The ABC of Compassionate Communication: 26 Steps to Improve your Compassion and Communication

We communicate every day. Sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes in frighteningly revealing ways, mostly in different ways between. Often, we are misunderstood, or we interpret the messages incorrectly. Becoming aware of how, through understanding, we can send and receive those messages with compassion will make not only the lives of those we love and care for better but our own too.

Through this easy-to-read book, which uses the letters of the alphabet to describe steps to compassionate communication, you will receive twenty-six facets of compassion and their relationship to improved communication compiled in a way that you will have not seen before. Each facet gives you the chance to delve deeper with tips and ideas that you can try for yourself.

When you are born in Wales, the poem tells us, you are born privileged. Not with a silver spoon in your mouth, but with music in your blood, and with poetry in your soul. In Sue's case, a sense of fun also shines through the serious side of life. Sue's maternal grandmother had epilepsy and would be institutionalised for long periods at a time, frustrated that people would not listen to what she wanted to say. This is probably the origin of Sue's compassion and support. After discovering movement and dance in her senior years, Sue became an educator and trainer for the cutting-edge seated movement program, Ageless Grace(R), bringing it to Australia in 2012 and New Zealand in 2015. Her energy, spontaneity and sense of fun are enjoyed not just by her grandchildren but the older population she engages with, many of them with cognitive challenges. Later, Sue brought the AGE-u-cate Training Institute programs to Australia, including the research-based Dementia Live(R) and Compassionate Touch(R) programs. These days, Sue revels in finding ways to empower those caring for our ageing population, including the challenges that dementia brings, through the aged care system, caregivers, and communities. Empty nesters, Sue and her husband are slaves to two ginger cats in Brisbane.