Reality NVC – The Unbearable Lightness of Being: NEXT Breakups, Endings and Loss: Befriending Grief
30th Apr 2026 - 18th Jun 2026
12.15pm- 1.15pm
£6 - £15
Led by: Simon 'K2' McKIbbin | Contact Simon 'K2'
Nine Thursday Lunchtimes · April – June 2026
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
A Reality NVC Series
Some territories ask us to look away.
This series asks us to look in.
“If life happens only once, nothing leaves a permanent mark — and yet this lightness is unbearable. We long for weight: rootedness, a love that binds, a place to rest our heads.”
— after Milan Kundera
Introduction
Across nine lunchtime sessions, we explore the parts of life many of us are taught to avoid: death, grief, aging, suffering, loneliness, love, and the wounds that linger.
Using Nonviolent Communication (NVC), Focusing, and embodied presence, these sessions offer a space to meet reality more honestly — not by escaping pain, but by turning toward it with courage and care.
Reality NVC is not about comfort that bypasses difficulty.
It is about the kind of presence that helps us stay with what is real — and discover, beneath it, a deeper aliveness.
Series Format
Format Drop-in lunchtime sessions
Time Thursdays, 12.15 – 1.15pm
Dates
9 April – 18 June 2026
Each session stands alone. Come to one, or follow the whole arc.
The Arc of Nine
Session 1 · Thursday 9 April 2026
Opening: Death Café — Living in the Spectre of Death
When we stop looking away from mortality, something opens.
With Rilke, Heidegger, Mary Oliver, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Session 2 · Thursday 30 April 2026
Breakups, Endings and Loss: Befriending Grief
Grief is love with nowhere to go.
A space to honour rather than manage what has been lost.
With David Whyte, Francis Weller, and Rumi.
Session 3 · Thursday 7 May 2026
Eternal Youth? Facing Aging and Decline
The body’s unravelling met with presence rather than denial.
With Thich Nhat Hanh, Ram Dass, and Simone de Beauvoir.
Session 4 · Thursday 14 May 2026
The Crack Where Light Gets In: Suffering as Doorway
The full, undefended experience of pain may carry seeds of transformation.
With Rumi, Leonard Cohen, and Pema Chödrön.
Session 5 · Thursday 21 May 2026
I-Am to I-Phone: When Your Device Becomes Your Identity
Who are you when the screen goes dark?
Recovering the embodied, unmediated self.
With Sherry Turkle, Eugene Gendlin, and Thomas Merton.
Session 6 · Thursday 28 May 2026
Alone in a Crowded World: The Longing to Belong
Exploring the quality of presence that makes true meeting possible.
With John O’Donohue, Tara Brach, Rilke, and bell hooks.
Session 7 · Thursday 4 June 2026
The Sound Beneath Silence: Finding Yourself in Solitude
Aloneness as the ground from which authentic relationship becomes possible.
With Thomas Merton, Rilke, Wendell Berry, and the Desert Fathers.
Session 8 · Thursday 11 June 2026
The Heart’s Wilderness: Love and Longing
Love and longing as companions on the way toward union.
With Rumi, Hafiz, David Whyte, Pablo Neruda, and Rabi’a al-’Adawiyya.
Session 9 · Thursday 18 June 2026
Closing: The Wound That Won’t Close — Chronic Hurt and Healing
Exploring a changed relationship to wounds — where they no longer define us, but may yet deepen us.
With Bessel van der Kolk, Francis Weller, and Clarissa Pinkola Estés.
Registration
Register Your Place
If you are an NVCer, you will fit in here too: