Mediator L Randy Drew - DRAFT
Conflict Shaped My Life
The only thing remarkable about me is how remarkably average I am... and my ability to help people engage with their conflicts more successfully and less harmfully. I mediate as if my life depends on it because often, lives do.
From a young age, seeing the world through the eyes of both the bully and the bullied shaped my life into a lens of contradictory compassions, which in turn prepared me to extricate tangible solutions from cauldrons of conflict.
I'm no mental health professional, but in my story collection, "When Bullies Cry", I describe times when I've broken down people with (apparent) cluster B (Antisocial, Borderline, Histrionic, and Narcissistic) personalities only to be consistently saddened by the result. Despite what you might think, it turns out, there's no joy or satisfaction when you finally achieve that breakthrough and bring a bully to tears.
Southern California Family Mediation
SCFM Mediation Center, Children's Courthouse
It took me 43 years to discover my purpose in life - and I'm eternally grateful because I remember that feeling of having something important to do but not knowing what. There's nothing else like Mediation, the only form of Assisted Dispute Resolution (ADR) , (Mediation, Arbitration, Litigation) for which volition is a defining quality. After graduating from Pepperdine, MBA-ADR, 2009, I knew mediation could be so much more if it was better understood and employed to its greater capacity.
It took finding an article by Kenneth Cloke, The Vibrations of Conflict, to confirm my suspicions and open my eyes to the possibilities, the true magic of Mediation.
Family of Volunteers
The SCFM team of volunteer Mediators and Leadership Tiger Teams are not here for me; they show up & deliver solutions, succeeding when everyone else has tried, for young co-parenting families and their children. Nonetheless, as my role has evolved from Mediator to leadership, I'm most proud of having held together a remarkable team of 40 volunteers, with very little funding, for 11 years.