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Say It Skillfully® OUR VOICES – Peter Tavernise, May I Be Healthy
Say It Skillfully® is a show that helps you to benefit from Molly Tschang’s expert guidance on the best possible ways to speak your mind at work in a positive and productive manner. Episode 117 is the 21st monthly feature of “Our Voices,” intended to accelerate social change that levels the playing field—helping everyone live to their full potential. In hearing the life journeys of people you might not otherwise encounter, listeners gain empathetic understanding for what may be a very different experience of what it means to grow up, go to school, struggle, work and live in our world. The aim is for you to see a bit of yourself in these journeys, and embrace—we’re more similar than not. In this episode, we are given a front row seat to the journey of Molly’s friend Peter Tavernise, whose tiger-like courage and self-assuredness inspires. Peter grew up a “military brat”, learning early the importance of serving others from his Air Force father and mother, who taught underprivileged students, some in extreme poverty. After college, Peter saw the possibilities of the Internet for nonprofits. Joining the “Circuit Riders” volunteer brigade, he introduced the Internet to many nonprofit executive directors from Florida to Chicago. He found his dream job at Cisco to literally “transform the nonprofit sector through the use of the internet.” He shares the best and worst as Executive Director of the Cisco Foundation from creating engaging math games for kids and creating Covid internet solutions to reconnecting regions after natural disasters. Peter opens up about the decline of his health—years of symptom after symptom cascading in—all the while test results not showing what exactly was wrong. After a former marine said, “You look like a prisoner of war,” he began to work from home. Peter was suffering and “begging the universe for just 5 minutes a week where I didn’t feel like I was going to die.” After 7 years and 32 different health professionals, one doctor finally cracked the code, and so began his road to recovery. Hear how he went from catastrophizing everything—fixated on relentless pain—to resilience, the power of somatics and invaluable life lessons. A few gems: If you can’t change your circumstances, you must change who and how you are within them When discouraged, encourage others It’s important to have an answer to “what’s next?” Like a plant needs water, sunlight and soil; people need safety, belonging and dignity Treat yourself as you would anyone else you care deeply about Peter’s past has indeed served its purpose; he inspires us all to know no boundaries and to commit to safety, belonging and dignity, so that all can be safe, seen and heard, and our true and best selves. Molly’s thought for the week— Peter: May I be well, may I be healthy, may all beings be well, may all beings be healthy.