The 10 Roles Applied

Stories are powerful tools to bring to life the experience of the Third Side. Stories can transform one’s understanding and even at times provide guidance and inspiration to those in conflict. These stories are a few of the many 3S stories that are being shared around the world. The stories here are grouped into general stories, and stories emphasizing each of the nine thirdside roles.


The Healer: No Sting of Bitterness

By Ron Borges Boston Globe 8/12/2003 Darryl Stingley didn't say the human thing when he heard the news about Jack Tatum. Instead, he said the right thing, which is what has separated him from a lot of people for a long, long time. Not as long as he's sat in the wheelchair that has been so much a part of his life all these years. Not for 25 years this very day. But for a long time the paralyzed former New England Patriot wide receiver has said the right thing but not for the reasons so many athletes say it today. Not for the wrong reasons. Not just to mouth words ...

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The Healer: Moving an Entire Nation

One person's act of forgiveness can sometimes move an entire nation. On Sunday, November 8, 1987, Gordon Wilson and his twenty-year-old daughter Marie were laying a wreath for the war dead at Enniskillen in Northern Ireland when a bomb exploded. Wilson lay buried under several feet of rubble, fumbling for his glasses, his shoulder dislocated. His daughter lay beside him dying. Later that evening, in an interview with the BBC, Wilson described with anguish his last conversation with his daughter and his feelings toward her killers: "She held my hand tightly, and ...

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The Healer: The Power of an Apology

"I was part of a surgical team which made a mistake," the physican recounted, "and we lost a child. Everyone froze and said nothing, fearful of the legal liability. I was in shock and didn't know what to say. I just went up to the child's mother and told her how very sorry I was." Three years later, the malpractice lawsuit finally came to court. Our lawyer just couldn't understand why I wasn't named when everyone else on the surgical team was. He asked me and I didn't know. Finally he couldn't contain his curiosity anymore so, during a deposition, he asked the child's ...

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The Healer: Replacing Road Rage

One day on a four-lane highway a senior executive failed to notice a driver behind him trying to pass. The frustrated driver finally passed on the right, blared his horn, and made an insulting gesture. The executive became enraged, sped up, and began to overtake the other car on the right. As he was passing it, he rolled open his window to shout a response; the other driver did the same. As the executive looked at the other driver, suddenly the words popped out, "I'm sorry!" The other driver was speechless, then he too replied, "I'm sorry!" Each ended up motioning the ...

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The Healer: Forgiving a Torturer

By Susan Collin Marks One Thursday afternoon in October 1992, I witnessed forgiveness in action. I was working on the South African National Peace Accord, and I had organized a workshop in Cape Town for the police and a number of civil and human rights NGOs to clear lines of communication between the two groups. It was two-and-a-half years since the historic release of Nelson Mandela after 27 years in prison. South Africa was groping its way towards a new order, trying to weave together a highly diverse society that had been methodically torn asunder by centuries of ...

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The Healer: Holding People Accountable in Order to Move Forward

The "Movement of Mothers from the Enclaves of Srebrenica and Zepa" was established in 1998. In this government-independent Bosnian organization, headquartered in Sarajevo, more than 10,000 women are united together. They survived, severely traumatized, the collapse of the former UN Protection Zone in Srebrenica in Eastern Bosnia on July 11, 1995. Most of the mothers lost their male relatives: 10,701 Bosnians disappeared according to the movement since the entry of Serbian troops. Among those missing were 570 women and more than 1,000 infants and children. The majority of ...

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The Equalizer: Stopping Domestic Abuse

Sally was faced with an alcoholic husband, John, who turned violent when drunk. John had repeatedly broken his promises to stop drinking and he absolutely refused to undergo treatment. In desperation, Sally resorted to an approach sometimes called an "intervention." She turned to others for help: his children, siblings, closest friends, and work colleagues. They called a meeting with John. One by one they told him how much he meant to them and recounted specific incidents of violent behavior, dangerous driving, and personal embarrassment. Collectively they insisted ...

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The Mediator: A Family Feud Settled

By William Ury It was a family feud. Dan and Sally were in the middle of an acrimonious divorce. Sally's father Jim, who had employed Dan in his business, refused to pay him for work he had done. Furious, Dan sued his father-in-law to recover his lost wages. The judge, however, suggested that they try talking with a volunteer mediator first. I was the volunteer; it was one of my first mediation cases twenty years ago. Dan, Jim, and I sat in a little room in the courthouse. Clearly a little uncomfortable, they would not at first even look one another in the eye. I ...

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The Mediator: Crushing Grapes and Narrowing Rifts

Simona watched as a dark shadow crossed her grandpa's face. The conversation had briefly touched on Daniel, and the whole table grew silent. Then conversation picked up again with the nervous focus of people trying to change the subject. "Isn't this lamb wonderful?" and the conversation continued. Grandpa just glanced at the door. He was not one for many words so Simona and the others might never know what he was thinking. Daniel, her father Augustin's brother and Grandpa's first son, had not been at the family table in 15 years. When communism was a reality in Romania, ...

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The Bridge Builder: Seeing Things Differently

By William Ury In the spring of 1996, I facilitated a private dialogue at a chateau outside of Paris between five Turkish and five Kurdish civic leaders whose peoples were trapped in a civil war that had taken twenty-five thousand lives and destroyed three thousand villages. The dialogue was confidential; people had been killed by their own side for talking to the other. Many of the participants had spent time in jail. One Turkish nationalist, Tarik, had been described to me by his friends as someone who would "just as soon shoot a Kurd as talk to one." The tensions ...

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