(Victoria Pynchon- Forbes.com)

It’s been a long time since people confused mediation with meditation, but I’m still frequently asked “what’s a mediator?”

The answer is as simpleas the process is deep.

A mediator is someone who understands how conflicts erupt into disputes, why people have so much trouble addressing them, and how to negotiate a resolution that serves both parties’ interests well enough to solve the problem or close the deal.

This process should sound familiar to every mother in the land. Mothers may, in fact, be the original mediators, the Old Gangsters of dispute resolution.

When I was teaching dispute resolution to high school students last week in connection with the launch of my book Success as a Mediator for Dummies, it occurred to me for the first time that every mother is a mediator.

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