Darlene Goetzman is a working writer and peace activist in Western New York. She has been leading a writing group, Micro-Memoir Mondays, since 2019. Her focus is creative nonfiction, often flash, and includes working on the memoir, Groomed for Violence, Made for Love. The latter is one woman’s journey of shedding the social, religious, and familial conditioning that sanctioned(s) subtle and overt violence and the movement towards unconditional love and freedom.
Darlene is a certified journal writing facilitator through the Center for Journal Therapy and was an active master teacher for Global Learning Partners, among other professional affiliations. Darlene has a Master of Arts in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation with a concentration in Human and Organizational Transformation from the California Institute for Integral Studies.
Her first formal Dialogue Education workshop was in Dr. Jane Vella’s living room in 1994; but it was a couple years earlier watching Jane create the conditions for a large group of people to meaningfully and excitedly participate in a strategic plan that hooked Darlene. She has never been the same. These days, she studies and practices Organic Intelligence, mindfulness meditation, principled nonviolence and knows humans have the innate capacity to evolve into a more loving version of themselves. She continues to ask: under what conditions do humans choose change?
Darlene Goetzman is the author of Dialogue Education Step by Step: A Guide for Designing Exceptional Learning Events, 2012 as well as “Where Appreciative Inquiry and Dialogue Education Meet” in Dialogue Education at Work edited by Dr. Jane Vella, Jossey-Bass, Spring 2003, and was an active contributor to GLP’s blog. Darlene has more than thirty years of experience designing and leading successful learning events within the fields of adult literacy, dialogue education and organizational development.
Currently, Darlene is a founding member of Love in Action Cattaraugus County, and a volunteer with: Operation Warm Hearts’ Steps of Hope program and the Trauma Informed Coalition of Cattaraugus County. She is also a member of the Enchanted Mountain Village, Inc. She actively supports The Metta Center, Pace e Bene, Choosing Earth, The Nonviolent Global Liberation Movement, and Rivera Sun’s work including her weekly publication Nonviolent News.
A mother of three, she enjoys sewing, applique, reading, biking and gardening. She lives with her husband of thirty-six years and a talkative cat named Gracie in Western New York State.