Welcome to Bloomwork!
AN END TO ARGUING: 101 Valuable Lessons for All Relationships
Navigating conflict is one of the biggest challenges for any relationship. It’s often one of the biggest reasons couples seek couples therapy, and one of the biggest reasons couples result in divorce.In An End to Arguing, Linda and Charlie Bloom draw from their work with thousands of couples and their own 50-year marriage to show how destructive conflicts can be prevented. The experts also provide helpful tips for effective communication, advice to repair existing damage in a relationship, and lessons for individual and interpersonal growth.
Praise for End to Arguing…
“Powerful medicine is offered here: a book that expands your understanding, supports, kindly instructs, and skillfully challenges you to grow in love, and shows you 101 wise and helpful ways to do it!” -Jack Kornfield, PhD, author of A Path with Heart
“. . . an amazingly comprehensive presentation of relational challenges in which the commitment to non-hostility is the prelude to fruitful negotiations. Perhaps the universal first instruction to couples in distress could be: ‘Stop! Calm down! Get a grip! Now talk.'” -Sylvia Boorstein, PhD, co-founder of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center, author of Happiness is an Inside Job: Practicing for a Joyful Life
Successful relationships are the cornerstone of a thriving life. While most of us understand this, embodying the qualities and engaging in the practices that promote strong and respectful connections with life partners, co-workers, friends, and others is a formidable challenge for most of us. Yet the ability to create fulfilling relationships is a skill that can, given adequate knowledge, support, and practice, be developed and fully integrated into our lives. Even those of us who have had painful or difficult experiences in past family or romantic relationships, can, under the right conditions learn to master the art of relationship. At Bloomwork, we are dedicated to assisting individuals, couples and organizations to enhance their relationship-building skills by offering practices and tools that facilitate this process. We customize our offerings to the specific needs of our clients. The skills that we offer support in developing include:
- The art of “conscious combat” -managing relationship differences effectively.
- Getting “unstuck” from entrenched interactional patterns.
- Creating networks of ongoing support.
- Developing “enlightened self-interest”.
- Fulfilling the need to simultaneously provide care and support to my partner and myself as well.
- Becoming a life-long learner.
- Managing moods effectively.
- Living in gratitude.
- Moving from breakdowns to breakthroughs.
- Transforming a good relationship to a great one.
Married since 1972, Linda and Charlie Bloom have been working with groups, individuals, couples and organizations to enhance the quality of their relationships and communication skills since 1975. They both have Master’s degrees in Clinical Social Work and have lectured, led seminars and provided consultation at universities and learning institutes throughout the United States as well as internationally. They have written and published four books, Happily Ever After…and 39 Other Myths about Love: Breaking Through to the Relationship of Your Dreams, 101 Things I Wish I Knew When I Got Married: Simple Lessons to Make Love Last, Secrets of Great Marriages: Real Stories from Real Couples about Lasting Love, and That Which Doesn’t Kill Us: How One Couple Became Stronger in the Broken Places. Their organization, Bloomwork is dedicated to promoting healthy, fulfilling, and successful relationships for individuals, couples and organizations. They have served as psychotherapists, marriage counselors, consultants and seminar leaders since 1975. In addition to their academic and professional training, the Blooms’ expertise in the field of relationships stems from experience in the crucible of their own committed partnership of over 52 years. Their best-selling book, 101 Things I Wish I Knew When I Got Married: Simple Lessons to Make Love Last has been translated into several languages and distributed world-wide. Since its publication in 2004 it has sold over 100,000 copies.
Up Coming Events
The Secrets of Great Relationships
The Well Being Retreat Center
June 9 – 11, 2023
Tazwell, Tennessee
Having a great relationship means more than just staying together. Unless we enjoy trust, intimacy, caring, and love with our partner, we are sharing an arrangement and not a true partnership. We seek relationships hoping to bring greater fulfillment and meaning into our lives yet for many couples the dreams of infatuation soon dissolve into the disappointment of a cold and joyless relationship or end in divorce.
In this workshop, we will examine the unique qualities that exceptional relationships embody and identify various means through which it is possible to develop and integrate those qualities and experiences into our relationship. In addition, we will identify and engage in practices that can transform the quality of connection in ways that promote co-creativity, unconditional acceptance, and spiritual awakening.
African adventure in Kenya & Tanzania!
September 29 to October 18, 2023
We are once again partnering with OAT (Overseas Adventure Travel) in scheduling a private trip
to Kenya & Tanzania.
Our itinerary will include:
Game-viewing drives through the Masai Mara National Reserve, The Serengeti National Park, the Tarangire National Park,
• A home visit and meal sharing with a family in the Mto Wa Mbu Village,
• A visit to the Masai Mara Reserve, the Serengeti National Park, meetings with the Hadzabe and Datoga peoples,
• A visit to the Ngorongoro Crater, and much more!
Our adventure will not only allow us to view and be in close (but safe) proximity to wild, exotic, creatures in their natural habitat, but will take us into the homes and families and general culture of the areas we’ll be visiting. There will also be opportunities for pre-and post-trip adventures to Gorilla Trekking in Rwanda, to the Murchison Falls in Uganda, and to other locations.