Reconciliation (CD)

Nancy Oelklaus
Entrepreneurial Systems (2007)
ISBN 9780979117923
Reviewed by Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson for Reader Views (4/07)

Nancy Oelklaus’ CD “Reconciliation” is one of those self-help works that will most definitely strike a chord with everybody. No matter who you are, or where you are in your life right now, I bet that there are some unresolved issues that you’ve just pushed aside at some point in time. We tend to forget, we even tend to forgive sometimes, but reconciliation seems to be a much more difficult thing to achieve. Ms. Oelklaus touches on some of the most important, and subsequently also most difficult areas of the possible reconciliation.

The titles of the individual tracks on the CD are:
Reconciliation:  The First Time
Reconciliation Through Giving Up
Reconciliation with my Daughter
Reconciliation with my Mother
Reconciliation with Family Disappointment
Three Simple Steps to Reconciliation
Reconciliation with Money

The first two tracks deal with reconciliation with colleagues and/or acquaintances and the next three with the reconciliation with family members and family issues. I am absolutely certain that everyone could – and should – get some good pointers on how to achieve similar reconciliation in their own private world.

The Three Simple Steps to Reconciliation sum up the basics of the process. As such, I felt that this track/chapter should have been the last one on the CD. I think it would carry more impact that way.

As Ms. Oelklaus stresses, those steps are simple, but not easy. They are:

Step 1: Feel all the feelings.
Step 2: Make a decision of how you want to be or how you don’t want to be in this relationship.
Step 3: Say or write – from your heart – what you truly need to say.

Try this exercise yourself – I think you will agree that those steps are simple. But they certainly won’t be easy – or at least they were not easy for me.

In the “Reconciliation with Money,” Ms. Oelklaus makes us aware that reconciliation does not necessarily have to be with a person, it could also happen with a process or an objective. Money is often a cause of significant stress and strife in a relationship. This chapter shows you an alternative way of dealing with it.

I enjoyed listening to this CD a lot and it certainly made me reflect on different facets of my life that I need to work on some more. I found the advice simple and straightforward, yet not preachy. In addition to my suggestion to reverse the order of the last two tracks, I would like to add just one more: add some background music or some suitably soothing music between the tracks. But for that, I found this to be a well designed self-help aid. I would recommend “Reconciliation” to anybody who is willing to make his or her life smoother and better.