Tag Archives: parenting

When facing a miscarriage

This is for any of you who have ever lost a baby.  I remember my own miscarriage and the years of stiffled pain I held inside. I want to share with you a beautiful poem by Paula Brancato.

 

The only time I ever cried at the gym,

apart from when I broke a balance beam with my

head, was in yoga class.  The teacher,

in her bow pose, switched on “Love

to love you, baby.”   Right into the second

chakra it went, just above my pubic bone, when something

very much like my head, but lower, burst.

 

Only a month before, I had lost a baby I wanted

and a man I didn’t, one after the other.

 

In my bow pose, holding my ankles,

pelvis rocking on the mat, I started to cry.

 

I had no idea my body had baby memory.

A current ran through me, very like when my head

unexpectedly hit the beam and I found I was still

alive, or when years later, I held my mother as my grandmother

died, feeling through her body, my grandmother’s life in me.

In the yoga class, what I felt was distinctly the other

way around, a life that almost was but now would never be.

A part of me had died, and a smaller part of my mother

and an even smaller part of my mother’s mother and so on.

 

Paula Brancato

 

Create Your Own Endless Summer

Do you wish to let summer linger just a little longer? Whether your kids are going back to school, college kids are moving away, or it’s vacations that end just a little too soon there always seems to be an element of “I’m not quite ready…” that hangs in the air this time of year.

Do you notice it?

This year, rather than feel that longing as an inevitable part of life, I have decided to look at what specifically I grieve loosing as summer comes to an end. Then I plan to explore how can I incorporate more of those things into the rest of my year.

I suggest you join me in this exercise and see how you, too, can create a life that better meets your needs more of the year. (For my tribe down under, spend a little time imagining summer and then jump in, even though its winter for you. The imagining of the warmth will do you good!)

Here are the steps I suggest you try:

  1. List all the qualities of summer you enjoy. What about summer makes it a special time of year?
  2. List all the activities you usually only do in the summer.
  3. List anything else that comes to mind when you think of summer.
  4. Now go through your list and notice which ones bring up the fondest memories, the biggest smile, or just a feeling of ahhhhh! Highlight those.
  5. Lastly, start to imagine creative ways to incorporate some of these activities into your life year round.

As an example, one of my favorite parts of summer is our family vacation—whether we travel to adventurous places or just travel down the road to a place close by our family vacations have always been a highlight of my year.

As my children move out and into adulthood this time has become even more sacred for me—time for us to reconnect without distractions and be a “whole” once more.

Although I cannot expect everyone’s schedules to allow for us to do a family vacation every season, I have decided this year to proactively plan into my year trips to see my children where they live. It will allow me to extend the benefits of feeling connected, being playful and enjoying them that I now attribute to summer.

The key here is I am going to plan these trips now, rather than wait. Otherwise life, work, and other commitments rapidly fill my windows of opportunities and these trips either don’t come to pass, or are combo trips without the same pizzazz!

One of the reasons our summer vacations become so good, is because we all know about them, plan for them and contribute to their success.This year, even if the interim trips are very simple I will not be waiting around for next summer’s family vacation; instead I will be creating mini-vacations with my kids all year long.

Share you ah-ha’s with me and the ways you will be exploring creating your endless summer!

5 Tips for Working Moms

What can you do when you are not home after school to connect with your child, help with homework, and maintain a close connection with their daily life?

Find a routine you can commit to and be there at those times. Use these times to discuss classes, homework and any wins or challenges. Most importantly, use these ideas to build connection with your child and make them sacred times you do not easily schedule over. Some ideas for making time:

1. make sure you are the one driving to school so you have that time to connect, since you cannot do it after school.

2. If you are home at dinner time, make sure you eat together regularly–even if it is take out food because you do not have time to cook,

3. Plan a weekly day/night out where they can look forward to having alone time with you without distractions doing things you both love,

4. Check in when you do arrive home, sit on their bed or where ever they are and ask questions–how was your day? any new kids at school this year, what are they like? or I have had a challenging week, how about you any challenges lately? — and then listen.

5.  If you really are not around much after school find a group of parents of your child’s friends that you stay close with who can also hold your child and create a safe container. Maybe invite them and their children over regularly on weekends so that bonds are made and a village is formed. This is the most important thing you can do, whether your a stay at home mom or a traveling business woman. Find ways to form a village where you are not the only one watching out for your child and you have close contact with their “gang” of friends.

After graduation what will she find?

If you have been following me for long you know I am passionate about empowering women around the world.  Empowering myself.  Empowering you.  Empowering your friends.

Yet, I believe the biggest change we can make will come through empowering our daughters, the next generation of women.  I have three daughters and I feel incredibly passionate about their experience being more authentic, strong, and celebratory of their feminine nature than mine.

I spent my adolescent, teen and early adult years trying to avoid the unwanted attention of male teachers, male friends of my parents and early bosses.  This made me feel ever so self conscious of my sexuality, any sensuality, and my affect on others.  The message was do not let your energy shine because it draws creepy and sometimes flat out assaulting behavior in people you are suppose to trust!  Unfortunately more women than not have similar stories of their youth.

As a young woman I also saw that power was solely in positions that men held– leading me  to develop my masculine side through becoming assertive, honing my decision making skills, and becoming highly competitive. As far as I was concerned, why would anyone want to live in a disempowered place–and this was what it took to not be powerless.  Many of you have had similar experiences in order to attain power and influence in the world.  I just did it to extreme–like most things I pursued in those years I was using my successes to validate my worth.

I suppressed anything that hinted I was feminine in my work life.  Upset and feel overwhelmed?  Whatever you do DON’T CRY.  Feel lonely and isolated?  Work harder to get ahead, getting attached to co-workers makes it harder to become their boss anyway.  Have a strong intuition that something is not right, stifle it because no one will take you seriously if you told them and worse they will stop listening to you in general.  Feel enthusiastic and have a spontaneous idea, find some market research or statistic to support your idea or keep your enthusiasm to yourself.

By the time I had my first child I had lost touch with so many parts of me that my new role as mother was like landing in alien territory.  Being spontaneous, unplanned, full of emotions, fully bonded with another human being was not natural to my ego and the role I had learned to play.  During the next chapter of my life I began to unravel this masculine mask and re-engage my feminine self.

What I realized was I had become a good man.  I never had role models of what it looked like to be a woman AND be powerful so I had traded my femininity for power.  And I am not alone.  Maybe you too gave up a piece of yourself to pursue something important.  I have been hearing from women every day, from all different walks of life that this same pattern has been played out in many ways.

The real terror of this situation is by working so hard to prove ourselves capable of the same things men can do we have been teaching our daughters the same thing we were so appalled by– that being feminine is not a position of strength.  You can be a woman these days, but certainly not a juicy, emotional, intuitive, creative, life giving female!

My new vision is to support young women becoming adults who believe in themselves–not just as a person, because that still denies their being feminine–but as the female person they are.  Let’s help them not only endure their volatility and sensitivity but relish their femininity.  Feminine strengths are missing in all aspects of our culture– education, health care, business, law and government.  If our young girls enter these areas with their femininity in tact maybe each of these areas could find new solutions to our current problems.  What are these feminine traits?  Intuitiveness.  Sensuality.  Multi-tasking. Tribe building.  Creativity.  Relationships.  Communications.  Power sharing.  Consensus building and many more!

I will explore ideas about how we can create an environment that helps our girls become women who celebrate their femininity, demonstrate their strength in our culture, contribute in big ways to our world and have a better chance at healthy relationships because they start with a heaping dose of loving themselves–just as they are!