BURP.
Clear the air. Know together. Do better.
WHILE I FINISH THE BOOK, HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW.
When a baby gets air trapped inside, pressure builds. They squirm, fuss, cry, and make everyone around them miserable until somebody helps release what they cannot release themselves.
Adults do something remarkably similar when somebody should have known better. And don't.
We swallow disappointment. We replay what happened. We rehearse imaginary conversations. We vent to everyone except the person involved. We tell ourselves we don’t care.
But we do.
I call that Should-Know-Better Misery.
BURP is the conversation I have been studying, writing about, and practicing since 2008—the one that begins with knowing what is trapped inside yourself before asking someone else to know it with you.
Clear the air. Know together. Do better.
NOW ACCEPTING GROWN BABIES
Have a Should-Know-Better Conflict you’d like to BURP?
The kind of misery that has been sitting inside you because somebody should have known better.
Maybe you keep rehashing it.
Maybe you keep venting about it.
Maybe you’ve already had the conversation a hundred times in your head—but never with the person involved.
Maybe you’ve carried it for months, years, or a lifetime.
While I finish the book, I’m inviting a small group of people to try the conversation.
TAKE THE BURP CHALLENGE
BURP uses words like pats on the back to clear the air, release the misery, and communicate from a need to know rather than a need to blame or shame.
1. BURP yourself.
Start with what you know, don’t know, and need to know.
2. BURP with someone else.
Have the conversation with the person you believe should have known better.
3. Tell me what happened.
Share the outcome of the conversation with me—and, if you choose, with others.
You don’t have to tell me the private details.
I want to know:
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Did you clear the air?
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Did you know something together you didn’t know before?
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What did doing better look like?
I recently had my own Should-Know-Better moment over a couple of hydrangeas.
I could have spent years telling my version of the story.
Instead, I went back and had the conversation.
I began with guilt, a little bag, a pair of scissors, and the belief that a woman thought I was a flower thief.
I ended with accountability, new friends, reciprocity, care—and more hydrangeas than I knew what to do with.
WANT TO HEAR A BURP TALK?
I’m turning eighteen years of writing, research, conversations, color, misery, and knowing together into a book—and a talk.
If you’d like to know when the first BURP Talk is announced, come along.
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