, so in the inevitable storms of life, your force, your inner grail, your Care Bear light can always be found, and eventually seen. Your you is needed in the all of it.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?

I see us at the scene in the movie where the audience is gripping the back of the chair, because they know, the cliches are real! We are the ones we were waiting for! We each have a part to play! The Lion always had courage, and the Tin Man already had a heart. We wonder what can I do, how can I help? If you can be anything in the world, be your Self. It’s the role you were made for! Hate and greed are loud, love tends to whisper – now is the time to amplify!

As a playwright and educator, along with my brilliant colleagues at Collaboration Play Labs – Dr. Brian Rhinehart, Jacque Arend, Dr. Howie Silverman, Debra Rich Gettleman, Niki Patton, and Sharona Silverman, we’ve been writing the scripts, and having the interactive performances on stage, and now it’s time to do it in real life, with each one of us playing our part, in hUmanity. For many of us, that whole idea is so woo woo, there’s a knee jerk eye roll of cynicism – that’s good – that’s the place to work, to get gently curious – why do I scoff at care, compassion, kindness? Why do I hold love and tenderness at arms distance, or make it the butt of a Hallmark joke? Not to finger point, but to dig a little deeper – what am I protecting? What am I maybe avoiding?

It’s a Call to Arms – the arms that hold and help, and heal and away from the arms which hurt.

A Call to Action to normalize kindness, and push back against the knee jerk eyeroll diminishment of the “soft skills” of emotion, and recognize the bravery it takes to be real, vulnerable, in integrity and authenticity.

Imagine a Telethon, not to raise money, but to raise Tender, Loving, Care, a TLC-athon to amplify compassion, kindness, vulnerability, to our selves, each other, our community, corporation, and cosmos. (Use that cynicism if the eye roll came, a tiny opportunity to work with the resistance.)

Picture the firehouse fundraiser and giant thermometer gauging how much we’re raising, and donate the part you play, your character and unique fingerprint, the essence and effort of that. Even reading this far, leaning in and getting curious about what it all means, for you, already moves the needle on your personal journey and on the TLC-athon fundraiser gauge.

Here’s a thought experiment to try right now: I invite you to get gently curious, to any resistance you might feel to the idea that You, your unique You, matters, is critical in fact. Not me, not the person over there, not later… but like a gentle detective, take a look, ask your Self, What if I do matter? What if who I am, just like the Willow tree, the trout and the May Fly, what if being the fullest me, or at least leaning into that, is my job, my role my purpose? Can I imagine it, for a moment, and if I can’t, can I check into that – why can I not believe, I might matter? It’s a good question to play with, like little weights to exercise the muscle, like tiny repetitions in your work (it) out routine – recognizing, strengthening and amplifying the muscle of you!

Reach out if you want to know more. By the way, I have worked with people whose resumes and accomplishments are jaw dropping, and still, they don’t see what they, in the role of themselves, could possible have to bring to the table. We are many of us, in doubt of how valuable and critical we each are…like the drop of salt water is part of the ocean, you are a part of the human species, and you matter. For real.

Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?

I am collecting clips, live and recorded, from 4 to 14 minutes, so we can have an endless stream, an ongoing Willy Wonka Vat, of care, compassion, kindness, love, to add to the collective vat of good, of care, of kindness – to dip into and schmear all over ourselves, and by doing so, all over our very tender and infected collective wound on hUmanity.

By putting your oxygen mask on first, you really do help everyone else. If you want to participate in the TLC-athon, you can do that right now, by taking a mindful breath, another cliche, so valuable, no breath, no life. Just that moves the needle. If you want to get involved as a clinician or creative, sharing your practice, or collaborate in any way, reach out to me. This is not about me, it’s about hUman. Your U matters. So cliche, knee jerk eye roll, so true.

If you want to stay in the loop of classes, one on one or couples sessions live or on zoom, We have a range of programs and packages please email me.

Pricing:

• Individual & Couples Life Enrichment via Zoom Sessions $90/120/160
• Corporate Packages from $400 – $10,000
• Not for Profit & For Purpose Organizations custom pricing
• In person US & Netherlands custom pricing

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.devorahmedwin.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/devorahmedwin/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devorah-medwin/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n02vIAaVFZs&list=PL4Wkr2BUe6fWxI7srQzOJ71bNVzY-GX7B
• Other: [email protected]