From me to you – Page 6

28 Days of Gratitude

Have you ever had one of those months, seasons, or years where you’ve felt like you just couldn’t catch a break? Every time you dig out from the latest challenge a new one comes up? It doesn’t have to be traumatic – new opportunities coming up when you’re already feeling spread thin, a big project around the house, an event at your child’s school, etc. Just the relentless passing of time where you’re so busy you have trouble catching your breath.

This is the state I’ve been in for about 9 months (and if I’m honest, I can see a similar pattern going back 2.5 years, and a less obvious but still prevalent pattern going on for my whole adult life). Each new thing that comes up I think, man, if I can just get through this I can regroup and find some level of balance again. But the regrouping from one thing just leads to the need to regroup from another thing, every accomplishment being balanced out by another project or problem taking up the time just saved.

I’ve had so many things take my breath away over the past couple of years that I’m beginning to recognize that it is my perspective on life that is the challenge, not what life is doling out. Now to be fair, there are some genuine challenges that come from sleep deprivation that will get better over time, and when they do I will have a whole new set of resources to rely on to help me take things in stride and not view them as challenges as they come up. This is a huge deal and I do not mean to minimize that in the least. However, there’s also a way of thinking about things that has been keeping me down.

Because here’s the thing — I’ve never been happier. I have so much good in my life, so much love and so many aspects of my larger vision for my life manifesting all over the place. But I’m so depleted that I don’t have much energy left to actually appreciate any of it. There’s a show my boys like to watch called Peg + Cat — each story they uncover a “big problem” and Peg is “totally freaking out!” But then she takes a breath and counts backwards from five and starts to problem-solve. That’s where I was at the start of February when inspiration struck — I would make February my “28 Days of Gratitude” and post daily to Facebook about what I was grateful for each day.

And, of course, I am so grateful that I gave myself this gift! Some days it was easy to come up with many things that I was grateful for, and I could have gone on and on and on if I’d let myself. On my hardest day, my gratitude was about tomorrow being another day. But the overall thing I noticed was that each time I found my thoughts slipping into downward spiral thoughts like “will this ever end?” or “not another thing!” or the like, this practice encouraged me to reframe what was happening, to see the good in it, and if I couldn’t find anything truly good to at least shift gears enough to stop the downward slide. It was still an intense month, but I had a much better attitude to handle what was coming up as it was happening, as well as to reframe it in my mind when I thought about things later.

What a shift. What a relief! Gratitude is one of the simplest tools in our toolbox, and yet it is one of the most powerful ones we have. Nothing will shift your energy faster than finding even the smallest bit of gratitude inside of you. So now the trick is to keep the gratitude flowing. I’ve started making notes about what I appreciate about my husband, and I think I’ll take the time to appreciate myself next. What a gift that will be!

So what’s really bugging you these days? Is there an area of life that feels like it is really pulling you down? Or perhaps you feel like you just can’t get ahead? Whether it’s a small itch that just needs to be scratched or a larger problem that needs solving, try taking a few days, weeks, or even a month to spend some time focusing on what you’re grateful for around it. Even if the only thing that shifts is your energy, you will find that you now have the ability to problem-solve (or even to stop seeing the situation as a problem!) So simple, so powerful, so worth trying! Namaste.

Photo: Eu Sou by jeronimo sanz

Visioning

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. ~ Carl Jung

I am getting excited as I prepare to help facilitate a visioning workshop next weekend. I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions — they are far too easily discarded as life throws its incessant curve balls at you. Instead, I am a big believer in creating a vision for where you want to go in life, revisiting it from time to time to make sure it still resonates, but mostly just living life with that vision in mind.

In order to create a vision, you need to listen to your own inner wisdom. The first time I was introduced to the concept of visioning, I was led through a guided meditation that started by stilling the chatter of my mind so I could really connect with my divine wisdom, and then that wisdom showed me images of what me living my life fully really looked like. I have since gone through a variety of visioning exercises, but I think those two core components are always present — getting still enough to listen, and then allowing the vision to unfold, almost like it is being unveiled to you. As a result of this kind of process, you may see yourself living a life you haven’t even thought to dream of, and yet somehow it just feels right, it feels like it matches who you are and what you want in life.

So how does visioning differ from dreaming about where you want to be? The major key here that I see is that when you dream, there is a wistful feeling about it. As Carl Jung says, that dream lies outside of you, which I think makes it feel unattainable because you don’t wholly own it. When you create a vision, it resonates with you because it comes from within. It may feel like a huge stretch from where you find yourself in this moment, but you can visualize yourself living that life, perhaps because on some level you already have it.

Visioning can provide you a big picture vision for your life, but it can also be a powerful tool for the short-term. I like to do at least one visioning exercise each year — it helps me to see if my big-picture vision still resonates and helps me to visualize what steps I can take in the near future to move in the direction of my vision. One of my favorite tools in this process is the Vision Board, which is a large part of our upcoming workshop. I display my annual Vision Board prominently so that I can always look at it — sometimes it’s for inspiration, sometimes it’s a reminder, and sometimes it just feels good, like a warm and fuzzy hug to wrap myself up in. It is a snapshot of my current trajectory — a mixture of where I am today and where I see myself going from here, all the good stuff that I want to focus on and attract more of into my life. Last year’s Vision Board is covered in green — lots of plants and vegetables and trees and arbors. I didn’t know it at the time, but it turned out to be a year full of growing and gardening, with visits to farms in addition to my first vegetable garden, lots of wandering in the woods, and ultimately the purchase of a home with beautiful trees surrounding it and even a green lawn.

So how does visioning differ from goal setting? I guess my question in return would be, where are you getting those goals from? If you dream of having a large house with a sports car and a slim figure, your goals will likely be about achieving some steps in the direction of those dreams. The problem is that when the dream feels unattainable, on some level that feeling taints the associated goals as well, making it easy to throw your hands up and make excuses for why you cannot achieve your goals. So yes, visioning differs from goal setting, but once you have a vision it can be easier to set goals that come up out of that vision for your life, baby steps on the way towards living that vision. The goals become a bridge from where you are today towards where you want to be.

I remember how startled I was when that first visioning process showed me as the mother of two children. Up until that point I had been decidedly anti-children. I was so shocked that the first “goal” I had was to really look at why I thought I didn’t want children and to allow myself to consider what it would be like to be a mum, trying it on like a hat to see if it fit. That process uncovered a lot of stuff for me, old beliefs that weren’t serving me anymore that once released allowed me to be more open to many possibilities available to me that I had previously shut myself off from. Once I opened myself up to this idea of having kids, it kind of had a life of its own, it flowed without my having to do a whole lot to make it happen. To me, that’s a sign that where you are headed is in alignment with who you are. When life is constantly throwing up obstacles to your path, that’s a good time to ask yourself if it’s truly a path you need to be on.

The beauty of the vision is that it becomes your “true north” for your compass — now you have something to set your sights on, something to point yourself toward. But it isn’t a list to check off — the things you will have and/or accomplish by a certain date. Life may take you to a variety of different places along the route to your vision, but these stops along the way are really just steps that are bringing you closer to that vision whether it is obvious to you or not. Almost by accident, my vision is coming into fruition in unexpected ways. It isn’t unfolding anywhere near like I had imagined it would, perhaps mostly because originally I had no idea how on earth I was going to get from “here” to “there.” At some point along the way I realized that I’m already “there” — the details are still evolving, but the foundation has been laid and the construction is underway. It’s a work in progress, but oh my, what a journey. I find myself grateful for this path and for all the manifestations along the way, from tomatoes in the garden to my beautiful boys. Life is good. Namaste.

Photo: juliustrum – last steps to the light by Till Krech

31 Days of Calendar Readings and the Energy of 2014

After an incredibly busy summer leading into an intensely chaotic fall followed by a typically jam-packed holiday season, I felt a deep need to spend my January doing a different kind of work, work that gives back to my community and not just to my wonderful family. I reached out to my Facebook community and offered to do 31 free Calendar Readings, one for each day in January. I was pleasantly surprised by the immediate response! Whether truly excited to receive a reading or curiously intrigued about what that really meant, I ended up with 23 “clients” within just a couple of days. What a gift for me!

I treat myself to a Calendar Reading each January as one of the handful of rituals I choose to start the new year. It is a reminder that this new year is a blank slate and gives me what I need to assess where I am coming from and get a vision for where I am headed. Getting to do this for others also enables me to really see the patterns that are emerging in the new year and how the energy of this new year is different from previous years.

I was relieved to be able to tell immediately that 2014 is a gentler year. The past couple of years have been intense in the way where it can be hard to keep your balance. While I certainly know people who found their sea legs relatively quickly, for the rest of us it has felt a bit like we were in a small boat on a rough sea getting tossed about. So while this year has a gentler energy, that does not mean it is any less powerful. It feels like we were drinking from the fire hose and we finally figured out how to control the nozzle — there is still a ton of momentum catapulting us forward, but we are learning how to direct the flow instead of having it barrel over us.

This year we’re being asked to stop letting our left brains run the show quite so much. The left brain is a bit of a workhorse — it serves a very important purpose, but if we see the world only through its eyes, we lose sight of the magic and mystery of life and the joy of the present moment. We are also being asked to let go of our need to be in control — when we trust that things will be okay without our micromanagement, we open ourselves up to allowing even better things to unfold in our lives, things we might not have been able to imagine all on our own.

It is a year where many of us will come into our own — when we listen to our own inner wisdom instead of the expectations and judgments of others, we step into that unique place that only we can fill and new opportunities start to open up for us. Hand-in-hand with this is the reminder that we need to be patient — new seeds are getting planted through this process and as exciting as this is, we need to trust that they are doing their jobs (growing) while we do our jobs. Just as a garden needs tending, this is not passive waiting — we still have steps to take along the way to keep things flowing, but there is no need to push or rush things along either. The seeds will bear fruit when they are ready!

And for me, it is a year where I am personally being encouraged to make sure I’m doing a little bit of everything instead of my typical “focus on one thing to the exclusion of all others” approach. So far, January has been even busier than I could have imagined, but this approach enables me to move forward on all fronts instead of just a handful, which ultimately means I get to do more of this Work that makes me feel so awake and alive. So thank you to all of you who have accepted my offer this January — it means a lot to me that I get to do this for all of you. And if you haven’t raised your hand yet and you’re interested in a reading, I still have a few spots left! Namaste.

Photo: heart + intuition canvas print by Mae Chevrette

Structuring the Unstructured

Spider Boy is many things. Inquisitive. Observant. Independent. Imaginative. Playful. Funny. Sweet. But he is also highly-sensitive and spirited. I’m not much into labels, but I’ve found these to be helpful ones in that they’ve given us a foundation to work with to figure out how best to support him. The best description I’ve found to describe this comes from Raising Your Spirited Child: “Spirited kids are, in fact, simply ‘more’ — by temperament, they are more intense, sensitive, perceptive, persistent, and uncomfortable with change than the average child.” I laughed the first time I read that — “more” is exactly the word I would have used to describe Spider Boy — but over the years what has really come into play is that bit about being more “uncomfortable with change than the average child.”

This year being his first year of preschool, this discomfort with change became a noticeably large hurdle for us, whether it was special days at school like holidays or Crazy Hair Day, or weeks off from school for vacations, it didn’t take much change to throw him off. However, this year also made us realize just how much he thrives on routine and structure, and how much better he does when he has information about what to expect. It has been a bit of a struggle for me — I’m more of a play-it-by-ear kind of gal — but I’m learning through trial and error what works and what doesn’t. So what to do with the luxury of a long, unstructured summer? I remember them fondly from my own childhood, but the major regression after just one unstructured week for spring break made me quickly realize we needed something to help structure our 14-week-long summer.

Since spring break, we’ve experimented with the idea of a more regular routine. I realized I had it in my head that a routine was more like a high school schedule — first bell at 7:05 am, first period starts at 7:15 am, second period starts at 7:52 am, etc. That kind of thing is crazymaking for me! But the good news is that Spider Boy doesn’t need anything that explicit — he just needs to know that generally speaking, by 9 am we’re going to be ready to get out of the house and do something fun, and here are the steps we will take to get us there. We won’t be doing exactly the same thing at the same time every day, but generally we will be doing one or more of the same things in the same 1-2 hour period each day. I posted our routine up where he can see it — you can see a sample here — and he loves to ask what time it is and then run over to “the schedule,” as he calls it, to see what we’re going to do next. This has been working fairly well for us, once we worked out a few kinks, but on non-school days we have still had a little too much wiggle room for comfort. Enter my (un)structuring brainstorm.

We’re starting the summer by “celebrating” a letter each day. I am not making any other changes to our routine — we are doing essentially the same kinds of things that we would have done on non-school days previously — just adding the focus of a letter each day. So the books we read begin with that letter, the yoga poses we use in Spirit Time begin with that letter, everywhere we go when we see something that begins with that letter we call it out, etc. Once we’re done with the alphabet, we’ll move on to colors, shapes, and numbers. We’ve just finished our first week, and it was surprisingly successful, however it was also a transitional week that included a sensory camp held at Spider Boy’s school the same days he would have had preschool, so next week will be the true test.

My plan is to write up notes for what we do each week — what worked and what didn’t, along with the books/videos/excursions/etc. that I’ve found for each topic — so that if you find yourself in a similar boat with a spirited and/or highly sensitive child, you can find some inspiration here. I would love to hear what is working for you and your families this summer as well — please share your ideas in the comments!

Week One: A-B-C-D-E
Week Two: F-G-H-I-J
Week Three: K-L-M-N-O
Week Four: P-Q-R-S-T
Week Five: U-V-W-X-Y-Z

Explore your parenting through poetry

I am so excited to host my first guest post by the talented and inspirational Lauren Wayne of Hobo Mama fame! Lauren’s Poetry of a Hobo Mama: The First Three Years is included in the Mindful Parenting e-Bundle that I’m an affiliate for. So cool!

By Lauren Wayne

What I love about poetry is how it allows us to view our lives through a different prism: one that breaks apart the pieces of our experience into rainbow colors and then focuses them with clarity that can be blinding in its insight.

When I became a parent, it was natural — even necessary — to explore my new adventures (and misadventures) through the lens of poetry.

Did we dream you into existence,
or was it more mundane?

When you open yourself up to writing poetry, you open yourself to reexamining and memorializing what was meaningful to you, even the hard moments.

Feeling you leave in a gush of pain and red,
in the blackest and loneliest part of the night …

Why were we led all that way, and never to see your face?

Poetry gives a voice to the sublime stories you want to retell and re-envision.

You slipped out to our surprise, …
a flashing red-purple,
wriggling in the water, and finally hauled in,
turning it around
and catching us in your net

And it elevates the everyday into song.

You sleep beside us
for the waking together
sun bright
you point out
and smile.

I’ve been writing poetry for years — handmade diaries from junior high glittering with stanzas in pink and green ink, earnest fountain-pen scrawls on random pieces of notepaper from college. But nothing has inspired me more than parenting — this wild, enlightening, exhausting, wonderful journey.

What can I learn in two years together
(almost three)?
What have you changed in me
except everything?

Even if you don’t consider yourself A Poet, even if you’ve never written (or read!) a poem in your life, I encourage you — I urge you — to pick up a pen or sit at a keyboard and give it a try. Consider an image, or a moment, and take a walk into your imagination. Describe it, feel it, relive it, and find the meaning for yourself that you can now share with others. As parents, all our writing opportunities are limited and hurried, but a poem is short — and therefore a possibility for an unexpected interlude.

One-handed now, lap filled,
breast claimed, you furtively search
for the letters, the keys,
the strain to capture your thoughts in the dark.

If you’d like some direction, I have a whole month’s worth of parenting-poetry prompts from my recent Weekly Parenting Poetry Workshop here. The workshop is over for now, but you can free verse it (so to speak). The writers who came alongside for the workshop didn’t consider themselves poets — but look what they created.

Who knew a heart could stretch farther
than even the body around it
that housed you each in succession?

Who knew love could flow out and envelop
so big a group — bigger —
and never grow anything but thicker,
like the blood joining us all together?

Flex your pen, find your voice, and explore your parenting through poetry.

You can purchase Lauren Wayne’s Poetry of a Hobo Mama: The First Three Years at Amazon in hard copy or as an e-book. And for a limited time, Poetry of a Hobo Mama is available as part of the Mindful Parenting eBundle, 20+ gentle parenting resources for one incredible price of $24.95. Buy your copy today, because the bundle with Lauren’s book and many others will be available only until June 10.

Lauren Wayne lives and writes in the Pacific Northwestern USA, with her husband, Sam, and their two sweet boys: six-year-old Mikko and two-year-old Alrik. She has been writing and publishing poetry for twenty years, but parenting has added even more inspiration. Lauren blogs at Hobo Mama about natural and attachment parenting, and gives a behind-the-scenes look at writing at LaurenWayne.com. She co-hosts the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting and is a cofounder of Natural Parents Network, a site that brings together attachment parents interested in a natural lifestyle.
Photo credits: Author

Spirit Time

“”It may be hard to believe that stopping to meditate together just a few minutes each day could possibly make your kids happier and more peaceful and confident, but give it a try for three months and see for yourself. I saw it in my own children, and I see it all the time in the families I work with as a children’s meditation teacher.”
~ Kerry Lee MacLean

When I first left my for-pay job to stay home with my boys, I had a dream of reinstating my daily meditation practice. My then 10-month-old son was not yet sleeping through the night, or anything close to it—Bean hated our daytime separation so much that he would often cluster feed at night to get the mommy-time he craved—so my previous routine of getting up early to get some me-time wasn’t really working. I knew it was an idea to keep working towards, but I needed something to feed me in the interim. My aha! moment came when it occurred to me to include my boys in my practice, and Spirit Time was born.

Spirit Time is my opportunity to do my practice in front of my children, and they are welcome to join in if they choose to. That doesn’t mean that it looks anything at all like my typical morning practice, which really requires about 30 minutes of alone time to feel satisfying. It is much more kid-friendly, including meditation, movement, and reading.

Meditation

My boys were not yet 1 and 3 when we started Spirit Time, and now they’re not yet 2 and 4. This makes for a pretty loose interpretation of the concept of meditation. When I started, I would simply sit on my meditation cushion and attempt to watch my breath “in the middle of the marketplace,” otherwise known as our playroom-of-a-living room. I’ll put on a New Age Pandora station or turn the TV to Comcast’s Soundscapes to provide some calming background music, perhaps more for my sake than for theirs. Some days I end up with a child (or two) in my lap. Other days I end up being a climbing structure. Today, Bean was having a seriously rough morning and kept melting down, so I ended up nursing him while I watched my breath.

I recently fell in love with this Simple Toddler Meditation, and I’ve borrowed/adapted a couple of components for our use. When it is time to begin Spirit Time, we often have to clean up our toys first so I sing a little cleaning song. Then I move into our Spirit Time song, sung to the tune of London Bridge: “Please come and join my little ring, little ring, little ring. Please come and join my little ring, and make it a little bit bigger.” Spider Boy will often set up a pillow for each of the boys as well as my meditation cushion, so technically there is a place for all three of us, and I will talk for a minute in a soothing voice to help let them know what I am doing, as if I am leading a guided meditation. I will take a few deep breaths and, depending on their energy, maybe take a moment or two to watch my breath, and then I’ll move into vocalizations. Spider Boy especially loves language, so I start by taking five deep breaths, making one of the vowel sounds on each outbreath. A becomes aaaah; E becomes eeeee; I becomes iiiii; O becomes ohhhh; and U becomes ooooh. Bean especially loves animals, so then I will take five or so more deep breaths, making an animal sound on each outbreath. Favorites include moooo, cock-a-doodle-doooo, hisssss, hee-haaaaw, and neeiigh.

I know as the boys get older, we can move into more traditional guided meditations and visualizations, but for now my intention is to model a sitting practice for them, and to ground my own energy, which has huge affects not just directly on me, but on them as well.

Movement

Getting my boys into yoga was one of those “seemed like a good idea at the time” ideas for far too long. Spider Boy is really resistant to “follow the leader” type activities, and isn’t one to participate when, say, there’s a song at his preschool with hand movements. He might do them later when it is his idea to sing the song, but not typically in the moment. I tried showing him yoga videos with kids doing the movements, and he thought they were amusing (sometimes), but really was not interested in doing the movements, and often would get upset with me for attempting to do them myself.

Bean is another story. Now that he is old enough to do the movements himself, he loves them, so I am one happy yoga mama. We started with a handful of toddler yoga videos from YouTube to provide a common base for us to work off of. While I love The Sun Dance (and watching either Spider Boy or Bean do a downward dog is priceless!), Bean’s favorite by far is Bug Yoga. This morning we checked out a couple of kids’ yoga videos I noticed On Demand. The Space yoga wasn’t as big of a hit as I thought it would be, but Bean loved the Farm one. At one point she has the kids doing back rolls (saying it’s like pigs rolling in the mud), and Bean got super excited and dropped onto the floor to do Dead Bug Pose. (Precious!)

As time goes on, I expect Bean to take the lead here, with Spider Boy following a little more reluctantly. As Spider Boy starts to get favorite movement activities over time, I can incorporate more of what I know he likes to get him engaged, and perhaps just encourage him to do it on his own at other times of day. I will also incorporate movement from other traditions, like qigong. But much like the meditation, my goal for now is to model movement that gets our energy flowing.

Reading

Spider Boy is an avid reader. He loves being read to, listening to audiobooks, and now beginning to read himself. Bean is much more hit or miss, loving books in theory but having minimal patience to sit through full books. Either way, setting aside time to read to the boys each day is incredibly important to me, as is having at least one of those books be one with a good message. Typically I’ll get out three or four books and let Spider Boy choose one for us to read. This enables me to focus where I’d like for us to go during Spirit Time, and then if either of the boys wants to read a second book (or more), I’m open to whatever they’re interested in. This morning, they both desperately wanted to read, and all three of us each picked out a book. We started with A Great Attitude—a simple book with a simple message about how it isn’t what happens to you that makes you have a good day, it’s how you choose to respond—and then moved on to Anh’s Anger—a wonderful story about a boy who befriends his anger and learns how to release the negative energy in ways that leave him feeling good and empowered. And then Bean snuggled into my lap to read What Does It Mean To Be Present—a simple yet beautifully illustrated book that talks about mindfulness and being present aimed at school-aged children. Bean had a great time pointing out the blue butterfly on each page.

I love having this time to read about things that are important to me, like mindfulness. They are each going to take away probably a sliver of what the book’s intention is, especially when we read something like poetry from Earth Prayers, but I know what is said is percolating in their brains when Spider Boy asks a question later in the day (or week, or even month) about one of our Spirit Time stories. For their first six years especially, children are such little sponges. They are absorbing substantially more of what they’re read to (and shown and told, etc.) than we ever anticipate, so my goal is to be sure that for at least one story a day, they’re being given tools to build a strong foundation for their social, emotional, and spiritual development.

Spirit Time On The Go

There are days when we simply just do not have time for Spirit Time. While any one step of Spirit Time is not that time consuming, the boys are still so young that there is a considerable amount of running around time in the midst of the practice, so it can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 90 minutes (not dedicated time, of course!) I typically have it incorporated into our morning routine so that we are getting dressed, going potty, and possibly even cooking breakfast in and around our practice. However, if we are planning a grand adventure for the day and need to be out of the house early, we will take Spirit Time with us. I will let my mom drive, and then I can walk the boys through a modified meditation and some reading time, and sometimes we will even squeeze some yoga in at the park or wherever we’re headed. (Bean loves to do Dead Bug Pose just about anywhere!)

As with so many things about parenting, this practice has taught me not to compartmentalize so much. No matter what we are doing throughout our day, this is life. It can feel crazy and chaotic sometimes, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have time to do what is important to us. At first it may feel like you’re carving out that time, and possibly even sacrificing something else in order to make it work, but then it becomes just a part of the routine, a part of life, as integral to your life as breathing is. This is my goal with Spirit Time, to make sure that I am taking the time to nourish my spirit all while showing my boys that it is something worth making time for. The long-term benefits for them are huge—self-regulation skills, the ability to focus, even improved health—and short-term, getting to share this part of my life with them is priceless. Namaste.

What is mindful parenting?

“Mindfulness practice means that we commit fully in each moment to be present; inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intention to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and right now.” ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

There is an exciting parenting movement afoot that is growing by leaps and bounds. While it may be more accurate to say there are many movements afoot—positive parenting, gentle parenting, conscious parenting, spiritually-aware parenting, attachment parenting, playful parenting, and more—they are all subtle variations on a theme. The label that is resonating the most for me these days is mindful parenting.

So what is mindful parenting? I suspect that everyone practices their subtle variation on this parenting theme in their own way—I know that I am a big believer in finding your own way of doing things that works for you—but these variations have more in common than not. Here is my take on what the key points are:

Respect. Your children are people too, just as deserving of your respect as the adults in your life. When you respect them, you are modeling what respect looks like, teaching them to respect others in return.

Limits. Setting and enforcing consistent limits is critical to a child’s sense of security. It is their job to test boundaries; it is your job to ensure those boundaries are strong.

Mirroring. Your children are your mirror. This works in a couple of different ways. Children learn from watching and imitating others’ behavior much more than they do from being talked to, so BE the things you want your children to be. And if you see a “negative” behavior showing up in your children, take a look at how you are feeling and acting now to see how you might be affecting them.

Listen. We often complain that our children don’t listen to us, but it is equally true that we often don’t really listen to them. Listening to your children not only helps them to feel heard, it can give you much needed insight into the way your children’s minds work.

Connection. Even the most independent children still need a strong emotional connection with their parents. The most connected children are the most secure children, and that security enables them to be more successful in life not just in the early years, but as teenagers and beyond. When children “act out,” they are almost always feeling disconnected. Help them to feel reconnected first, then try to teach them a better way to act.

Breathe. When in doubt, take a deep breath. If you need to, leave the room. Center yourself, get yourself back to a place of loving-kindness, then reengage. Children are incredibly sensitive to energy, and will respond in kind.

Play. Children learn and communicate through play. When we get down at their level and play with them, it’s not just fun, it’s a way for us to both learn and teach. If there’s something you really want your children to learn, find a way to make it a game.

Awareness. Being aware of what’s going on with you, what’s going on with your children, what’s going on in your environment, can make a huge impact in your ability to respond instead of react.

Stay Present. Life is unfolding in the present moment, and no one is better at truly living in the present than a child. Not only is this moment of huge importance to your children because every moment is, each moment of your own life is deserving of your full attention. The more you can slow down and experience the present moment, the more fully you can experience your life and your children’s lives.

Parenting is full of a lot of little moments that can easily get to feeling like drudgery, that can easily bring up a sense of resistance in us. When we practice mindfulness, we can shift those moments, we can “do the dishes” (as Byron Katie would say) and love the task that’s in front of us, and love our children just as they are in this moment. Mindful parenting is a reminder to me that a mindful life is a full life, and every moment is a blessing with the opportunity for learning, for growth, for joy, and for love. Namaste.

Mindful Parenting e-Bundle Sale!

I am super excited for the Mindful Parenting e-Bundle sale that begins today and runs through June 10th! Some of the top conscious parenting bloggers have joined forces to create a fantastic bundle of resources at a fraction of the cost. Topics include gentle parenting, self-care for parents, creativity and play, children and food, spirituality, and more—pretty much sums up what I’m all about these days!

More than 20 products for $24.95 (valued over $274). Available only from May 28 to June 10, 2013. And if you buy the bundle through my website, I get a portion of the proceeds. Win win!

I am going to be writing more about mindful parenting throughout the 12 days of the sale, but this is such a great deal that I wanted to get a quick blurb up about it this morning. I love how positive parenting, conscious parenting, gentle parenting, spiritually-aware parenting, mindful parenting—all subtle variations on what is essentially the same theme—are taking off and becoming more the “norm.” It bodes well for this generation of children and those to come—and their parents! Namaste.

Which way do I lean?

“The days are long, but the years are short.” ~ Gretchen Rubin

“The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.” ~ James Taylor

With Spider Boy’s first year of preschool coming to a close next week, I’ve been looking back over this past calendar year a lot lately, my first year as a “stay at home mom.” This year has been a lot of things. Intense. Emotional. Chaotic. Playful. Stressful. Fun. Messy. Diverse. Routine. Challenging. Exhausting. Beneficial. And ultimately, Priceless. My boys will turn 2 and 4 this summer. No longer babies and yet still so very young. Every time one of them climbs up in my lap, or reaches up to hold my hand, or snuggles down in bed with me, I feel such deep gratitude for this time with them. They are growing so fast, physically and mentally and emotionally, and each day is a new adventure with them, a new opportunity for me to see them for who they are, to create a safe space for them to explore, to expand my perspective as I see things through their eyes, to learn from them as much as I am teaching them.

It is not easy. I am “on” 24/7, even in my sleep. My buttons get pushed pretty much constantly. I have been punched, head-butted, kicked, slapped, and elbowed, not always accidentally. I have changed more diapers than I could possibly count. The constant never-ending drone of meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking, dishes, and laundry is often overwhelming. There is no such thing as “just running in” anywhere. I am almost never alone.

I benefit greatly from having gone back to work after the birth of both of my boys. I know what it is like to come home after your child has already gone to sleep. I know the grief of having all too many of your child’s “firsts” happen with other people. I know that weekends are there just so you can catch up on laundry and grocery shopping and other chores. But I have also experienced the simple pleasures of “water cooler” conversations and lunches out with co-workers. And I know how good it feels to do work that you truly feel good at, and to even receive external validation for the good work that you do. Having had both experiences really helps me to appreciate the pros and cons of both choices, if indeed it is truly a binary choice. There are aspects of my work life that I miss (the people, more than anything else), but I’ve lived through it and know how miserable I was trying to balance raising a family with working outside the home, especially after the birth of my second son. On a good day, I felt like I was mediocre at everything I did; on a bad day, I felt like I was failing miserably, not even treading water, drowning in the overwhelm.

Like many women I know, I received news of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In with mixed feelings. While I really appreciated that she wanted to address the issue of women not rising into leadership roles in government and large businesses, I felt she really did those of us who have thoughtfully and consciously made different decisions a disservice. Long before I became a mother, I really struggled with the idea that I needed to give up so much of my time and energy in order to build someone else’s pyramid, as Daniel Quinn would phrase it. My life has always been multi-faceted; I’ve joked about being a “jack of all trades, master of none,” but truly, I just have a wide variety of skills and interests, and I don’t think there is a “job” that exists that could encapsulate enough of them for me to feel fulfilled. I’ve always needed my time outside of the workplace to round things out, to take classes and be involved in my spiritual community and write and be in nature and much much more. When I left my for-pay job, yes, it was so that I could spend time with my children, but it was also so I could consciously create the well-rounded life that I wanted to live, and be the best example for my children I could be of someone who lives life fully.

One of the things that I feel most thrilled about with this “new” life that I am creating is that there is no longer a clear delineation between what is “work” and what isn’t. My life is my work. Whether I am repotting the organic tomatoes that I grew from seed, tucking my toddler in for his nap, stirring the batter for a batch of zucchini bread, creating a flyer for an upcoming workshop that I’m helping to facilitate, preparing for a board meeting at my son’s preschool, or sitting down to grab a few minutes for quiet meditation, it is all my work. I have never felt more fulfilled.

This is what I feel Sheryl Sandberg and so many others have missed. It seems to me that having a conversation about gender in the workplace is “so last millennium.” Whether you are a man or a woman, whether you’re an empty-nester or new parent or opting not to have children, shouldn’t the encouragement be to live life more fully? To find what it is that you’re passionate about and do that? And if it doesn’t fit inside someone else’s box, to create your own box? I would love to see these influential people talking about how to spend less time at the office and more time exploring this amazing planet we live on, beginning with your own backyard. This isn’t about commitment or ambition or even work-life balance. This is about recognizing that it is all your life, and it is worth making sure that it is one that is being truly LIVED. So which way do I lean? I am leaning in . . . towards life! Namaste.

It’s All My Fault!

“Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.”
~ Hermann Hesse

The last couple of months have been tough ones at our house, for a variety of reasons. I have been in the process of coming off of a long-term medication, with unfortunate and adverse effects; I was responsible for creating the catalog for a recent fundraising auction, which took the bulk of my attention for many weeks; the pollen counts have been through the roof and the whole family has been coughing, sniffly, sneezy, and headachy; my husband has had to work some nights and weekends; and my boys have been their usual incredibly sensitive selves, where even slight challenges or changes get magnified by that lens of sensitivity. Often, when the boys start to “act out,” I know it’s a sign that I am uncentered and need to take steps to ground and recharge, so this past week I was working hard to do my part to restore order from the chaos . . . with mixed results, due at least in part to how out of whack everything had gotten.

By Saturday, the delicate balance in our family looked more like an off-balance washing machine, so it wasn’t necessarily surprising when a straw broke my proverbial camel’s back and I snapped. In a fit of frustration, I started saying, “Fine, it’s all my fault! I get it!” I was frustrated with myself more than anything, but I had been running on empty far too long, and all of my pent up anger and frustration and exhaustion started leaking out. Thankfully the grouchiness didn’t last–with help from my mum and my husband, we were able to turn the energy around in that statement. If it truly was all my fault, then I could also be “blamed” for the gorgeous weather, the abundance at the farmer’s market, the shade from the trees, and the scent of orange blossoms in the air. Writing about it now I can feel the shift inside again, the healing laughter that it created and my sense that I could just let go of “responsibility” alongside “blame.”

Letting go is truly empowering. Yes, of course, it is probably the highest form of empowerment to recognize that by shifting myself (my thoughts, my energy, etc.) I can shift the world around me, however that knowledge can also be crazymaking when things aren’t going as well as you expect/hope/want. As a parent, I need reminding from time to time to let go, to not hold on so tight. There’s a happy balance in there where you find your sea legs, staying present and aware of what’s happening so you can shift where you need to, while holding on to any expectations you have of the outcome gently, letting go of the worry and replacing it with, say, curiosity about what will happen next.

As a write this, it’s another absolutely beautiful day that I’m happy to take credit for, but I’m also happy to not be responsible for it. I am happy to leave the care of my children in the hands of others for a few hours while I reboot and recharge and dream of what curiosity will bring. No matter how bad things get, no matter how awful and guilty and grouchy I feel, there is always more good than not. There is always more good than not. Namaste.

28 Days of Gratitude

Photo: Eu Sou by jeronimo sanz

Visioning

Photo: juliustrum – last steps to the light by Till Krech

31 Days of Calendar Readings and the Energy of 2014

Photo: heart + intuition canvas print by Mae Chevrette

Structuring the Unstructured

Recommended Reading

photo: bridging knowledge to health by paul bica

Explore your parenting through poetry

Spirit Time

Meditation

Movement

Reading

Spirit Time On The Go

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What is mindful parenting?

Recommended Reading

Mindful Parenting e-Bundle Sale!

Which way do I lean?

It’s All My Fault!