My friend lent me The Cassandra Complex, a really engaging novel by Holly Smale that blends relationship challenges and time travel with a thought-provoking exploration of neurodiversity and our obsession with getting things right rather than what’s right for us.

I love a well-written character who reflects familiar aspects of myself that I may have otherwise struggled to articulate, even if I don’t share their specific experiences. Cassandra’s approaches—her analytical way of seeing the world, her need for structure, and her reactions to sensory or social situations—feel relatable to me. These traits aren’t exclusive to autism but are part of many people’s experiences. Holly Smale’s writing captures these nuances well, making Cassandra feel both unique and universally accessible, inviting a wide range of readers to see parts of themselves in her, which I appreciate as a core aspect of great writing.

I related to it so much that I filled out the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) questionnaire developed by Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues at the Autism Research Centre, a credible tool for identifying autism traits in adults. Scoring in the 26–32 range suggests I might share some traits commonly associated with autism (I snuck in at 26). However, childhood and generational trauma can deeply shape how we experience and react to the world, sometimes in ways that resemble neurodivergent traits. Trauma, particularly during key developmental stages, can affect sensory sensitivity, social processing, and emotional regulation, overlapping with traits seen in autism.

If there were a category for ‘obsession with people’ in diagnosing Asperger's, I’d likely fit on the spectrum more snugly, as my relentless interest in psychology and understanding emotions is profound. This may seem antithetical to traditional views of Asperger's and autism, which often emphasize special interests in technical or solitary subjects. However, many autistic individuals have deep, focused interests in people, emotions, and psychology. This passion for understanding human behavior might appear to contradict the typical portrayal but aligns with a different way of processing the world.

Many autistic individuals are driven by an intense desire to make sense of social dynamics and emotions, especially if these areas have felt challenging or confusing. For some, this focus becomes a lifelong study, not only as a means of connecting with others but also for self-understanding. My relentless curiosity about people and emotions exemplifies this beautifully unique expression, whether it’s linked to neurodivergence, trauma, or both. It highlights the complexity and individuality of our experiences, illustrating why there is such a range of traits within any diagnostic category. That said, I suspect my ability to read people’s expressions and feelings is more a result of heightened awareness developed from emotional experiences and navigating challenging social dynamics rather than being linked to neurodivergent traits.

While many experts now recognize that trauma can impact the nervous system in ways that mimic neurodivergent patterns, some theories suggest that trauma—whether personal or generational—could shape neurodivergence over time. Much of the emergence of neurodivergence, along with expressions of gender identity, sexual orientation, and other forms of diversity in the Western world, stems from the rigid and suppressed expressions of who we are that predate and arose from the Second World War.

Of course, my Heilkunst practitioner would say these traits are typical of the phosphorus constitution. In Heilkunst, there are six healthy constitutional types, akin to personality profiles, and the phosphorus constitution is associated with qualities like emotional depth, creativity, sensitivity, and a strong drive to connect with others—attributes that resonate with my passion for psychology and understanding emotions. She likens this constitution to a balloon bobbing in the air, reflecting how my energy feels—anchored to the earth yet yearning to float and explore my thoughts, psychology, philosophy, and visions for a better future.

This metaphor captures my sense of lightness and exploration, suggesting a natural curiosity and a desire to rise above the mundane. However, I often feel that daily living—showering, dressing, preparing food, maintaining a home—interferes with my desire to escape into my imagination and explore life's deeper questions. My practitioner also mentions that a hallmark of the phosphorus constitution is a "quick-burning bright flame," indicating a tendency toward burnout, and she believes that being tethered to everyday responsibilities can serve as a grounding force.

This struggle between the compelling nature of my inner world and the practicalities of life is common, especially for those of us who thrive on imaginative thinking. While daily routines can feel burdensome, they also provide a necessary balance, helping to manage the intense highs and lows that can arise from immersing myself in my imagination. Finding ways to integrate exploration into daily life—perhaps through mindful eating or infusing creativity into household tasks—could foster a connection between my practical responsibilities and imaginative pursuits.

Ultimately, each framework—neurodiversity, trauma, or Heilkunst—offers valuable insights into our experiences. Exploring these interpretations can deepen self-awareness and aid in our journey toward understanding and healing, highlighting the complexity of human experience.

Earlier in the week, I spoke with a friend whose child had received a diagnosis. They mentioned that other parents were experiencing stigma regarding their children’s diagnoses. To me, the idea of “normal” is outdated; yet it continues to be perpetuated through various systems, including our education and healthcare systems, cultural norms and family expectations, historical contexts, media representation, religious or spiritual contexts, social constructs of beauty and body image, digital spaces and online communities, as well as legal and policy frameworks.

I find the topic of "getting to know ourselves and growing ourselves" endlessly fascinating. I often tell my children that their biggest challenge is to understand themselves well enough to articulate their struggles. For example, in class, I encourage them to say, "This is what I'm struggling with because this is how I'm wired, and this is what would really help." Defining that "this" is the real challenge. Simply stating, "I'm dyslexic," "I'm autistic," or "I have ADHD" doesn’t capture the nuances of their unique neuro-blends, as the typical symptoms and patterns associated with those labels may not fully resonate with their experiences.

The challenge of defining what “this” means—identifying their specific needs and preferences—can be significant, especially when societal expectations and stereotypes around dyslexia, autism, or ADHD do not align with their lived experiences. By promoting deeper self-awareness, we equip our kids with tools to navigate their environments more effectively. This approach fosters resilience and encourages them to seek solutions that truly work for them rather than conforming to generalized expectations.

I believe encouraging them to articulate their struggles and needs based on their unique wiring, rather than solely relying on labels, will prove invaluable. For me, in my 50s, this remains a learning journey, and my self-expression continues to evolve. Recognizing that every individual’s experience of neurodivergence is different emphasizes the importance of personal understanding and self-advocacy.

This focus on understanding their unique neuro-blends not only helps them advocate for themselves but also empowers them to explore their strengths and challenges in a more nuanced way. By normalizing the conversation around self-knowledge, we create an environment where they feel safe to express their individuality and seek the support they truly need. It’s a beautiful way to nurture their growth and help them build confidence in who they are.

In a world that often rigidly defines “normal,” we must challenge these outdated notions and embrace the emotional complexities that make each of us unique. Through the lens of neurodiversity, trauma, and personal experience, let’s explore how our individual journeys shape our understanding of ourselves and others. By examining the interplay between our emotional landscapes and the societal expectations surrounding neurodivergence, we can uncover the beauty of our unique neuro-blends.

As you reflect on your own journey, consider how your emotional complexities influence your self-perception. In what ways have societal norms shaped your identity? I encourage you to take time to journal your thoughts or share your insights with someone you trust. Remember, you are not alone in this exploration—every story adds depth to our collective understanding, and each reflection brings us closer to embracing the beauty of our differences.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Normal Is Dysfunctional That Is the Growth Opportunity, How to Appreciate Our Differences Enough to Admire and Want to Embrace Them, Beyond the Whiteboard: Rethinking Education for Diverse Learners and Our Collective Future, Do You Struggle with the Daily Grind? Create a Heartfelt Calendar That Empowers You,  and Our Sensitive Souls. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. 

This week of school holidays allowed me to slow down, relax, and reconnect with my children in a more carefree, unstructured way. Compared to the busy, often restrictive feelings of term time, it’s been bliss. By setting aside work and focusing on the present moment, I found that the less I planned, the more things started to flow.

Of course, we still had some plans—dental appointments, haircuts, and other necessary activities. But the simple decision not to work and be fully present for those moments, as well as the downtime in between, was liberating.

We had some great talks about life, school, and future plans, along with some nice trips and socializing. Even the more arduous tasks of clearing out clothes and listing old toys for sale deepened my bond with the kids, and I found myself more refreshed than usual.

What struck me even more, though, was the unexpected side effect of this presence. While the week was centered around enjoying time with my kids, I noticed something else happening. Without the pressure of work, I found myself reflecting more deeply on the books I’ve been working on. My partner asked why I chose those topics, and, along with a timely request from a publisher for more details, this seemed to unlock new insights in the condensed time I had available.

This reminded me of something I’ve always known: when we let go of rigid expectations, inspiration flows naturally. Focusing on being present with my children seemed to open space in my mind, allowing connections between my ideas to surface without force. My partner's question and the publisher's email sparked momentum in my projects, showing me that sometimes, the best progress happens when we’re not actively trying.

It brings to mind a powerful lesson I learned during the birth of my second child. I had endured a painful first labour, full of resistance, tension, and an overwhelming urge to control the process. But during the second, with the guidance of a midwife, I learned to release that resistance, to breathe and move in flow with the contractions rather than fighting them. It was in this space of surrender that I discovered the art of allowing—a lesson that extends far beyond childbirth into all aspects of life.

Much like I had been advised to "forget about it, and it will happen" when trying to conceive, the same applies to the creative process. It was only when I stopped forcing and started trusting in my body, in the natural flow of events, that the birth unfolded in a more harmonious way. And so it is with our everyday goals and dreams. When we release our need to control the outcome and let life flow, things start to fall into place in ways we couldn't have planned.

The absence of pressure allowed creativity and clarity to arise, which speaks to:

• The power of letting go of rigid expectations: stepping away from work and focusing on family created space for inspiration to come unexpectedly.
• The link between presence and creativity: being fully present, whether with my children or in moments of ease, helped me see connections in my work that I might have missed when pushing too hard.
• Unexpected momentum: the questions from my partner and the publisher sparked a flow of productivity without forcing it.

This week reminded me of the value of slowing down, savoring the moment, and simply enjoying life. By leaning into the flow, I found clarity, energy, and progress in ways that felt natural rather than forced. Whether it’s labour or creative work, when we stop pushing and start allowing, the results often exceed our expectations.

Talking of which, I must get back to helping the kids list their toys for sale. They've spent the previous two holidays sorting through and grouping things for this moment—a kind of rite of passage as they let go of what no longer serves them, making space for the things they enjoy now. Hopefully, they'll earn a little money to fund their new interests.

As I reflect on this process, it’s a reminder that letting go is part of life's flow. Where in your life might you benefit from letting go in order to allow more flow? Whether it's loosening the grip on plans, expectations, or even possessions, sometimes surrendering control creates the space for something even better to unfold.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Be Fluid – How to Go with Your Own Flow, Finding Balance: Making Big Changes Through Small Steps in a Complex Life, From Exhaustion to Empowerment: Healing the Negative Associations of Giving,  and When Life Throws Curveballs... Embrace the Twists and Turns of Parenthood with Confidence. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. 

In Sophie Green’s novel The Bellbird River Country Choir, Debbie loses custody of her children while serving time for embezzlement. Upon release, she watches their stepmother, Julia, with them and reflects:

“Debbie had wondered how Julia could be this generous, and so helpful, then she remembered that Julia actually gets to be the kids' mum for real and Debbie is still a visitor in their lives. Granted, Julia gets the drudgery of school lunches and homework and fights over TV shows. But she also gets the funny little highlights that come with each day. A sentence here, a gesture there; the ways your children fill up your life with memories.”

Though Debbie's situation is unique, I relate to her longing for time with her children. Whether through split living, children leaving home, or other circumstances, a cycle of grief often accompanies their absence. Personally, I experience this every time my kids leave and return from their other home.

It's difficult to reconcile not raising my children full-time, but there is a silver lining in having more time to explore my own path. Still, balancing this freedom with the ever-present responsibilities of parenthood can be tricky. Even when they’re away, I remain in "parent mode."

Maintaining strong boundaries—both with my children and in co-parenting—has become increasingly important. Healthy boundaries are essential not just for my emotional well-being but for theirs as well. It’s about recognizing my emotional limits and taking steps to protect my peace. I now see boundaries not as walls, but as acts of self-compassion and clarity in my relationships. When I’m clearer about my needs and communicate those limits, it helps reduce potential emotional turmoil and misunderstandings.

A piece of advice that soothed my heart was this:

“It's natural to grieve the time you lose with your children, especially when you've been their constant support. The deep connection from raising them is irreplaceable. Reframing these emotions can help, but it doesn't erase the pain of missing moments. Instead, acknowledge the fullness of what you've given them—the unique foundation you've built will always shape who they become, even when they spend time elsewhere.”

As I continue navigating a split-living situation, this perspective reminds me that, while time apart can feel like a loss, the bond remains intact, woven through every interaction.

Reflecting on these emotions, I often find that books I read offer new ways to process what I’m going through. This week, I finally finished The Secret of Shambhala: In Search of the Eleventh Insight by James Redfield, a year after I first picked it up. Building on The Celestine Prophecy, it offers practical ways to develop emotional well-being, self-compassion, and bodily awareness—particularly through the concept of "prayer extensions."

A prayer extension involves focusing our thoughts and feelings to create positive intentions for ourselves and others. By visualising what we want, practicing gratitude and compassion, and grounding ourselves through body awareness, we align our energy with our desires. This not only supports our well-being but also helps us show up more fully for those around us.

While prayer extensions bear some resemblance to ideas like the Law of Attraction—both focus on harnessing positive energy to shape reality—James Redfield places more emphasis on collective intention and spiritual evolution, which is right up my alley. In Shambhala, he presents a holistic approach where thought, feeling, heart, and body work together, expanding on the separate insights introduced in The Celestine Prophecy. This integrated approach feels like a deeper, more connected way of living and engaging with the world.

Here’s how I can incorporate prayer extensions into daily life:

1. Thought Extension – Shifting Focus to What I Truly Desire
   Instead of focusing on what feels lacking, I can redirect my thoughts toward what I truly desire—whether it’s peace, fulfillment, or clarity. Each day, after the kids are asleep, I can take a moment to visualize a life where I feel grounded and content. I imagine details like a peaceful home, fulfilling work, and harmonious time with my children, allowing these images to shift my focus toward what’s possible.
2. Feeling Extension – Cultivating Gratitude and Joy
   My feelings shape how I engage with life. When I feel overwhelmed or dissatisfied, I can place my hands on my heart, breathe deeply, and consciously think of something that brought me joy today—whether it’s a shared laugh with the kids or a quiet cup of tea. These small moments of gratitude help shift my emotional energy toward more joy and peace.
3. Heart Extension – Connecting with Self-Compassion
   I’ve often been in the mode of caring for others, but I can remind myself to turn compassion inward. In a quiet moment, I can bring my awareness to my heart, imagining a warm, glowing light filling me with kindness. This simple act helps soften the "I’ll be happy when…" mindset and allows me to embrace that I am enough, right here and now.
4. Body Extension – Grounding in the Present
   When I feel overwhelmed, I can focus on grounding myself by tuning into my physical sensations. Whether it’s slowing my breath, relaxing my muscles, or taking a mindful walk, these practices bring me back to the present moment, shifting my energy to a state of calm presence.

While the four prayer extensions focus on cultivating peace, clarity, and compassion, I’ve come to realise that maintaining healthy boundaries is essential to truly embodying these states. Boundaries don’t contradict the peace I seek—they are a vital part of it. Setting clear emotional limits protects my well-being, allowing me to show up with more presence and compassion for myself and others.

For example, the Thought Extension encourages me to focus on what I truly desire, which includes the emotional space I need to thrive. The Feeling Extension reminds me that gratitude and joy are best nurtured when I feel emotionally safe, which strong boundaries help create. The Heart Extension centers on self-compassion, and part of that compassion is knowing when to protect my energy. Finally, the Body Extension teaches me to ground myself in the present moment, and boundaries help me stay rooted in peace rather than caught up in emotional turbulence.

By integrating boundaries with these practices, I create a more balanced and peaceful foundation in my relationships—especially when co-parenting or navigating my time with the children

Navigating life’s emotional complexities can feel like a delicate balancing act, especially when grappling with the challenge of finding peace while feeling torn between different areas of life. Whether it’s through split living, changing family dynamics, or other transitions, many of us face moments that challenge our sense of peace and connection.

In these times, pausing to reflect on the tools we have at our disposal can be incredibly helpful. For me, exploring concepts like the prayer extensions from James Redfield’s work has provided a pathway to reconnecting with my inner self. By focusing on my desires, cultivating gratitude, and practicing self-compassion, I feel better equipped to navigate emotional turbulence.

However, everyone’s journey is unique. As you reflect on your own experiences, consider how you can appreciate the small joys in life, recognising that each moment allows us to be fully present, no matter where we are. How might you reconnect with the present to find balance amid the pull of conflicting responsibilities?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy A Step Too Far: Finding Balance in a Busy Life, Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Will Be Your Limitation, The Art of Learning to Have and Hold Boundaries Healthily When Healing From Trauma Responses and Do We Need to Better Understand the Pivotal Role of Parenting to Evolve? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. 

When I read Soraya Lane’s visceral description of the ongoing rape of an inmate at Auschwitz by a guard, I was particularly struck by the character’s reactions to the sounds and sensations—the guard’s approach, the smell of his breath, and her struggle to control her own responses, including the mindful and slow eating of the meager rations he’d bring her for “afterwards,” all while facing the overpowering urge to wolf down whatever was put in front of her in the midst of starvation. These sensitivities resonate deeply with my own reactions to certain sounds, like chewing, which trigger intense anxiety and disgust, even though I’ve never experienced abuse of that sort.

Misophonia is a condition characterized by strong emotional responses to specific sounds, such as anger, anxiety, or disgust. Everyday noises like chewing, breathing, or tapping can become overwhelming and unbearable for those affected. It’s not merely a dislike; it’s an involuntary, powerful reaction that impacts mood and behavior.

Although I try to manage my reactions, these intense feelings sometimes slip out as sarcastic comments or misplaced frustration. The internal voice behind these responses often echoes my mum’s strong disdain and criticisms, highlighting how much I’ve internalised her perspective. There are various theories about the causes of misophonia, and for years, I’ve wondered whether my condition arises from my high sensory sensitivity and empathic nature, or if it’s a form of secondary trauma—or perhaps a combination of both.

My mum had a deep aversion to anything she considered uncouth or improper. She was often quick to express her disapproval of burping, swearing, sniffing, or poor hygiene. Public displays like spitting or men scratching themselves filled her with anger, and even casual references to sex would elicit stern looks and sharp comments. I sometimes wonder if her strong reactions stemmed from more direct trauma or if they reflect a pattern that has emerged from our family history.

The most obvious source is my grandfather, her father, who died when she was a child. He was an abusive alcoholic and died of lung cancer. Many people don’t feel the need to dig into their past, finding enough explanation in their upbringing, but for me, it feels like there’s more to it—especially when it comes to the intensity of my misophonia. Learning about inherited trauma has helped me make sense of things that don’t seem to be explained by my personal experiences alone.

For many generations, trauma has been something to be buried or suppressed, with emotional struggles viewed as signs of weakness. Resilience was seen as stoicism, and confronting trauma was thought to worsen the pain. This mentality is still prevalent today, although through modern psychology and figures like Edith Eger and Bessel van der Kolk, we now understand that processing trauma is essential for healing. Trauma, when unaddressed, lingers in both mind and body, affecting not only the individual but future generations.

My grandfather's abusive behavior could have affected me through inherited stress responses, potentially explaining my predisposition to anxiety, hypervigilance, or difficulty regulating emotions. It may also influence how I form relationships, trust others, and cope with challenges – in ways that are advantageous or disadvantageous. On a physical level, trauma passed through generations can lead to chronic stress, which is linked to health problems.

In essence, his behavior might have shaped not just our family dynamics but also my emotional and physical health today. This can manifest in ways we now understand scientifically, such as:
​

1. Epigenetic Changes: Trauma can alter gene expression, potentially increasing sensitivity to stress and anxiety in future generations.
2. Dysregulation of the Stress Response: An inherited overactive fight-or-flight response may lead to hypervigilance, emotional dysregulation, or chronic stress.
3. Attachment Patterns: Trauma may affect emotional regulation and attachment, leading to difficulties forming secure relationships and managing emotions.
4. Increased Risk for Substance Use or Mental Health Issues: Trauma can elevate the risk of mood disorders or substance abuse across generations.
5. Chronic Health Issues: Trauma-induced stress can contribute to chronic inflammation, which is linked to health issues like cardiovascular disease or autoimmune disorders.
6. Behavioral Patterns: Family dynamics influenced by trauma can lead to re-enactments, such as perfectionism or over-responsibility for others' emotions.

The idea that trauma can be passed through generations emerged from a range of scientific fields, with key contributors like Rachel Yehuda, Dr. Bruce McEwen, and Bessel van der Kolk showing how trauma can be inherited and linger in the body and mind.

In The Choice, a biographical account of her time in Auschwitz and the life she has led in the years since, Dr. Edith Eger reflects on her long-held belief that avoiding trauma was the path to healing, only to realize that true liberation comes from confronting it. She explains how burying the trauma led to deep emotional pain and anxiety, and it wasn’t until she began processing her experiences that she found freedom. Her words, “To heal is to take a risk—to step into the unknown and embrace change,” resonate deeply.

Throughout my life, I’ve sought various ways to confront and heal these deeply rooted patterns. Thought leaders and therapists who understand intergenerational trauma, such as Dr. Gabor Maté, Teal Swan, and Evette Rose, have played a crucial role in helping me uncover the connections between my emotional triggers and past family dynamics. They have also given me tools to manage my reactions and make sense of feelings that once seemed overwhelming or disconnected from my direct experiences.

Holistic and somatic approaches like meditation, hypnosis, Heilkunst, chiropractic care, and energy healing have helped me reconnect with my body, reminding me that trauma isn’t just stored in the mind but can reside in the physical body as well. Practices like journaling, meditation, and spending time in nature have been essential in creating space for introspection, while also offering a release from the constant noise in my head.

Even though I’ve made real progress, I can feel that there are still deeper layers to explore, and that’s completely okay. Healing these deep-seated patterns takes time and a mix of different approaches, especially when they’re connected to family dynamics and inherited trauma. I’ve learned that this journey isn’t a straight path or something that happens quickly; it unfolds in cycles and stages as I gradually peel back layers of old pain and gently bring them to light.

When we confront our trauma and untangle those inherited patterns, we not only improve our own lives but also set a better example for future generations. By breaking the cycle of pain, we build resilience, nurture healthier relationships, and leave behind a more hopeful legacy for our children and their children.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Clear the Fog of Trauma to See the Magnificence of Your Being, Shed the Layers of Pretence - What Does it Truly Mean to Be You?, The Soul’s Yearning – How to Recognise Your Inner Work and Are You Overly Responsible? Actually Seeing Yourself Through Fresh Eyes. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. 

I realised, as I started to work with one of my kids about creating more awareness around their well being, and having a more balanced approach to their days, that I perhaps need to look at whether I have the right balance in my own life.

We seem to live in a society that values productivity that can be outwardly measured—things like achievements, tasks completed, and visible progress. But how can we recognise and value the less obvious aspects of well-being?

Like many adolescents today, my kids struggle with social anxiety and healthily processing their emotions, which they feel very intensely. Recently, we did a project together focused on their well-being, and we both enjoyed it. Noticing how important processing time is for them, especially with all the academic and social input they receive, helped them understand the balance I try to maintain with screen time and boundaries.

Here's how we did it:               

1. Brainstorm Activities: We started by listing all the activities they do, from basic needs like sleeping, eating and showering to things like, school, extracurricular activities, screen time and socializing.
2. Identify Essentials: Next, they circled the activities that are essential for survival, like eating and sleeping.
3. Assess Energy Impact: Then, we went through the list and added symbols to each activity: a "+" for those that give energy, a "-" for those that drain energy, and an "=" for those that are neutral.
4. Notice Anything Missing: Finally, we looked for any activities that might be missing. The surprise for them was realizing the importance of processing time—taking time to think and reflect on experiences.

I explained this by comparing it to eating without digesting or eliminating waste. As I illustrated this, they realised that all the academic, social, and emotional input they receive also needs to be processed similarly. Then we listed all the ways they naturally do this through activities like journaling, singing, drawing, or even showering—if they have the time.

I’m trying to teach them that it's not just about what we accomplish externally, but also about noticing and making time for the things we need internally, like emotional balance and physical health, which aren't always as apparent.

Next, we shaded in their current activities on a weekly calendar, and they could clearly see that processing time was missing when they stayed on their screen until late. I think this visual helped them understand the balance they need and why they have certain boundaries in place to help them manage that balance.

We also explored what happens when they are out of balance. This can manifest in various ways—like feeling more tired, getting sick more often, struggling to cope with everyday challenges, and perceiving things as more intense or disproportionate to reality. All of these signs indicate that their well-being is being compromised when things aren't in balance.

One tool we've been using to track how things are going is an emotions intensity scale, which we use for a quick check in; they rate the intensity of their feelings from 1 (not intense) to 10 (very intense). To build on that, I suggested adding a similar scale for physical feelings, to check in on how their body is doing.

For the physical scale, they rate how they’re feeling physically, with 1 indicating they’re feeling very run down or unwell and 10 meaning they’re feeling really good and energised. A lower number on the physical scale shows they’re feeling more run down, while a higher number suggests they’re physically better.

The idea is to have my children think about the two numbers each day—one reflecting how they're feeling emotionally and the other for their physical state. This helps them build awareness and track how both their emotions and physical condition change over time, and it also allows me to stay connected and understand how they’re doing, even when I’m not there.

This practice also helps them recognise which activities require more energy and which need less, helping them plan their timing better—like when asking for sleepovers or lots of socialising. It also helps them notice the natural cyclical changes within their own body.

A wise friend of mine recommended scheduling around the days of her menstrual cycle and ovulation because she knows her physical and emotional states change during those times. As best as she can, she works with that when planning activities and commitments. My kids may not be at that level of awareness yet, but they will get there. To be fair, it’s really only relatively recently I’ve started to do that myself.

As I’ve been guiding my kids through this, I’ve noticed how their expanding social lives impact my own energy levels. Something as simple as driving to the local bowling alley in the evening to pick them up can leave me feeling drained when I’d normally be at home unwinding. I can always tell when I haven't picked up a book in a few days—my muscles are tight and stressed from overworking on the computer, signaling that I need more downtime to get lost in some fiction.

Holding my own boundaries and prioritising self-care will become even more important as my kids grow and start to go through that phase where they burn the candle at both ends. I’ve experienced burnout enough times in my life to realise that I need balance. And just as I’m teaching my children to find their balance, I’m reminded that I need to maintain mine as well.

As parents, we often focus so much on guiding our children that we forget to apply the same principles to ourselves. Just as our kids need balance to thrive, so do we. It's easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of daily life but, for me, recognising when I’m out of kilter is crucial. By modeling self-care and setting boundaries, I can teach my children by example that maintaining well-being is a lifelong practice.

Reflecting on the importance of processing time, I'm reminded of how essential it is for all of us. Making room to reflect isn't just about improving our well-being; it's about recognising that in a world focused on productivity, the quieter, less visible moments of self-care and contemplation are equally important. By intentionally carving out this time, we nurture our emotional and physical health, ensuring we're fully present and ready to take on whatever life throws our way. In doing so, we're creating a more balanced, fulfilling life for ourselves and our loved ones.

So, as you consider your own well-being today, remember the exercise we discussed: rate your emotional state from 1 to 10, with 1 being not intense at all and 10 being very intense. Then, rate your physical state from 1 to 10, with 1 being very run down and 10 being fully energised. How are you feeling today?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Finding Balance: Making Big Changes Through Small Steps in a Complex Life, Start With the Self and the Rest Will Take Care of Its-Self, Make Choices That Will Have the Most Positive Impact in Your Life and Mastering the Art of Inner Harmony: A Journey from Turmoil to Tranquility. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. 

Navigating the challenges of raising children whose learning needs don’t align with the way the curriculum is taught requires us to consider both their experiences and our emotional responses. Reflecting with close friends on the challenges of motherhood, especially when raising children who struggle with school, I found myself wondering, “Are there parents out there whose kids genuinely find joy in life?”

While my kids enjoy certain aspects of life, their day-to-day experience with school is something they loathe. I often think how much more fulfilling it might feel to be the parent of children who are truly happy.

Yet I also know that life’s challenges are where our opportunities for growth come from. In my fifties, I wouldn’t have half the resilience, competence, and confidence my kids see in me if I hadn’t been through some tough times. Not that we wish tough times on our kids, but they are an inevitable part of life, and I try to teach them that they can do hard things. I truly hope that as I watch them grow and mature into adulthood, I’ll see them flourishing, and that may bring a deeper sense of fulfillment in my role as a parent.

I don’t remember being as miserable as my kids when I was growing up. I remember the thrill of climbing onto the top of communal garage blocks, running across rooftops, and playing games like Hide and Seek with friends in my younger years. Sure, there was angst over friendships and boyfriends, anxiety in new situations, and resistance to my mum’s behavior and opinions most of the time, but on the whole, school wasn’t something I actively resisted. On the contrary, it was an area where I found autonomy and independence.

Through my competitive swimming, I experienced another world of independence outside the home, traveling to distant towns and staying away overnight. My mum used to say the biggest benefit of the intense training schedule was keeping me off the streets while doing something healthy. In high school, though, I always felt like I didn’t belong. I was “Shona the Swimmer” or, devastatingly once called, “Shona the Man” because I did Physical Education with the boys. I was dorky, wreaked of l'eau de chlorine, and often drifted off in class. But thankfully I didn’t have any learning difficulties; I did reasonably well academically.

Reflecting on my childhood, I can’t help but contrast it with the experiences of my kids. It makes me think about what Abraham Hicks says—that the purpose of life is to experience joy. When we’re true to ourselves and follow our inner guidance, we naturally feel joyful. Growth happens as a by-product of that joy; we don’t need to force it. But then I think about how tough it is for kids with learning challenges. The traditional school environment can be so frustrating for them because it doesn’t fit how they naturally learn. Every day can feel like a great effort, and it’s hard for them to find any joy or motivation in that kind of setting.

From kindergarten onward, my kids have balked at being in school. I didn’t fully understand why they seemed so exhausted and overwhelmed early on. Sure, there are days when they go without fuss, and occasionally things they look forward to, but both have (different) dyslexic and sensory challenges that make the learning environment particularly tough, leading to resistance and frustration.

I think about the concept of optimal motivation, which involves aligning tasks with intrinsic goals or value. While I understand that there are things in life we might not want to do but have no choice about other than choosing our attitude, for most kids, this is a level beyond their understanding unless they regularly see it role-modeled. Their childhood is filled with obligations they have to fulfill because the government or their parents say so.

For many kids, especially those who are neurodivergent, understanding and embracing the idea that they can choose their attitude toward learning tasks is both complex and often unattainable. They may struggle to see the purpose behind what they’re forced to learn in class, leading to feelings of frustration, resentment, or even helplessness.

As children grow, how they internalize these experiences can significantly shape their adult behavior. Some may continue to comply out of fear of disappointing others, leading to a pattern of people-pleasing and self-sacrifice. Others might rebel, seeking to assert their autonomy but sometimes doing so in ways that are self-centered or harmful to others. Finding that balanced approach—being assertive yet mindful and compassionate—is rare and often requires a conscious effort in adulthood to unlearn deeply ingrained patterns.

At the age my youngest is now, I was immersed in an intense routine—swimming morning and evening, attending school all day, and sneaking in late-night reading sessions by the hallway light. In contrast, my youngest doesn’t seem to have any strong interests outside of school. Social activities are rare, and by the end of the school day, they are completely drained, having expended all their energy at school.

My older child, who overcame many early reading and writing challenges, would greatly benefit from a hands-on, project-based learning environment now that they are in high school. They thrive in settings involving experiments, arts, crafts, and building models. Unfortunately, traditional education still relies heavily on a lecture-based approach, where teachers present information and students are expected to follow along all at the same pace. This system can be particularly challenging for students with non-linear thinking, as it often exacerbates issues related to memory, organization, time management, concentration, and communication.

On top of these learning challenges, my children also navigate typical social anxieties and emotional pressures of being teens—further complicated by screens and social media. These factors often lead to internalised stress, adding to their complexity of experience.

Reflecting on their journey since kindergarten, I understand the value of both education and resilience, yet it’s heartbreaking as a parent to see every day feel like a struggle for my children. I often feel frustrated with how the education system seems to overlook opportunities to make learning more engaging and fulfilling.

As I think about re-imagining education, it closely aligns with my current book project on healthcare, finding better ways to support people more holistically. While my current focus is on health, I’m eager to explore and share the stories of the people and organisations doing something different in terms of engaging our younger generations more holistically into the realms of learning.

It’s been forty years since I sat in a classroom, and back then, neurodivergences were not recognized. Those who struggled with traditional methods were often misunderstood and labeled unfairly. I’ve encountered many intelligent individuals who were misjudged simply because the system didn’t accommodate their learning styles.

Today, we recognize that learning differences exist, yet many educational systems still rely on outdated methods. This raises an important question: When will we embrace a more inclusive approach that truly supports diverse learning needs?

As we reflect on these issues, I invite you to consider your own experiences with education and the impact of outdated systems. How can we collectively work towards a future where every child’s learning style is valued and supported? How can we advocate for changes that will make learning more engaging and effective for all students? Your insights and actions could be key to driving the transformation we so urgently need.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Finding Balance: Making Big Changes Through Small Steps in a Complex Life, The Silent Wins: How to Acknowledge and Celebrate Your Growth, Leaders Who Walk the Talk and Are Interested in People and Self Empowerment , Crafting a New Vision for Healthcare: How Our Personal Journeys Shape the Future and Evolving Education. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. 

When Evette Rose first asked me, "Do you know how to have boundaries without having to fight for them? And how to have peace, respect, love, and support without fighting for it?" I didn’t know the answer. I have kept this question close ever since and can now honestly say, "Yes."

Over time, I've learned to maintain my boundaries without getting overly triggered, even when dealing with people who disregard them. This has been mentally taxing, perplexing, and oftentimes frustrating. However, I now have the experience of holding my boundaries without triggering my prefrontal cortex to shut down, inducing mental paralysis and panic. This has reduced my stress and allowed me to remain calm and clear-headed.

Sometimes we can walk away from boundary violators, and sometimes we can’t, making it critical to learn how to navigate holding our boundaries, even if that means going through a legal process. Lawyers and court systems are not my favorite arena. In my early twenties, I experienced a car accident caused by a driver who fell asleep at the wheel. The driver denied causing the accident, leading us to court. I was naïve, believing that simply telling the truth would suffice.

The driver was dazed and didn’t offer much at the scene; he had driven straight over the central line, glancing off my car and crashing into the one behind, causing it to flip. We were stunned when he denied causing the crash. I remember us all sitting in one of the waiting rooms to be called one at a time to the witness stand.

Then came the moment when the driver’s lawyer, with his funny little wig you see in British TV dramas, looked at me and said with conviction, “I put it to you, Miss Keachie, that you were the one who crossed the central line and crashed into my client.” I was momentarily stunned, then enraged.

My mum had taught me nothing if not to be honest. That lesson had been locked in many years before. Facing the consequences of my actions isn’t something I’d shy away from; I learned from an early age to own my actions. To have this guy accuse me of the very thing he had done was infuriating. I think I responded with great indignance, that indeed I had not lost control and driven on the wrong side of the road, but I threw in a profanity for emphasis and got reprimanded by the judge, which then put me in freeze mode.

It turned out that the guy was training to be a driving instructor, and his conviction would end his career before it started. In order to get what he wanted, he saw no harm in accusing others of his own behaviour. Clearly, he was not brought up by parents like mine. I have to say, I’d rather be honorable, so I am glad they taught me to be that way. Naivety, though, was a lesson life has since shaken me out of.

There have been a couple of other occasions where I have found myself getting activated within the legal system, but it’s not the system itself; it’s how people often use it to exacerbate already stressful situations. Disputes over a deceased person’s estate, disputes over property, tax, land, custody battles—the list goes on.

In my life, I’ve certainly come up against some very self-serving people. To be fair, I think we are all driven to be self-serving; it’s our nature. If we don’t put our own needs first, who will? What I’m referring to are those people who do it at the expense of others, like the driver of that car. They are the ones our nervous systems are supposed to alert us to, but many of us have maladapted nervous systems.

Neural pathways begin to form in response to how well (or not) our needs are met in childhood, regardless of parents' intentions or love. Dr. Gabor Maté explains that children are inherently connected to their parents (or caregivers) for survival. Even small rejections can force children to choose between rejecting their parents or parts of themselves, as rejecting parents is not an option when we are little and completely reliant. Our set point of "safe" in the nervous system, the command center of a human’s fight-flight response, therefore directly relates to the home life we experienced growing up. 

For those with overt abuse, trauma is easily recognizable. But even for many with seemingly normal childhoods, developmental trauma may still exist. This makes rational sense when you consider that, for a long time, the focus of child-rearing has been on teaching children to be good and fit in. While important, this should come after establishing a healthy sense of self and safety, which is often overlooked. 

Common occurrences like leaving a baby to cry or forcing a child to eat on a schedule can feel rejecting to a child. While such treatment might make an adult feel isolated and unimportant, for a dependent child, these experiences can be profoundly devastating. Repeated instances can lead to developmental trauma, resulting in emotional overreactions and nervous system dysregulation in unrelated situations later in life.

More critically, these early experiences can instill unhelpful belief patterns such as "I’m unworthy," "I’m alone," "I’m powerless," "I’m not wanted," "I don’t belong," and/or "I’m worthless" to name a few. This often manifests as inherited patterns of behavior. James Redfield's "The Celestine Prophecy" describes four archetypal control strategies parents employ: Intimidators, Interrogators, Aloofs, and Poor Me's. These strategies perpetuate unhealthy patterns unless the cycle is broken. Addressing these patterns is crucial for personal growth.

It’s these "normal" patterns that the legal system can exploit, profiting from dysregulated people chasing "justice." However, with self-regulation, one can navigate legal conflicts more calmly, even if they need a mediator to do so.

To be fair, it would be hard for a mediator to help someone change a lifetime pattern of dysregulated behavior just to navigate one conversation. That is actually our responsibility, but mediators are taught methods that try to keep to the facts and take as much of the emotive reactions out of it as possible.

For those interested in learning how to heal their nervous system, I discussed this more in The Path to Purpose and Clarity: How Healing Transforms Your Career Goals. It’s not an overnight job, but it’s worth the effort. In fact, it may even be your purpose in being here, to break those patterns in your family chain.

But what I find interesting as I contemplate navigating the legal system once more is that there have also been times when I’ve done this with reasonable people. What was involved in those situations wasn’t any dispute; agreement had been reached without any huge emotional upheaval, and the legal system was, in fact, a series of cogs and wheels to navigate with form filling and following a set process, providing the right paperwork and fees, and so on.

Now, when I think of Evette’s question, "Do you know how to have boundaries without having to fight for them? And how to have peace, respect, love, and support without fighting for it?" I understand that it doesn’t mean capitulating to boundary violators for peace. There is no peace in that. I have enough love and respect for myself to know that sometimes further action is required. Even if someone tries to create a fight, remember it takes two to have one. With my nervous system now in a healthy state, I trust that I can navigate even the legal system with patience, calm, and ease.

Reflecting on these experiences, I've come to realise that maintaining boundaries and seeking justice doesn't have to be a combative process. It requires self-awareness, emotional regulation, and the courage to stand firm in our values, even in the face of opposition. Given that this can be an emotive topic, keep in mind my reflections are primarily a means for my own reflection and personal journey of self-growth, shared in case they resonate as opposed to being a strategy or a tool to influence others.

As we navigate our own paths, it's important to ask ourselves: How can we create and uphold our boundaries in a way that promotes peace, respect, love, and support without resorting to conflict? Can we find the strength within to transform adversarial encounters into opportunities for growth and understanding? Embracing these questions can guide us towards a more harmonious and fulfilling journey, where our personal growth and the holding of boundaries are intertwined with compassion and self-awareness.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Normal Is Dysfunctional That Is the Growth Opportunity, What Is Holding You Back? Reclaim Your Worth, Your Love, Your Power, Do You Yearn for Better Outcomes? First Commit to Observing Your Reactions, Put Mature Parts of You in the Driving Seat for Better Results, Why Being Passive Can Be Powerful and Shine Your Inner Light - Let No One Keep You Down. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. 

Many years ago an old mentor of mine told me I had to create space in my life in order for something new to arise. Today, as I drew the Death card (I draw a tarot card each day, it’s fun, and I take what resonates from its meaning) that again reinforced that endings are a natural part of life, and that it is time to let go of what is no longer needed in order to create room for the new.

Last week I had been reflecting on the changing tides of parenting. After years and years of being present, observing, noticing, experiencing, and managing my children’s lives, they are now in a phase where it’s time to gradually let go so they can be more consciously present, observe, notice, experience and start to learn to manage more aspects of their own lives.

Additionally, the dynamics of split living and their father's preference for parallel parenting over co-parenting present their own set of opportunities and challenges. Despite the ongoing and time-consuming responsibilities in the coming years, including involvement in schools, healthcare, and other areas, the Death card reminds me to enjoy the new experiences that will emerge as the balance of responsibilities shifts from me to them, creating new space.

It begs the following questions, which come when any stage in life is coming to an end:

• Is it possible for me to be flexible enough to let go of what is dying away?
• Is it possible for me to be courageous enough to embrace the new without hesitation?
• What actions will I need to take in order to grieve appropriately for what has been lost?

Being on holiday without parental responsibilities (the children are on a separate trip with their dad) has given me that space to take a pause between chapters. The resort I’m staying in reminds me of one I stayed in with the children when they were much younger. As I watch families at the pool, it’s given me the time to reflect on that period of their childhood that was full of wonder but also – from a parenting perspective – rather intense.

As has happened often in the past, it’s another point at which I can look at my children through fresh eyes and see that they are more capable than ever before, giving me confidence that the changing tides are indeed ones on which something fresh and surprising can arrive.

In the last week I’ve consumed three novels, swam in one of the Seven Natural Wonder’s of the world, and spent a lot of time reflecting and relaxing in a beautiful place. At this time of the year Cairns is just the right temperature, with just the right amount of cloud coverage and, with great company to enjoy also, it’s been a beautiful retreat from the usual responsibilities of life.

And I suspect the things I’ve been drawn to hold clues as to the possibilities that can arrive on changing tides. Out at the Great Barrier Reef I again experienced this sense of connectedness with all of life, and the impact and ramifications of human consumption and ignorance. But, in equal measure, I saw life’s ability to regenerate and thrive, and the absolutely stunning results of that.

In a novel set in Auschwitz, written by Soraya Lane, I was deeply engrossed yet again in the ways in which people can rise to their potential in times of great trauma. This reinforced the message that the traumatic experiences I’ve had in my life are not in vain, they are a catalyst for something more, and something that can help others.

And in another novel by Tracey Rees, one of the characters (Jarvis) asks the other (Gwen) “I don’t know why you’re so shy when you’re so articulate. Do you ever try writing? Like books and stuff?” She is so astonished to be asked and yet he says “Seems like you fit the profile. You’re good with words and you clearly love stories. You’ve got an imagination, and you don’t look like the world holds much interest for you, no offence”.
Gwen is breathless, wondering if she really does fit the profile. “She loves books more than anything. She can never imagine herself being a go-getter, making money or selling houses o whatever normal people do…but in school her career’s advisor told her you can’t make money that way and you have to make a living…”

While I don’t see myself as a novelist, I’m more of a memoirist, I notice my affinity with her thoughts, and suspect that the things I have been drawn to are providing clues; clues that aren’t yet definitive answers or firm footholds, but are definite signposts of interest.

As this chapter of reflection draws to a close, I invite you to consider your own life: What endings are you facing, and how might you create space for something new? Are you flexible enough to let go of what no longer serves you and courageous enough to embrace the unknown? Reflect on the clues around you—they might just be pointing you toward a new and enriching chapter in your own story.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Take That First Brave Step Towards New Beginnings and Creative Energy, Even in Grief There Are lessons to Be Learned, Who Am I Now? and Take the Quantum Leap: Nurture Your Creativity and Intuition to Craft a Life of Purpose. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. 

As I write this, it’s Mother’s Day in New Zealand and yet my children and I are the furthest apart geographically we have ever been, on separate holidays. My kids are having a ball with their dad, and I’m having the first proper relaxing holiday I’ve had in many years.

Split living wasn’t something I ever envisaged, although it has its pros and cons like everything. In fact, I was just reflecting how I really didn’t envisage much at all and how many of my expectations about parenthood were really unconscious.

I always wanted to be a parent, and to do the best job I could, but beyond the “meeting someone, falling in love and having a family together” cliché, I hadn’t really put in huge amounts of thought to the specific role each parent would play in our children’s lives.

Despite growing up in an era where girls and boys were treated equally in many ways in the schooling system (we all did cooking classes and woodworking classes together, for example), there was the subtle yet powerful silent message that women stayed at home to look after the house and children, because – well – that is what the model was in the vast majority of households in 1970’s and 1980’s West of Scotland.

I grew up in a large extended family and many of my cousins were ten to fifteen years ahead of me, it felt that most years our family would attend at least one wedding and/or christening. Whether to have children was never really a question in my mind as I held each of my adorable little first cousins’ once removed.That unique fresh baby smell, the fragility and innocence and joy wrapped up in a bundle that needed so much attention was a beacon to move towards from a time before conscious memories or deliberation ever kicked in.

As I tussled with which direction to move in my career, wrangling at every turn as nothing felt like quite the right fit, there came a point among many questions, exercises and books that I drew out a map of my life. It was a long and winding road and I had been asked to make in moments and stages. I started at the end when I’d be a grandmother.

That one exercise demonstrates to me that my having children was never a question. The “meeting someone, falling in love and having a family” part seemed more problematic. Now I know why, which is a whole other story which I summed up recently in Devote Your Attention to Ways You Impact Others and How You’re Truly Treated, we are not always attracted to compatible or healthy relationships.

As I found myself on my third “live together” relationship, I again noticed how I was shouldering the vast majority of responsibilities in regard to running the house. With both of us working full time, I questioned why I was doing that but, suffice to say, didn’t do anything much about it.

Therefore, despite all that had been said beforehand in the rosy glow of shared dreams of having a family, I also found myself shouldering the vast majority of the responsibilities in regard to bringing up my children. This is no surprise really and I remember when a colleague was basking in her rosy glow, and was making her partner pre cooked meals for the days she was going away on a business trip, telling her that she was making herself a metaphorical bed she’d probably come to regret lying in once they had children.

The reality of having a baby is enormous. For a start, there is the sheer miracle of creation to start with. My children were pregnancies five and six, so when I finally sustained a pregnancy, that miracle felt very real as I watched a tiny human grow inside me.

Then there is the birthing process which – despite women having navigated since time immemorial – is nothing short of remarkable. For anyone who hasn’t actually seen a baby being born in their presence, it is worth a look at a photo of a wooden dilation chart showing a baby’s head (tip use those words as a prompt to search for one), and then look at an image of a human female’s pelvic bone to get a solid sense of the challenge.

All that was just to get to the starting line. Everyone told me how healthy breastfeeding is; no one told me that – at the outset – it would take up to ten hours of my day. Far less the wondrous world of “guess what baby is unhappy about”, which is the process of intimately getting to know whether our child is crying because it needs its nappy changed, needs fed, needs to sleep, is unwell or just needs comforted after its own rather traumatic ordeal of being born.

To imagine birth, think of being nestled comfortably in a relatively quiet and dark space then, all of a sudden feeling yourself thrust from that down through a narrow tube contracting and squeezing, with a diameter just fractionally wider than your head. It's a remarkable feat of flexibility and compression, not to mention quite a traumatic experience that unconsciously lives on in our bodies.

As our children grow and we become more attuned to their nature and needs, we notice patterns. When my teen daughter cries that I can’t possibly know how her body will respond to days of over exposure to social and screen time, together with a lack of sleep, I sigh inwardly. Years and years of being present, observing, noticing, experiencing, that is how mothers know.

And for all that we know, we have to gradually let go and let our children be present, observe, notice and experience their own body, their own thoughts and their own feelings. Along the way they too will be no doubt be attracted to incompatible or unhealthy situations and relationships in a bid to get to know themselves. Because it’s in the contrasts of life that we grow.

Not since infancy do we go through such rapid growth as in adolescence. As a mum navigating this time in my children’s lives, one of the hardest challenges isn’t letting go. In truth, letting go of the cumbersome impossibility of managing someone else’s life constantly is a relief. The hard part is not that, it’s that – in order not to expose our children to responsibilities they are not yet ready for – it has to be a gradual letting go.

Let me give another analogy to get a sense of this. If I’m driving and become aware I need to pee, but there’s no toilet for miles, I hold on. Then I see a road sign for the next rest break, I am counting down towards it. Then I run to the loo, barely able to hold on, and there’s a queue. Suddenly I’m wishing I’d prepared myself for this better, had somehow been able to let go gradually.

Letting go gradually is a unique mix of developmental stage and maturity, circumstances, and our own awareness of all these things and what they mean. And gradual isn’t like the steady running of a tap, it happens more in bursts or fits and starts.

Add in the mix that I’m not the only parent, like all children, ours are the manifestation of two sets of genetic material and life’s longing for itself. While I've always been deeply involved in managing our children's lives and have developed a certain approach based on my experiences and insights, his involvement now comes with its own unique style and preferences. This is another learning process which can also be challenging to navigate, especially given his preference for parallel parenting rather than co-parenting.

As I sit here on Mother’s Day, relishing my first day of a truly relaxing holiday, I can't help but reflect on the evolving phases of motherhood. Much like navigating through a series of twists and turns on a winding road, I find myself in a different phase now.

My ultimate goal remains: to nurture authentic, self-respecting humans who can thrive independently by the time they reach adulthood. However, now more than ever, the parenting journey feels like adjusting the flow of water from a tap. While the tap is still firmly on, I'm being challenged to find the right balance and flow to suit our current circumstances while keeping an eye on the long-term goal.

Perhaps as a parent you, too, have navigated twists and turns in your journey, discovering unexpected challenges and joys along the way. If you are not yet a parent, perhaps this will inspire you to do what I didn’t – and may have made my life a little easier – to get to know yourself, your needs, your expectations and your boundaries before becoming a parent. Either way, take a moment to consider how our experiences have shaped our understanding of parenthood and growth. Like the flow of water from a tap, may you find the right balance and rhythm to navigate the ever-changing currents of life.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Why Did I Not Know This About Parenthood?, Normal Is Dysfunctional That Is the Growth Opportunity, When Detours Define Your Destiny and Struggles Forge Your Strengths and Do We Need to Better Understand the Pivotal Role of Parenting to Evolve?. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

"Strength does not come from the body. It comes from the will." - Mahatma Gandhi

All my life I wondered what I was here for. The question of “what is the purpose of life?” was on my mind from a young age and, at every turn, the answer eluded me.

As a young teen training and competing in swimming events regularly, I thought the road to the Olympics was perhaps the path I was destined to pursue. But when I was told I had narrowly missed being chosen for the national squad one year, and if I could improve my time for the 100m breaststroke I’d be in with a chance, I seriously considered whether this was indeed my path.

After a few months I decided it wasn’t. I'm definitely more motivated around others, there’s a kind of effervescence I feel when there is that synergy between like-minded and like-hearted people. Younger me loved swimming because I was part of a great team with a great coach. And when certain people left and the team dynamic changed, my heart was no longer in it.

Then as I was approaching the end of my schooling and had to decide what to do next, I took the path of least resistance and went to university because – still unsure of my next move - it was the pragmatic choice. Some subjects I didn’t enjoy (advanced maths and statistics being good examples) and was really bad at, and others were a breeze and I liked them (like psychology and business studies).

Still not really knowing what I wanted to do, I went for one last study option and pursued a postgraduate diploma in human resource management. From there I fell into jobs in recruitment and then finally customer services – well, customer complaints. There I found a niche championing improvements based on customer feedback, which was what led me to the field of customer service transformation, specializing in the intricacies of people and culture.

Although the puzzle pieces of my professional journey were beginning to make more sense, I knew it wasn’t quite the right fit. Wherever my road was leading was still very unclear to me, it sat like a shadowy enigma in the background of my mind.

And, as much as I couldn’t see my career path, I couldn’t see myself either. Decades spent attempting to meet others’ expectations and striving for perfection left me frustrated, I was yearning for more clarity about my true identity.

But most importantly, at that point in my life there was one thing I was very clear on - and one purpose I had always known I wanted to fulfill – to be a mum. Younger me had envisaged that very clearly, I would meet someone, fall in love and we would have kids, happily ever after… well, not quite.

To make a long story short, heartbreak, feelings of unworthiness, and a series of tumultuous relationships dulled that once vivid dreams. Multiple miscarriages became poignant chapters in my journey, leading to the birth of my children at the age of forty.

Motherhood was a cracking open of the soul. My children are as different from each other as their parents are, yet a mix of us both; and both were demanding in their own ways. No longer was it possible to be superwoman and please everyone all of the time. Life put me under immense pressure at home and at work.

As being a parent was the one thing I was clear about, it took center stage and the complexities of nurturing two individual beings in their growth became the focal point. While my commitment to allowing my children to be true to themselves was unwavering, the journey also drove me to some dark places. Coming face to face with those moments when you realise you sound or act just like your parents, in ways that you do not want to, reverberated in unexpected ways. It challenged me to confront unhelpful patterns and undergo a pretty intense motherhood boot camp

Over the last decade I’ve learned extensively about trauma patterns, secure attachment and attunement, child development stages, toxic relationships, conflict management and wrangled with parts of myself until I came out of the wash clear enough to see. I emerged stronger, wiser and with something entirely new: boundaries.

All that and I was still unclear about my purpose in terms of what service I might be to the wider world in this life. I started to take on some life coaching clients, which felt good but not entirely on point. Than one day, as if orchestrated by the universe, a moment of clarity dawned.

Reading a description of a card depicting a compass, the words resonated deep within: "You are a Pathfinder guiding others on their journeys... Having followed your own path, you have evolved to embrace your gifts, establish your passions and desire to use them for the collective good..." Fifty-two years into my journey, the realisation struck – the struggle to see my path was, in fact, the path. The very challenges and uncertainties that seemed like detours were the transformative forces shaping me into a Pathfinder. Helping myself had became the cornerstone of being able to help others.

As I embraced this idea of being a Pathfinder, I totally resonated with a commitment to leading others on a quest for their truth and authenticity, illuminating obscured aspects of their situations or relationships. It was a revelation that spoke to the very core of my being, a purpose that had been veiled until that moment of clarity.

Yet, while I appreciate the independence of managing my workload and working one-on-one with clients, the synergy that arises from a great team is truly majestic. I find it puzzling when healthcare practitioners avoid discussing clients with each other for confidentiality reasons; I believe collaboration (with consent) could lead to a more holistic understanding and faster resolution of issues. Moving forward, I hold a vision of collaborating with like-minded and like-hearted individuals to achieve this kind of holistic approach through teamwork.

As I reflect on the myriad struggles life presented, I am reminded of a recent experience at a group Family Constellations session I attended. I witnessed an older lady - who had been abused by her father from the time she was a baby – take back her power and see herself clearly for the first time. Despite the harrowing experiences, she recognised her survival and the strength that had blossomed in the aftermath of her struggles.

While no one wishes such traumatic struggles upon anyone, it is a testament to human resilience. We have a remarkable capacity not only to endure but to transcend, rising above the challenges that life throws our way.

This journey of self-discovery has illuminated for me the strength that arises from navigating life's struggles. Reflecting on our individual paths, let us recognize that our ability to transform challenges into strengths is a testament to our resilience. Together, we can navigate the intricate paths of life, supporting one another on our quests for truth, authenticity, and personal growth.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy From the Roots of Anger to the Blossoming of Healthy Boundaries, Embrace Your Real Self, Weave Words Like Wands - Confessions of a Sarcastic Perfectionist, An Open Letter to an Old Friend, Looking Back to See the Clues to Your Destiny and The Quiet Whisperings of Truth That Inspire Our Life. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. 

I was listening to a class this week with Evette Rose about navigating anger on the path of life. She was talking about the physical processes that happen within our bodies when we become angry, and how our body has learned that feeling as a way of keeping us “safe” when it perceives danger.

Sometimes – maybe often, depending on the level of trauma in our past - the perceived danger is triggered not by our actual circumstances, but rather by an ingrained neurobiology from a time in our young lives when our best course of action was to get angry and lash out or to suppress the anger inwards on ourselves. In essence we get stuck in immature and unhealthy ways of dealing with things.

Then, listening to a Teal Swan meditation on Healthy Boundaries, I was asked to look back over my life, to reflect on the times that I didn’t feel good about myself: the times I felt stupid or wrong, guilty or angry with myself, the times I judged myself harshly, criticised myself, felt unacceptable, unsuccessful, not good enough or otherwise beat myself up thinking there was something wrong with me.

Reflecting back on the times I blamed myself for making mistakes, felt ashamed of myself, took too much responsibility for others, lost confidence in myself, sabotaged myself to placate others, put myself down in front of others, or allowed them to use, control or manipulate me or put me down, I recognised the truth in Lisa Romano’s words when she says “It takes courage to love the self others abandoned”.

Because that is, in essence, what happens. Growing up, the parts of us that don’t “fit in” are the parts we deny, suppress and disown. I know I worked hard as a youngster to be physically fit and develop physical and mental resilience in the world, perhaps because that kind of strength was valued in the people and culture around me.

Opening up emotionally wasn’t something anyone I knew really did, that kind of vulnerability was kept for within close and trusted relationships. As a result I didn’t necessarily see a lot of conscious, healthy role modeling around handling conflict, or – perhaps more crucially - repairing after a conflict. And yet, my intuitive and emotional self is highly adept at reading others’ emotional landscape.

That part of me that is more intuitive and sensitive was definitely kept far more hidden, and in my blind faith about safety within certain types of relationships (for example, I believed a romantic partnership or marriage was the safe place to share my true feelings and let people see my true self, because that is what I had seen role modeled, and I believed that grownups in workplaces would act professionally) I have experienced many things coming from left field to teach me that life isn’t quite like that.

Through strong imagery of sitting chest-high in the edge of the ocean, Teal’s meditation asks us to experience those feelings of having abandoned ourselves like waves coming in, crashing into our chest and washing over. Crucially, she asks that we practice sitting with those feelings until they pass.

It’s a practice of not moving into the hard wired responses of lashing out, fleeing, freezing or acquiescing when feeling strong emotions. Whether it’s me abandoning myself in the ways I described above (like blaming myself for mistakes), or someone else attacking me or manipulating me, or in some other way reflecting back to me the anger I often perpetrate upon myself, it takes practice to achieve emotional regulation.

I think perhaps the most shocking of experiences for me has always been those reflections of anger or subjugation from others, because as a kid I perpetrated that upon myself, taking it upon my shoulders to be perfect and avoid those kinds of responses.

However, I find life has a way of needling us in just the right way in order to try and evoke a growth response to develop beyond the unhealthy patterns and unprocessed emotions of those earlier times.

Evette asked the class to define what anger means to us, to consider what anger does (that we feel we can’t) in everyday life, and what does it allows us to feel – other than anger? These were thought provoking and provided valuable insights, as I could see that anger has been the way I’ve felt and expressed my boundaries in the past, and it gave me the outlet and bravery (with its surge of adrenaline) to express opinions I’d otherwise kept suppressed.

Boundaries are those things we will and won’t accept, how we assert them is a whole other communication skill to learn. Briana MacWilliam covers this really well in her attachment courses, and some people quite like the Non Violent Communication courses, but there is plenty of ways out these days to learn the skills.

What I’ve come to really appreciate is the ability to observe my feelings rather than be completely identified with them. This has taken time and practice, and was only possible after practicing meditation regularly. It gives me room to pause and the choice to react differently, in ways that are more healthy and productive.

That said, dealing with my own emotional reactions to insults, aggression, manipulative statements or other attacks, then asserting myself in a calm, rational manner, continues to be a challenge. All I can say is that, over time, I’m getting better. Things that would have thrown me off kilter for days or weeks now disperse in hours or minutes.

And part of that is also about owning who I am, completely.

So what if I live in a world (by this I mean the people and places who surround me) that tends to devalue the role of a stay-at-home parent and, instead, constantly promotes and cajoles you back into a workplace? I used to play that game; it led to burn out, illness.

I value my health and my role as a parent above what others think I should or shouldn’t be focused on. For me, the role is more than feeding, ferrying and clothing my kids. It’s a role that involved completely managing their lives when they are little, to gradually training them for more independence and then moving into a coaching role through their teens.

It’s a role that involves making the best healthcare and educational choices that match my values, and navigating a terrain no other generation of parents has had to navigate – technology (and it’s deliberately designed dopamine driving addiction). It’s a role that involves helping my children to emotionally regulate themselves and to be able to apply critical thinking to situations and relationships. It’s big, and it’s the fostering of the next generation.

So in the past where I would have defended my lack of engagement in the expected route back to the workplace, there is a subtle but healthy change, instead I advocate for my role. I value my role, and I’m immensely proud of the time, focus and energy I’ve put in and continue to put in.

That said, it’s been far from perfect. My time as a parent has been a collection of the good, the bad and the ugly. It’s been a massive learning curve and growth journey, with much healing taking place. In short though, it is a step in the right direction.

The direction I wanted to head was to cultivate kids who are closer than I was in knowing themselves at a younger age, and better able to identify things and people who are compatible with their beliefs and values. If they are able to distinguish toxic from healthy growth, and have confidence to navigate these scenarios even a little better than I was able to in my younger years, then we will have moved forward.

Imagine nurturing a generation unafraid to know themselves, confident in their beliefs, and capable of navigating life's intricate dance? Whether we raise children directly, we are all raising them indirectly through our example.

As you stand on the shore of your own emotional ocean, take a moment to reflect on the waves that have shaped your journey. Consider the insights gained from defining anger's role in your life. Challenge yourself to observe, not just react. Uncover the power to express boundaries with calm assertiveness, acknowledging the growth it brings, and choose the path of self-affirmation. Your journey, like the ebb and flow of the tides, has its own rhythm. In embracing your journey, you not only rewrite the narrative for yourself but contribute to a narrative of empowerment and authenticity for generations to come.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Mastering the Art of Inner Harmony: A Journey from Turmoil to Tranquility, Empower Yourself - When a Difficult Reaction Sends You Into a Tailspin, Do You Need to Heal Your Boundaries?, Change Unhealthy Reactions, Your Mind Will Try to Protect You By Resisting Your Healthy Boundaries and Expand Your Emotional Vocabulary to Get Your Real Needs Met. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. 

I read a quote by Nicola Jane Hobbs this week who said:
“Growing up I never knew a relaxed woman, Successful women? Yes, Productive women? Plenty. Anxious and afraid and apologetic women? Heaps of them. But relaxed women? At ease women?  Women who aren’t afraid to take up space in the world? Women who prioritise rest and pleasure and joy? Women who give themselves unconditional permission to relax – without guilt, without apology, without feeling like they need to earn it? I’m not sure I’ve ever met a woman like that. But I would like to become one. I would like us all to become one.”

I’m sure many men would also resonate with aspects of that, and some women may not, but for me it was a take note moment that has led to a deeper reflection on navigating societal norms and parenting realities.

As my eldest born is crossing a Rubicon right now, traversing the road to her last years of required schooling, and we have been asked to write something for them. As I was doing that, I reflected on the archetype that is considered “normal” in our society.

I would describe it as the person who is physically very capable, who attends school and finds learning in the school system both enjoyable and fairly easy; someone who has their own opinions and can think for themselves once leaving the school system, yet doesn’t create waves within the system, in fact they shine as a beacon of the system’s success, passing exams and getting good comments from teachers because they are helpful and do not cause any issues or stress.

They are: compliant; have good manners, good attendance and good grades; are fully vaccinated; help when required; and grow up to make money for the systems. If they are female, they don’t show any aggression and, if they are male, they don’t show any emotions. Either way, show no weakness – with weakness defined as anything that doesn’t fall within the desirable archetype’s behaviours.

This norm is an aggregate of different aspects and, while there are no doubt people who can tick all those boxes, many fall outside of the norm in a least one or two aspects, and many can’t relate to any those things as being true and easy for them at all.  Most definitely “relaxed” is not a word I associate with any of it, and I suspect that is because many people are not being fully themselves in order to fit inside the norm.

So what I reflected for my eldest child is that it is my highest hope that they deeply discover what is true and authentic for them and live in accordance with that.

Then I was talking to a friend of a friend this week about the role of being a mother. Although I had become disenfranchised with the healthcare system in my early twenties, when it let me down in every way, it wasn’t until I became a mother that I well and truly butted up against the norms and systems, and it forced me into a choice to “come out” as me or continue to be so stressed and ill that I suffered a painful decline.

Again, I’m sure many men who have chosen to become full time parents may resonate with aspects of what I am about to say, but I can only speak from my own experience as a woman.

My first born was pregnancy number five, becoming a mum was not an easy road for me, but it was something innately felt I wanted and yearned for. What I had also envisaged was providing a stable home for my kids and bringing them up as a joint team. That did not happen.

Instead I birthed children and then realised that – while I am responsible for them – I do not have free rein to bring them up as I would like. In fact, I don’t even have the right to be a full time parent.

I think of it as miraculous that women can grow actual human beings inside us. After years of trying, I literally gave my
body and heart over to incubating and growing two new physical lives. Then, for the first six months, I watched in wonder and awe as their physical growth was entirely down to the milk my body produced.

As wondrous as it was, it was also grueling – especially being in my forties by then - and it literally sucked the life out of my physical and emotional reserves. There’s no recovery time, no spa break from being mum, and no community around to easily support each other in the way our species was designed to live.

I continued to feed my kids as they started eating solid food, and was fully responsible for their care and wellbeing for a decade. It wasn’t the team effort I had envisaged, instead it was a baptism of fire, coming up against every part of myself I’d denied and disowned and every mask I’d ever worn was ripped from my grasp.

When they started living part of the week with their father and part with me, it was both a welcome relief from the intensity and relentless nature of conscious hands on parenting, and an unequivocal stab to my heart. I fully support my children in having a relationship with their father, I always have, but I did not choose to – and never would have – given up half my time with my children as they are growing.

Of course that is only the physical hands-on time, it’s not that my parenting brain (which is concerned with their psychological, emotional and physical wellbeing, as well as all the events and commitments coming up) switches off. There are always things to organize and pitfalls to navigate.

My friend’s friend, who I have known for some time, has found herself working with women who are finding themselves navigating the legal system as they separate from partnerships that – if they weren’t toxic before - become toxic in the system. Having firsthand experience of this ourselves, it was an interesting and meaningful conversation.

She tells a story of the lawyer who was minimizing the role of a parenting in a mediation meeting. Being proud of her role as a parent, she pointedly asked the lawyer why she was trying to devalue the role. Then, as the ex spouse had a tantrum and left the room, she said to the lawyer words to the effect “Had he been parented with the kind of conscious care required to grow a mature adult, perhaps he wouldn’t be having a toddler tantrum right now”.

In this country, people who give up careers to look after children are supported in principle through a section of relationship law that recognises the economic inequity that causes (in terms of lost opportunity for career progression, building of retirement funds etc). However, in most cases it fails miserably to address the inequity and the stay-at-home parent is left floundering financially in comparison to their ex partner.

The government does not recognise parenting as a job in itself and only provide support for sole parents who are in other work or seeking other work.

Then I was trialing a questionnaire for a friend who is learning a new coaching technique, and it was all about motivation in your job. I considered doing this in relation to my coaching and consulting career, but decided instead I would do it with my role as a parent in mind.

I was asked about my top five positive emotions in regard to my job, and my top five negative emotions. The positive emotions all related to the honour and privilege it is to pave the way for little humans to grow in their journey of life. The negative emotions all relate to the sheer isolation and exhaustion of parenting in today’s society, and the requirements and expectations put on us by norms in government and healthcare systems especially.

I do not like “the nanny state” approach, I believe in the personal power and potential within all humans to be connected, conscious and responsible citizens. I particularly believe that it’s our entry into this world that can either cultivate a sense of this innate power or quash it altogether, leading to a win-lose mentality which is really a zero sum game.

We are all having fluoride added to our water here locally because the government “can’t trust” a portion of our society to use fluoride toothpaste regularly. Where does the intervention stop? I feel we are people being micromanaged on a vast scale using fear as the main tactic.

So in my reflections to my daughter I urged her – as I always do with my children - to be who they feel themselves to be. I’m not a renegade encouraging them to butt up against the systems, I want to be a relaxed woman remember, I can’t go to war and be relaxed.

I saw the Eight of Swords tarot card this week that depicts precisely what I’m pointing to. It depicts a woman who is bound and blindfolded, encircled by eight swords planted in the ground, that look like bars surrounding her. There are certainly methods for her to flee, but due to her blindness and tied arms, there is no way for her to do so securely.

Here was the advice given, wise words:
“Always remember that you have alternatives and that even being tied does not take away your power - the female has options, they're just not simple ones. Stop thinking or at least slow your thought process. The swords surrounding the woman represent the thoughts that are keeping her trapped and blinded to the truth of her circumstances. If you feel like your mind is racing and you can't slow down, take ten to fifteen minutes today to sit with your eyes closed and focus on just one thing. Whether it is your breathing or the sound of a fan in the room, focusing on something that is happening in the present moment will help you get out of your head so you can see things a little more clearly.”

I can see – clearly – what I don’t want, and I can orientate in a completely different direction. Some aspects of life are beyond my control and if I dwell on those too much I become frustrated and anxious. The best course of action is to focus on the one thing I do have control over, me.  

That is precisely where I encourage my children to focus, on themselves, their reactions and their inner world. And if they are casting their eyes and hearts to the future, envisage it as one where there are obvious and healthier alternatives to those that exist today. That is where my energy belongs, in the creation of the new, not fighting the old,
outdated things I cannot change.

While reflecting on societal norms and systems that confine individuals, particularly women, and the struggle faced in parenting and navigating these norms within predetermined archetypes and expectations, I advocate for authenticity.
What about you? Are you focusing on what you can control and envisioning a future with better alternatives, rather than being trapped by the limitations of existing systems? As author Scott Stabile says “Unlearn what you are not, and remember who you are... unlearn and remember… this is one path to freedom”.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy What to Do if You Feel Trapped By Your Circumstances, Do We Need to Better Understand the Pivotal Role of Parenting to Evolve?, Why Did I Not Know This About Parenthood?, You Have Amazing Options When it comes to Healthcare, Evolving Education, and Womanhood: A Story of Our Time. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

One of the things I’ve really been struggling lately is shifting gears between the different areas of my life, and being able to be fully present in each one. I had heard once that men find it easier to compartmentalize than women but, whether it’s true or not, I don’t think compartmentalizing is the answer.

I think of it like stuffing all the toys back into the toy box and forgetting they’re there. In fact one definition of compartmentalizing is it’s a form of psychological defence mechanism in which thoughts and feelings that seem to conflict are kept separate or isolated from each other in the mind.

Those with post traumatic stress disorder may use compartmentalizing as a way to separate positive and negative aspects of themselves – though in truth we all tend to be a conglomeration of parts with different (and often conflicting) beliefs about ourselves and the world. Our stress levels and psychological state often determine which part of us in the driving seat and which narratives we have playing in our head.

For me it’s all about the different roles I play in life, and how I shift between them with ease and grace. With my kids living between two residences, there are days when I’m fully in school mum mode, and other days when the practicalities of drop offs, pick-ups, pack lunches and homework are not my responsibility. For any parent, though, they will understand that doesn’t mean I can fully shift out of parenting mode.

In my kids absence this last couple of days I’ve still been contending with applications for secondary education, juggling dental appointments, planning and organizing for upcoming birthdays, holidays and so forth, as well as hearing downloads of their day and giving advice and cheering on where necessary.

Then there’s me in my role as partner, sometimes it’s just us, other times it’s us and the kids, and those can be quite different modes energetically. That’s aside of socializing with friends which again can be alone, with my partner of the kids or both, and then there’s me-time.

Me time can be the things I do that are about self care, health and wellbeing, or it can be about focusing on sculpting what comes next in my career, whether it’s study, contemplation, or exploration and trying out different things.

It’s in my nature to get fully engrossed in what I’m doing, particularly in that last part where I’m sculpting and in the process of creation; I suspect I could get endlessly lost in there. Yet it’s inevitable that none of the toys from each of these boxes are ever fully locked away in my heart or mind. But crossing from one to the other and back again can take a tremendous amount of energy, particularly if it involves some of my least favoured tasks and commitments.

And in the very serendipitous way it does, life has presented me with reminders of antidotes – from two different sources this week – that have the potential to help me manage these gears changes with more grace and ease.

The first was in a podcast about reverse meditation with Andrew Holecek. It reminded me that the key to ease is to sit with the pain. I think of it as symbolically sitting down at the kitchen table with those uncomfortable feelings embodied as a part of me sitting across from me with a cup of tea, while I look them right in the eye and listen good to what they have to say.

Andrew says that “When we are being invited – and sometimes even pushed – out of our comfort zones, this is where the rubber meets the road, it’s where growth really takes place”.

He points out that meditation, much like sport, can mean many things to many different people. There is a level of calming the mind, which is often referred to as mindfulness, but it offers so much more and “we are invited to go much further, so much deeper, where we can say yes to whatever arises”. 

He cites Krishnamurti who – when he was allegedly asked in the latter stages of his life after 70 something years of teaching – “What is the secret to your unflappable contentment?” he responded “I don’t mind what happens”. I think this is a beautiful reminder to lean into what is unwanted and see what it has to offer as a lesson for growth.

Andrew’s approach has developed over the years after first being introduced to the principles of it over a quarter century ago in a three-year retreat which was a traditional training in the Tiebetan Buddist curriculum. He says his confidence and conviction really comes from his direct personal experience because, although he has done exhaustive literature analysis and study in other traditions also, his real confidence comes from intensive exposure and practice.

I think this is true of all of us, if I put into practice the things that resonate with me then I become an advocate of them. Isn't it bliss the way our essence just pulls in what's in alignment with our unique vibration?

The second great antidote to my discomfort came from finally reading through some material from Claire Zammit that I’ve had for a few years now, about learning the meta skills that catalyze the functional skills of writing, coaching, facilitation, leading etc - learning what really makes the difference between someone solid in these skills versus those people who really seem to crack others open and light them up with (what appears from the outside to be) a magical ability to generate ideas, connections and catalyze breakthroughs that inspire awe.

I find Claire interesting because she came into her present work having been a solid coach and then doing a PhD to understand what makes that difference between someone good and someone phenomenal. In her research she interviewed and got to know many successful people. I think that may have been how she met Dr Jean Houston whose Quantum Powers course I did through Claire’s company Feminine Power a few years ago.

Jean is in her late 80s now, she did her apprenticeship with the iconic anthropologist Margaret Mead, and she met all sorts of interesting people like Einstein. She's been working in the field of human potential for half a century and really gets the science behind quantum transformation.

All of this lends to the depth and resonance I feel in Claire’s work, where she talks about the fundamental underpinning of all meta skills, the skill to be present and to create space to allow for meaningful interaction. She says "There is really no such thing as a resistant client or resistant group, what there is, is the absence of a space of depth for transformation to happen".

Hers is a three-part process to cultivate presence, and one of those is also a three-part process on where your attention lies. She recommends that firstly you bring your attention into you, bringing awareness into yourself, breathing down into your belly. Then you take your attention out to the edges of the room, becoming aware of the space in and around you and, only then, your attention goes onto the other person (or people). She also recommends imagining you are communicating deeply, belly breath to belly breath.

Well that is my one paragraph take on what obviously has more nuances when learned and practiced.

When I reflect on these antidotes to the stress I’ve found in changing gears, I have heard similar things presented in different ways from different sources at different points in my life, but these two just clicked into place nicely this week and were good reminders to lean into what I was feeling and how to create space within and around me to connect with others.

What about you, do you struggle in shifting gears between the different people and areas of your life? If so, what practices could you start or revisit in order to cultivate more of a sense of spaciousness and ease around those gear changes?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Shift Focus and Make Time for You, Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress, Meditation – the Cornerstone to Your Success, How to Make Me-Time a Top Priority  and Meditation 2.0 – The Road to Enlightenment? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Here in New Zealand, as in many places throughout the world, it’s Mother’s Day. As I receive good wishes and gifts from my own children, and see and hear the delights of such from other friends who are also mothers, along with a beautiful appreciation of my role as a mother from a burgeoning relationship, I have felt called to also contemplate the deeper meaning of the term mother.

The mother that resides within and for all of us.

The mother consciousness, as defined by author Sarah Durham Wilson, says “you are perfect exactly the way you are. Every breath you take is a gift to the world. There is nothing you could do to make me stop loving you. I will always be here. I will pick you up when you fall down. Go after every dream. I’m right here, I love you.”

She talks about the archetypal journey from maiden to mother, which I think men can also relate to through their own childhood and inner child. Her journey work starts with meditating with that young child, the little girl (or boy) inside who has been waiting to be mothered for a very long time.

Sarah makes the point that patriarchalised mothers don’t have the energy and the fortitude to be the primordial femme. The patriarchy just bleeds into everything and becomes programming “this life is hard… don’t even try…stay small, you’ll be protected…” and then there is that look “that makes you feel you’ll never be good enough, she will never approve of me”.

Therefore, in seeking to connect with the primordial mother energy, my first job was to sit in meditation with the maiden, the little girl inside who had been waiting to be mothered. And I started the practice of hearing her, heading into the underworld and making reparations. And then, as Sarah says so sublimely, “you start to forgive and release, to alchemise maiden pain into mother wisdom. The pain becomes the medicine”.

It truly does. My childhood may not have been perfect, but my relationship with my mother was everything I needed in order to grow into the person I’ve become today, I wouldn’t change a thing. As I reflect back on my female lineage, mum may often have led with the sharp side of her sword, but it ultimately helped define my edges as I journeyed through life.

She also taught me the value of being present in sickness, of drawing on my own reserves, of trusting my own judgment and of allowing others to be who they are. Her mother, my gran, taught me the value in being alone, of not needing to furnish anyone with an explanation for what my own needs and desires are, to simply live them. And my dad’s mum – though long gone – is with me always and immortalized in her gentle energy that remains with me and her wise saying “what’s for you won’t go by you”.

Mothering my inner child has helped integrate a great deal of unhelpful patterns and behaviours, which had been helpful as a child but had become outdated and no longer served me, with the parts of myself that I had suppressed, denied and disowned over the years. I can’t say the journey is at an end, for that will come with my last breath, but I’m in a much healthier place than I have ever been.

In terms of the journey from Sarah Durham Wilson’s perspective, she says that once we have mastered alchemizing our pain into medicine, then we meet the cherishing mother – the opposite of the patriarchal consciousness:

“We have to practice going inward and meeting the cherishing mother until it becomes closer and closer to how we talk to ourselves and how we talk to others. The work is to see ourselves through the great mother’s eyes, which is to see ourselves with an incredible amount of love”.

Being a mother who vowed when my children were born that they would be allowed to become simply who they are – while respecting others for who they are – I’ve had a lot of practice at feeling into the cherishing mother when I am interacting with them. However, intention and reality are not always the same and so sometimes I fail at this, but I never lose sight of the aim.

And in many respects that is becoming much easier now that I am easier on myself, now that I am connecting to myself more and more through the cherishing mother.

From Sarah’s perspective, this is when we move into mother work. “We learn to build an inner model of the mother we needed when we were little, and the woman our world needs us to be now”. The last step is then to bring that energy to the surface, to the world.

As I sat down to write this today, I thought about where I am in life right now. I am an active mother of beautiful children, and of my inner child. The act of mothering the three of us is time consuming and important, especially for them as they move through their adolescent years and into their teens. It is the most important focus in my life at this point.

But I am also moving closer to bringing that energy out into the world. Contemplating what to write this morning, I felt called to another mother, Mother Nature, in order to feel into the thread that wanted unraveled in this contemplation. And in seeking direction from that calm, gentle lapping of the waves on the shore as I walked along the beach, I found what I wanted on this special mothering Sunday.

“Mothering” says Sarah, “in the way of the great mother caring for us as her children. Like a deep nurturing, a deep protection, a deep unconditional love”.

I hope that you will take the time to mother yourself, to sit down with your wounds and to love them through this mothering energy. It is time for us to bring kindness, compassion and love right back to the heart of where it is needed, beating inside our chests and radiating out into the world.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy  Should We Abandon Happiness as the Impossible Dream?, How Does Who You Say I Love You to Heal the World?, The Quiet Whisperings of Truth That Inspire Our Life, The People Who Hurt Us Are Vehicles for Our Growth and Be the Change You Want to See. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

This week the theme seems to have been “you can’t please everyone”, which is pretty apt for someone like me who has been learning about and practicing more healthy boundaries and communication in recent years.

It is school summer holidays here and, for the first time in a few years, we have overseas visitors back again in New Zealand. For my children and I, that heralds the start of long anticipated catch ups with loved ones.

My kids have grown a lot since we last had anyone here for an extended period but, as they have gotten older, it hasn’t really gotten any easier to figure out what to do with our days.

Each child is as different from the other as they are from me, and - add other loved ones into that equation - it feels like I’m sitting a practical exam after completing a people pleasers anonymous course.

Both my kids are highly sensitive as well as strong willed but in entirely different ways. So one gets highly anxious in crowded indoor spaces like climbing centres, bowling, shopping malls and so forth, whereas the other has those things as top activities on their list. The other gets thrown into a tailspin around loud or startling noises, so the movie theatre is a no-go which – predictably – is the other’s
preferred indoor activity.

Outdoors seems like an alien planet to them most of the time. I love the beach, my kids prefer trees, but even those are of little interest these days. When they were small kids we could be lost for hours in the woodland while they created fantastical worlds seen only in the imagination. Near any body of water they’d inevitably end up in it and needing the change of clothes always kept in the car for that reason.

These days it seems that the only things of interest are screen time and friends. Going for a walk is like suggesting an hour of torture. What New Zealand has to offer is the great outdoors. Lacking the thousands of years of human history of the UK where I grew up, there are not swathes of places of interest like grand houses, castles, museums and theme parks to tempt.

Yet, with visitors who have come to spend quality time with us and enjoy our summer, it’s hardly an attractive proposition to sit in the house while the children are zoned out doing their own thing.

Now do not take this as me saying that the kids get to dictate what we all do, that is not the case but it is a factor. The reactions to doing things other than their default are as varied as everything else, one gets quiet and withdrawn, the others gets loud, vocal and sometimes downright rude.

I’ve noticed adults aren’t much better and, in many cases, just expect the children to do whatever they are told. This isn’t how I have brought up my children. I want them to know and be who they are, to know their own needs, wants and desires, yet also to have some respect and consideration for the same in others.

A friend of mine said they can envisage my kids at age 25 all wild and free, but in a deeply understanding “knowing themselves and what lights them up” way, and reckons what I’m doing in the meantime is trying to give them a safe space in which to grow into that. It is certainly the aim, but that requires continually shifting strong but negotiable boundaries as their development occurs.

As I try to navigate this, and the interaction and reactions from others whose needs, wants and desires are often entirely different again, the basic question I have to ask myself in all this is “what do I need and want right now?”

It’s in taking care of that I start to break old habits. Making sure that amid the navigation of my children’s needs and that of others, I am taking the time for some basic self care. When I do not have visitors, I meditate daily, read, sometimes take a nap, walk at the beach often, do yoga and swim regularly.

Now I may not be able to achieve all of that while I have visitors, but I have to retain some of it in order to strike a balance. First recharge me, and then I have the resources for others.

The best way I have found of making nice memories with such a diverse and often conflicting range of needs and wants is to let each person (including the children) have their own preference in rotation, within reason (clearly an adrenaline sport might not be the best idea for an elderly relative, for example). There are likely many more ways of solving the same problems and I would love to hear what works for you when dealing with conflicting desires among people.

Do you attempt to please everyone and lose yourself? Do you still gravitate towards pleasing certain people in certain situations in order to avoid anxiety, unpleasantness or even conflict? Or have you developed a secure enough sense of who you are and what you need to be able to cater to that as well as holding the needs and desires of others that you care about in high regard?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Fulfil Your Long Desired Yearning for Belonging, Start With the Self and the Rest Will Take Care of Its-Self, Embrace Your Sensitivity Rather than Have to Protect Yourself from the World and Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Sovereignty, our inherent freedom, and yet because of the way many of us are indoctrinated into the world it has become something we think has to be given or taken.

My friend and I were having a philosophical debate about a famous quote from Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, “Sovereignty is not given it is taken”. My friend said, would it be truer to say “Sovereignty cannot be named because it just is”?
I think both are true, but the reason Atatürk’s quote had resonated with me at this moment is because of the challenges – and therefore the lessons – that have been showing up in my life of late. It brings up for me two very contrasting things:

• Those who seek to take other people’s sovereignty,
• Those who are waiting for someone else to give them their sovereignty

Both of these concepts deal in power and control, something James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy describes well. He depicts control strategies that we each develop in order to stop others draining our energy. These sit on a scale of aggressive to passive and he describes four archetypes; it’s often easiest if you start by taking a look at which strategies your parents employed:

• Intimidator’s threaten verbally or physically and come on too strong, making others frightened. They are so wrapped up in their own anger they don’t care what is happening inside the other person.
• Interrogator’s constantly question, criticize, nag and find fault, making others self conscious and eroding their confidence.
• Aloof’s shut down when confrontation happens. They often withdraw physically or verbally, forcing others to struggle and dig to find out their true feelings.
• Poor Me’s tend to guilt trip, projecting themselves as the helpless victim in need or care and attention. This makes others feel guilty even if they know there is no real reason to feel this way.

Each of these are linked with the corresponding strategies that created them, and that they create. For example, Intimidators create Poor Me’s appealing for mercy, or, the child will endure until they are old enough and big enough to fight back, creating another Intimidator, and so the cycle continues. Becoming  aware of the strategies I and others employ, is how I would start to break the cycle.

Each of us arrives in the world completely dependent on adults for our survival. The predominant tenet of parenting for generations has focused on “controlling behaviours” and it’s little wonder therefore that each one of us adopts patterns that fool us into thinking we have to take or be given sovereignty.

When I attended a course last year, run by the Family Court here in New Zealand, there was an enlightening poster pinned on the wall. It showed two wheels side by side; one showed what equality looks like, the other showed what power and control looks like. And while the wheel showing control clearly depicts physical and sexual abuse on the outside, it very adequately describes the more covert and “ordinary” kinds of psychological, emotional and financial control that happens between people.

In essence this gives some more clarity around quite a simple concept, equality. This being where a person’s rights, needs, desires etc are held in equal regard to another’s. Power and control is where those rights, opinions, needs etc are not held in the same regard.

This is very apparent to me across many areas of society: from familial structures and dynamics to corporate structures and dynamics; from education to health systems; the relationship governments’ hold with their people; the use of media to manipulate popular opinion; and pretty much everywhere there is any kind of human interaction.

I have spent much of this last year, for example, in correspondence between lawyers. Over this entire process, it very much appears that the person I have been negotiating with cannot seem to hold my rights in equal regard to their own. They are represented by a lawyer who – again and again –expresses the same disregard, with correspondence full of backtracking, contradictions, barbs, personal attacks, deflections, threats and a continually emotive and provocative tone.

The whole strategy appears to be about taking power and control, which seems short sighted. There is a requirement in this case for ongoing interaction and cooperation. I cannot fathom why anyone would believe goodwill or cooperation could exist after continued unhelpful and aggressive communication.

However, apparently this is quite normal. Kate Davenport QC, when elected as President of the New Zealand Bar Association in 2018, said she “had set a goal to stamp out rude and aggressive behaviours between barristers (lawyers who can advocate in courts)”. The article at the time said that “much of that aggressive behaviour involved personal attacks on clients and that lawyers were obliged to show that correspondence to their clients”.

She had previously written back to barristers asking them to redraft letters with a reminder of the rules for courtesy. My lawyer set aside most of these nocuous comments and focused on the actual issues at hand which required negotiating. While practical, it often had the same effect of leaving my good character feeling sucker punched without being able to defend myself.

Like many countries there is a regulator for lawyers in New Zealand, which operates a complaints service and it deals with complaints about a lawyer’s conduct, such as “treating you with discourtesy or behaving in an intimidatory manner” among other things. However there was also an article a few years ago reporting that there is no action taken in the majority of cases against lawyers.

As I have traversed these negotiations, many people (who are not directly involved) sit in shock listening to the details and wonder “how do they even get away with that?” and believe a magic “someone” should hold people accountable.
I once believed this too, that the human constructed systems of power and control would themselves protect the sovereignty of the individuals within it, how ridiculous that seems to me now. As my friend said, sovereignty is inherent.

But growing up – like many others – I was taught to be good, to tell the truth and often to put others opinions and needs before my own – particularly if they held positions of authority. It has been a long road to learning to have and hold healthy boundaries even in the face of being manipulated, threatened and my rights tossed to one side.

Of course there are various forms of control, and learning what we can and cannot control is part of the lesson. Clearly there are many cases where one human/groups of humans exerts control and power over others, and just as many cases that highlight that even in those extremes there is still a degree of self sovereignty that determines how well those being victimised fare.

But society would have me believe I control far less than I actually do, which is why most of my lessons are learning and writing about personal power and how to reclaim it.

In my experience there is no magic someone, no one who will come along and give me my sovereignty, not even someone I employ to represent me legally. It is down to me to hold my centre and stand firm on what I believe to be fair and reasonable – in spite of the pressure coming from every angle of those directly involved.

Recently when extremely aggressive attempts were made to railroad me into waiving my legal right to independent representation in the transfer of a property, I remained determined, probably moreso after being threatened. In situations like this it is tempting, when taking my sovereignty, to want to get into the power control game also. But my mantra is I stand up for my rights and allow you yours.

“Therein lays the gold in all of this” my friend said “the courage to speak your truth regardless, where once that had all but been eliminated from you”. That is true, my voice has been long in its reclaiming, and it is a journey – an art and a science - to developing one that can be heard while standing in my centre calmly, solidly, rather than spinning out.

I was reminded of the words Claire Zammit uses in situations where people have an underlying unhelpful belief pattern about not being seen/heard. She has a number of deeper truth statements that I think are worth pondering:

• I see myself. I am deeply present to my feelings, needs and desires. I intuitively know how to ask for my needs and desires in ways that inspire others to meet them.
• I came here to be seen and heard. The more I presence my needs and desires the more I empower myself and others.
• I deeply see and anticipate my own needs and I create structures for their fulfillment in advance.
• The best way to see how much other people do or don’t care about my feelings, needs and desires is to tell them clearly what they are and then see how they show up.

Our sovereignty is inherent; we can take it or relinquish it at any time. To take it we must presence ourselves and be willing to let go where we can of those around us that disregard our rights, opinions, needs and desires. That is our inherent sovereignty though, the right to choose.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Reclaim the Sovereignty of Your Soul, Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Will Be Your Limitation, Normal Is Dysfunctional That Is the Growth Opportunity, Do We Need to Better Understand the Pivotal Role of Parenting to Evolve?, Looking Back to See the Clues to Your Destiny and Build a Healthy Self Concept. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

As someone who writes frequently, it gave me pause to consider whether I currently use a limited emotional vocabulary.

Let me give you an example I heard this week from Briana MacWilliam as she was doing a class for people who are choosing to recover from relationships in which they felt neglected, abandoned or dismissed. She talked about a client who had felt a big jolt around a change in their life, in this case a new partner, which caused a sense of overwhelm and spiralled into anxiety and panic and she was thinking of ending the relationship.

Her vocabulary was vague and it was difficult to pinpoint the issue, but with some work, she could articulate that she was a little bit excited, a little bit nervous, a little anticipatory (all quite positive feelings), but maybe there were also some doubts creeping in, she felt a little challenged, exhilarated but also worried, and all of this was going on at the same time.

This is normal.

However she had not been taught growing up how to sift and sort through all those energetic states, emotions and inner experiences with any amount of sophistication. As a result she had become overwhelmed by the emotional charge of all those different, conflicting, ambiguous feelings in her mind and body, which is what had caused her to spiral. I can relate to this.

In this state she became scared and confused and lumped all those (similar but nuanced) feelings into one big category – “bad”. I experience this quite regularly, particularly around those who appear to chronically ignore what I have said or fail to take into account how I feel.

As Briana said “It’s important to recognise the energetic states moving through our bodies. By focusing firstly on the physical sensations (we are having in relation to those emotional charges) it helps mentally organise them, initially through symbols rather than words”. This is some of the most critical work Briana says she does with her clients and it requires practice over time.

This then leads to being able to describe the feelings more accurately which in turn gives more clarity around what is wanted and needed – and in turn this informs clear communication in terms of personal boundaries. And certainly I would agree that defining and communicating boundaries is critical to ensure I do not attract relationships in which I am neglected, abandoned or dismissed.

The other point Briana was making in the pursuit of more healthy relationships, is that by confronting past relationships defined by this, I am also confronting my attachment anxieties.

Attachment theory and styles are well known in the world of developmental psychology, Briana describes them as an instinctual blueprint in the survival part of our brain and nervous system that determines how much closeness or distance we need to feel comfortable that our survival needs are met.

However, depending on the extent to which the parenting we received was supportive and loving versus critical and demeaning, many of us grow up with insecure attachment and here is an example of why. She describes a young child pretending to be superman. On one hand supportive parents might say “Hey check you out, go you!”, and the child might think “Yeah I am capable of great things”.

On the other hand, a harsher parent might bristle and yell “Stop that noise! Sit down! Look at how your stupidity is ruining my rug and my furniture. I don’t want to hear from you unless spoken to. Idiot!” That child hears that they are worth less than the rug and furniture, and that the natural self exploratory process they were innocently playing with in that moment was offensive, damaging and it inspired punitive repercussions.

If that pattern is repeated, in time the child learns not only to distrust their own intuition and creative impulses but to feel distaste, shame, anger and guilt for even having an inner life. Again I can relate.

They may also doubt that they are capable of great things. So as the child grows and the parent reinforces the idea that the child is bad, a burden, not good enough, not measuring up to some standard of behaviour or condition of love, that thought process gets internalised and psychologists call it our wounded inner child.

It is these subconscious patterns that create and trigger the instinctual blueprint in the survival part of the brain and nervous system and cause people to react in flight, flight, freeze or hide. Fast forward to adulthood and an angry spouse may translate to the person who has grown up with this type of narrative as “I must have done something to upset them, this must really be about me, therefore it’s my fault, I have to fix it to earn their love back and feel worthy of love”.

When really, it’s an insecure attachment blueprint in the brain and nervous system that is sending this message as it has flared up in survival mode. Briana says quite pointedly “Until we can become aware that our attachment impulses are survival impulses (rather than authentic needs of our true self) they are always going to trump our good sense until we can raise our consciousnesses around this issue and mitigate it”.

That might seem obvious but I know from my own experience it’s not easy to do when being flooded with emotions.
This week I received a draft agreement that I had been awaiting for some time, and had requested on several occasions should include a paragraph reconciling this particular agreement with the previous agreement (which was settled on vastly different terms).

When I finally received the draft from the office of the person I had sent two texts and an email to about this very paragraph in the previous 24 hours, in addition to the prior comments, and saw that – again - no such paragraph was included, I was flooded with emotions. This was a deal breaker for me and I will admit I fired off an email in response “Please do not contact me again until this is sorted. I do not appreciate being ignored. What a waste of time and money”.

It is quite unusual for me to be so abrupt but, as I said previously, I get triggered when I feel chronically ignored.  Not long after, I then received a phonecall from their office so, pulling over to take the call, was caught off guard when it was the person’s personal assistant on the line rather than the person I needed to make the change.

They were equally as triggered, challenging me to explain my accusation of “being ignored”. I was at that moment at a loss for words because I had literally attached a screen short of the two texts to that email and felt I was living in an alternate reality. Gaslighting is another form of deliberately being ignored and triggers me even more.

I ended the call at that point as my brain and mouth were not going to say anything calmly and confidently anytime soon. Once I got home I followed this up with an email attachment with screenshots showing the many times I had requested this paragraph in various communications in the weeks prior, both to my representative and the other party’s.

Thankfully the process of writing, a much more focused form of using words than talking, made it a lot easier to convey what I needed to – the facts – rather than simply feeling that I was drowning in floods of emotions and unable to take a breath never mind speak.

And it was with that in mind that when I heard Briana’s sage advice on developing a rich emotional vocabulary I realised the missing link in my recovery. There are four steps not three:

1. Become consciously aware of the unhealthy patterns that get triggered and dysregulate my nervous system
2. Regulate my nervous system – whether in fight, flight, freeze or hide – my priority is to help my body feel safe so my rational thinking comes back online
3. Become aware of those different, conflicting, ambiguous feelings in my mind and body and learn how to describe the feelings more accurately, which in turn gives more clarity around what is wanted and needed
4. This then, in turn, informs clear communication in terms of personal boundaries

For all the words I have in my vocabulary, assigning them in to emotions that are flooding my body was not something I learned to any sophisticated degree as a child. However, I am learning now as an adult how to do this and how important it is in order to be truly heard and create and communicate healthy boundaries.

How often do you feel overwhelmed and unable to express what you are feeling with any clarity? Can you imagine how your sense of health and wellbeing and relationships can improve if you could? Is it time to take a closer look at you inner world and learn how to name the surge of emotions that course through it simultaneously?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Do You Yearn for Better Outcomes? First Commit to Observing Your Reactions, Put Mature Parts of You in the Driving Seat for Better Results, How to Break Free of Addictive Relationship Patterns, Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress, How to Take Things as They Come When You Have Learned Not to Trust  and Taking Your Own Space. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I was watching a movie called Freedom Writers based on the real life story of Erin Gruwell who in 1994, as a naive straight-out-of-college teacher, worked with class of juvenile delinquents, gang members, drug pushers and underprivileged students. The school deemed these kids incapable of learning and felt it was more a matter of them being warehoused until they were old enough to drop out on their own – if they lived to see that day.

Instead of giving up, she inspires the kids to take an interest in their education and planning their future. She encourages them to keep journals, recording the stories of their lives to get them engaged, and assigns reading material that relates to their experiences before taking them on trips to places beyond the streets of their childhood lives, to museums and so forth, and teaching them about the wider world and other people’s struggles.

Specifically Erin uses The Diary of Anne Frank to show them, like them, a 13 year old girl who faced baseless hatred, bigotry, persecution and a system out to destroy her. Eventually, the class’ study of Anne Frank and their continual journal writing leads them to extend an invitation to one of Frank’s protectors, Miep Gies, and to raise enough money to bring her to their school.

When the old woman arrives, she tells the group, “I did what I had to do because it is the right thing to do—that is all.… Anyone, even a teenager, can turn on a small light in a dark room.” After a student calls her his hero, Gies quickly deflects the title: “I have read your letters, you are the heroes, you are the heroes every day. … Now your faces are engraved in my heart.”

The kids went on to graduate from high school, half went to college and some even went on to university and higher studies. The stories of Erin Gruwel and her students, as they move from their freshman year to senior years from 1994-1998 were collated and published in The Freedom Writers Diary, which is what the movie was based on.

It was a timely reminder for me of how – specifically in those years of adolescence – the difference it made to me have someone who believed in me. I was lucky in fact to have several people, two fantastic swimming coaches and others who just said the odd thing along the way that made me dig a little deeper and do that little bit extra that made all the difference to the outcomes.

There are so many ways in which kids’ self esteem can take knocks. Just recently my daughter related a story from her own classroom, where a teacher told her that her writing wasn’t good enough and, after flipping through her whole book told her she needed to “try harder”.

Apparently he then went on to tell the class that their writing can be a reflection on who they are. Ergo my daughter, who has struggled will dyslexic tendencies and made huge strides in her reading these last couple of years, received a message that isn’t good enough, and that she isn’t good enough. From all the study I’ve done on the human psyche and trauma I know this is one of the most common subconscious messages that people play in their heads.

But it’s not just kids who need to feel that belief. I saw an open post dedicated from husband to wife (a lady I know) that was inspiring. It was a page from N.R. Hart’s Poetry and Pearl’s 2 called Unexpected. It starts “She’s the girl you never saw coming. The unexpected one who calms you, centres you…she gets you, really gets you, like no one else ever has. She is your best friend, lover and soul mate wrapped up in the prettiest package” and so it goes on.

It’s a beautiful prose that reminds me of just how powerful having another see you and believe in you can be. But of course, it comes with a warning in my head. I know it’s normal and healthy to want others to see us and believe in us, but it’s not healthy when I need others to validate who I am.  That is the sign of codependency, when my very sense of self is shaped by that approval and disapproval, which is not a fun place to be.

I was also reminded of another aspect of believing in people this week when a friend of mine pointed out that there were times they felt I was trying to change them by empowering them, which can also be seen as a criticism. Again true, I am guilty of seeing people’s potential and forgetting that unless they can see that and want to reach for it, I’m a better friend that can accept them as they are.

My daughter’s teacher may have been trying to convey that he believed she can do better, for example, meanwhile it also implies that who she is isn’t good enough. It would be a different matter entirely if she had heard “I can read this, but I believe there’s a beautiful hand writer locked inside you waiting to be seen, if you want to explore that let me help”.

I think the key is really about allowing people to determine what is it is they want and helping them believe they can be it, do it or have it. I will admit I find it so much easier to believe in others than myself.  Human potential is something I’ve always been interested in and I do believe – objectively – we can each be, do, have whatever we believe we can.
Sometimes the circumstances of my life provide overwhelming evidence that maybe I can’t be, do or have the things I often don’t even allow myself to dream of. I get caught in a loop of inner voices and evidence of my not worthiness. Then I get so distracted with other things it just falls off the radar.

Until I watch something like Freedom Writers and that voice inside me says “remember” and I start to feel inspired again.

Lately I’ve chosen to set aside the inner voices that have distracted me constantly in a bid for justice. Fighting for what I want and deserve is something I became well practiced as growing up. But it’s also an illusion when it creates inner turmoil and not inner peace; the calm, clear knowing of inner peace. Where I’m not concerned with what others think, only how I feel. And from that place I know I’ll make good choices.

Bringing myself back there I’ve started to see again the many reminders of who I am, what inspires me, what I’d love to offer and do in life. The job at hand now is to stay in that centre of inner peace and believe in myself enough to reach out and take the opportunities that are sure to come my way if only I am open to seeing them.

Because there are many people out there, kids growing up every day, and the many adults who try their best to raise these kids. Adults, while trying their best, who still have the inner doubts they had that were seeded there when they were kids, which have inevitably attracted many experiences to really enrich the idea that they are not worthy, or are not enough or are different and so on and so forth.

Breaking this chain is what calls me. It’s why I write to create awareness in myself and others, and why I feel called to be and do more to help kids as they are starting to grow, before life gathers too much momentum and shows them time and time again they are not worth it and stop believing it is even worth trying.

So what inspires you? Where have you felt called to be, do or have more than you are/have/do now? When there aren’t those around us who believe we can reach for what inspires us, we live in an age where it’s easier than ever to reach out and read, hear or watch the stories of those who have overcome the odds and made a difference anyway. Will you?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Magic Happens When You Believe in People, Shine Your Inner Light - Let No One Keep You Down, Start From Where You Are, Now Go and Be Great, Mankind’s Great Summons: Turn Your Pain Into Medicine and Heal the World and Finding Your Purpose – the Magic of Those Who Believe in You. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay 

My daughter got me thinking this week when she exclaimed she doesn’t really know “what I do”. I realised it was time to get loud and proud about the aspects of introversion that are often hard to explain to the outer world and how this shows up in my life in terms of how I choose to spend my time.

In short, introversion is used to describe those of us who feel more comfortable and become more energised by focusing on our inner thoughts, feelings and ideas rather than what is happening externally.

In typical fashion, as I pondered how to explain this, a friend then asked me this weekend how I’d spent my day. I responded “Doing typical introvert type things: thinking, reading, writing and going for a beach walk”. It has been a big week, which in my terms translates to “lots of my energy has been focused outward”.

I figured if anyone is really interested they’d ask what I like to read, write and think about, though of course my friends know me well enough to get the general idea as (being friends) we share lots of common interests.

For my daughter though, the things I’m interested in aren’t particularly on her radar at her age. She sees all the visible things I do like grocery shopping, washing clothes, housekeeping, taking her and her sister to school, extracurricular activities, play dates and appointments and ensuring they are equipped for all those things.

What she won’t notice so much is the thought, planning and organising that goes into a lot of the parenting I do. Like trying to figure out what is good and healthy for the kids in this world of 24/7 online streaming, a smorgasbord of processed food and consumerist choices, and established systems of “norms” (in terms of healthcare, education etc) that get seeded in our psyche one way or another through media, advertising and social conditioning.

Then once those decisions are made it’s about holding those boundaries with persistence and patience and helping the kids regulate their emotional responses which requires a lot of “outward attention juice”, and can be pretty draining if I’m honest. Then constantly reassessing boundaries as the kids grow. That is aside of the specific personal growth and challenges the kids face at each stage, like learning to develop their will, or dealing with conflict healthily.

On one hand, it’s amazing to be able to apply all that I’m interested in (in terms of psychology, human potential, trauma and evolution and so on), but it can be exhausting.

Then of course there are things like: paying bills, taking care of finances and other paperwork such as insurances, taxes and so on; looking after the car, the cat, taking back library books, taking the kids for haircuts and dental appointments and many other details. Sickness, are they sick or just tired or avoidant? How sick are they? What treatment do they need?

This is all completely aside of the business coaching work I’ve started doing or the hours of preparation involved over the last year in responding to a constant stream of lawyer’s letters. Last week I attended a mediation that probably took around 25 hours of my time to prepare for.

This was mixed among a week where my kids were attending their first session of an 8-week course about managing big changes in their life (and one was very apprehensive and therefore required a lot of attention and focus to get there in a positive frame of mind) and two higher education open evenings that each lasted over two and half hours at a time. So at times we would normally be at home relaxing instead we were out among hundreds of people with our attention focused outward.

According to psychologist Jonathan Cheek introverts come in many types and have a blend of qualities from among the others:

• Social introverts - This type of introvert prefers small versus large groups of people. They prefer a quiet night at home over a night out.
  
• Thinking introverts - Introverts in this category tend to spend a lot of time thinking. They are introspective and creative.
  
• Anxious introverts - Anxious introverts often feel unsettled or nervous around people during social interactions.
  
• Inhibited introverts - This type of introvert tends to over think, spending a significant amount of time considering a decision before doing anything.
  

Of course people don’t always fit in neat boxes but, in general, I would agree that like most introverts: being around lots of people drains my energy, I enjoy solitude, I have a small circle of close friends, people might find it difficult to get to know me, too much stimulation leaves me feeling distracted and dissociated, I am very self aware, I like to learn by watching before doing and I have always been drawn to jobs that involve independence.  

Parenting, though, takes things to a whole new level as I am no longer thinking and doing just for myself, I am thinking and doing for three – to greater or lesser extents – throughout years of dependence to independence. And I have to admit in recent conversations with male friends of mine it came to my attention how much of this really is “unseen” to them.

All are what I would call hands-on dads, who actively look after their children and take them to various activities as well as actively helping in the household, one described it well when he told me his wife would say it’s a 70/30 split whereas he’d say more like 60/40. I asked whether he had considered all these “unseen” components of planning and organizing and he admitted that his wife probably does the lion’s share of those.

Given that a lot of this thought and then putting it into action is a real mix of introverted and extravert activity, I imagine it’s all draining in some way to most people. In most families (from what I’ve observed mixing with other parents through school and socially) it does seem like it’s women who still take on this less acknowledged role with their children, despite some also holding down other jobs when, in fact, it is a job in itself.

Some time ago I read that western society, in particular, not only encourages but assumes extraversion. Being productive is highly valued and that means visible effort and results – and those results generally need to be linked directly to money to hold any validity.

There are different estimates and, according to some, extroverts outnumber introverts by about three to one. Author Jonathan Rauch says “While introverts are often labelled as shy, aloof and arrogant, these perceptions often result from the failure of extroverts to understand how introverts function”.

He suggests that extroverts assume that company - especially their own – is always welcome. “They cannot imagine why someone would need to be alone; indeed, they often take umbrage at the suggestion. As often as I have tried to explain the matter to extroverts, I have never sensed that any of them really understood."

This is true. And I can assure you that never has it been so important to me as through the parenting years to ensure I focus on self care also. Writing these articles gives me focus, Annette Noontil says “If we have to do for others at least make sure we are learning from it”, that is great advice and taking the time each week to focus on and share what I’ve learned is healthy for me.

As are regular beach walks, doing my meditation, going for a swim and doing some yoga as well as making time for my close friends and deeper connection with others who share my interests.

All in all, given that every single thing we do starts with a thought and our state of being, I get the sense thought the power of taking this inward time is unseen and undervalued next to doing in our society, certainly that has been my experience – and yet it is key to our growth and evolution.

Where do you sit on the scale of introversion to extraversion? Do you have friends and family you could relate to in reading this? If you can relate to it yourself how did it help you? Are there any tips or insights you’d like to share on introversion?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Be Who You Are, Who Are You? Introduce the Remarkable Human Behind the Roles You Play, How My Kids Helped Me Find My Purpose and Say Yes to You. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I’m no stranger to being responsible and taking responsibility, perhaps because I’m the eldest in my family, or perhaps it’s just my nature or the way I was brought up. Regardless, if anything, I have an over developed sense of responsibility and often don’t even see the ways in which I am taking on responsibilities that might be better taken by others.

I did a brainstorming exercise with a stay-at-home parent who was feeling quite stuck, asking:

1. What responsibilities do you pick up within your family?
2. What do you do in the way of self care?
3. What lights you up?
4. What blocks you?

It was an interesting exercise, particularly because that first list was huge compared to the others and I recognised a lot of the things I do in there too. After listing all the stuff they had done just in the last day or so, then looking at which of those things they actually enjoy doing (which was a small proportion), it was evident as to why there was an overriding sense of feeling stuck.

It was also useful to start questioning whether:

• Are all the things you are doing necessary?
• Which of these things needs to be done by you?
• Which of these things would be better done by someone else in the family? Or outsourced?

One of the more challenging things I’ve found as a parent is the constant shifting capabilities and developmental needs of my kids. Frankly I’d be happier to just set boundaries as a one-time deal “This is the way we operate and this is what is expected of you” and never think about it again.

Of course that just doesn’t work because the ability of each child is always shifting through the ages and stages, just when I start to feel we have reached some solid ground there it goes shifting again.

I like to understand the broad principles of the way things work and, of all the useful resources I have ever read or heard on parenting, it was a talk on the ages and stages by a lady Mary Willow (who runs Plum Parenting) that has stuck with me.

Mary talked about the broad development categories of our kids:

• Ages 0-7 is about physical growth
• Ages 7-14 is about social/emotional development
• Ages 14-21 is about cognitive development

And she goes into the detail of what this looks like at each stage: the kinds of reasonable expectations we could have and the useful and healthy ways to parent our kids through all of it. Obviously none of these stages are exclusive, there are crossovers, but it’s broadly the age ranges where those capabilities take big growth spurts.

My own kids are in that middle band, still at an age where they need hands on managing and organising throughout their primary and intermediate years. Standing yelling at them from one end of the house to “tidy their room” or similar is as ineffectual as it is energy draining. It usually requires some hands on working alongside to begin, and calm, mindful face-to-face reminders as they get older.

Kids do gradually take more responsibility for planning, organising and logistics, but it requires active management by a parent until they are at least 14 or 15, and probably beyond for most teens today. This has become more noticeable to me as my kids are adjusting to a split living situation and they have to pack and plan ahead a lot more than they or I are used to. It’s a constant juggle of assessing:

• What they are capable of doing for themselves without prompting?
• What do I have to help them to do to help them towards independence?
• What do I just need to do for them at this stage?

That middle one is the challenge. With my tendencies towards over responsibility, perfectionism and efficacy, it can often seem easier just to “do it myself”. It certainly requires a lot of patience and persistence to help others in their independence. 

This isn’t exclusive to parenting though. I am reading Atul Gawande’s book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, it examines – in a world where people are living a lot longer – what the quality of that life is like for those in their twilight years and whether the medical approach is working.

He also examines other circumstances, such as serious or terminal illness, where people become dependent on others. These conclusions, I feel, also apply to children:

• “Many of the things we want for those we care about are the things we would adamantly oppose for ourselves because they would infringe on our sense of self”
• “We want autonomy for ourselves and safety for those we love. That remains the main paradox and problem for the frail”
• “Safety and protection are not all we seek in life, we seek a life with worth and purpose and yet are routinely denied the conditions that might make it possible”

And while I might consider myself very independent, able bodied and sound of mind at this point in my life – and thus author of my own story to a greater degree – there is no denying my interdependence on others.

I was talking to the kids about respectful communication this week, and asking the reasons why they would want to communicate respectfully. Of course, as children who attend school and have been brought up in a society that uses contrived punishments as commonplace, their first thoughts were about the people and ways in which they would get punished.

It took a while, and a lot of prompting, to get them to think through the natural consequences of being disrespectful. Our inherent interconnection and interdependence can be ruptured so easily without this basic respect.

What I have come to a deeper appreciation of is, while it might be easier to get a young child or a frail elderly person dressed by doing it for them (rather than helping them to do it themselves), or to make my children’s beds (rather than patiently helping and reminding them and managing the process until it is routine), my energy is better invested towards helping others be as autonomous as they are able.

Otherwise, as Annette Noontil says, “When you do for others what they can learn to do for themselves you are taking away their opportunity to learn and grow and it makes them weak. They become dependent on you or others and will resent it.”

Not only that, I realised, it’s all energy that I could be redirecting into my own growth and learning and doing the things I love doing.

So in which ways do you do things for others that you could better serve them by helping do things for themselves?
 
If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Ways to Reach for Growth Rather Than Reacting With Old Conditioned Constriction, Resentment, the Family Business. Are You Willing to Let It Go? Make the Invisible Visible - Celebrate the Gold in Your Emotional Reactions and Are You Overly Responsible? Actually Seeing Yourself Through Fresh Eyes. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Many decades after the war had ended, holocaust survivor Dr Edith Eger finally began to do the inner work necessary to thrive in her life. She said “At Auschwitz, at Mauthausen, and on The Death March, I survived by drawing on my inner world. I found hope and faith in my life within me, even when I was surrounded by starvation and torture and death.”

However, of her life after the war, she said “My inner world was no longer sustaining, it became the source of my pain, unstoppable memories, loss and fear… I tried to banish the memories of the past, I thought it was a matter of survival.”

Then she reflects “Only after many years did I come to understand that running away doesn’t heal pain… (In America) I was further geographically than I had ever been from my former prison, but here I became psychologically imprisoned… running from my past, from my fear.”

Dr Egar, now a renowned psychologist, also observes “There is no hierarchy of suffering. Nothing makes my pain worse of better than yours”.

She has worked with many patients, both those with overt trauma like her own, and those suffering from more covert chronic trauma of childhood development in a world where parenting has centered on controlling behaviour and ignoring feelings for far too long.

Dr Gabor Mate, another child of the holocaust, agrees and says “Trauma creates coping mechanisms.  One way is soothing that leads to addictions, but another way is, if you get the message that you’re not good enough, then you might spend the rest of your life trying to prove that you are, compensating by taking on too much”.

I recognise all these dynamics at play in my own life. I realise I was compensating my whole childhood for my mother’s poor relationship with her father: an abusive, alcoholic liar who died of lung cancer when she was only seven years old. It understandably shaped her whole way of being in the world, as does everyone’s childhood.

My mother was always afraid of anyone getting the better of her, or of us, of being duped, and – as such – had strong unshakeable opinions about the way things should be and a very controlling nature. As children, her reaction to our behaviour (my brother and I) dictated the landscape, and I was never sure whether she would be angry or calm, but she was angry a lot.

To compensate I became hyper attuned to everyone else’s feelings in order to anticipate danger, a perfectionist to ward it off and highly anxious in my relational attachment style.

Like Dr Egar, mum banished the memories of the past and talked about them very rarely, and she certainly made no concession that she had been shaped by her own childhood experience in a way that did not allow her to be the fullest expression of herself.

Now a mother myself, I have been forced to confront the unhealthy behaviour patterns I myself adopted as a child many times over. When I read Dr Egar’s words about her return to Auschwitz decades later, I recognised the truth of them straight away:

“Arbeit Macht Frei, seeing those words made me realise they do spark with a certain truth. Work has set me free I realise. Not the work the Nazis meant – the hard labour of sacrifice and hunger, of exhaustion and enslavement. It was the inner work. Of learning to survive and thrive, of learning to forgive myself, of helping others do the same. And when I do this work I am no longer the hostage or prisoner of anything.”

When I was listening to an interview with Sarah Durham Wilson this week, author of Maiden to Mother: Unlocking Our Archetypal Journey into the Mature Feminine, she really spoke to this sense of many of us being stuck in our child selves.

She talks about the journey of meeting with the maiden (or master) the little girl or boy inside who has been waiting to be mothered for a very long time, about journeying to the underworld (the hurts experienced and the compensations we made) where you start to forgive and release, to alchemise the pain into mothering wisdom. The pain becomes medicine.

This is what makes Dr Edith Egar and Dr Gabor Mate so good at their jobs and able now to speak on world stages about their experiences and lessons, not just from their own lives, but that of the many thousands of people they have helped. They have taken their pain and alchemised it to medicine.

And so this is the task that Sarah Durham Wilson points to. The journey from the patriarchialised mother, where it’s all about keeping you small as a (so called) act of protection, to the great Mother consciousness, which is the opposite and says “you are perfect as you are and cherished always”.

My own healing journey has attracted many more opportunities through other relationships over the years to see all the unhealthy patterns and behaviours I adopted. My work right now is to break the pattern of fighting to have my opinion heard, of my chemical addition to chasing closeness from those unable to give it (the emotionally unavailable), and to ease the pervading sense of anxiety over constant rejection and abandonment.

To break the patterns of codependency, enmeshment trauma, and an anxious attachment style, I’m learning to have and hold healthy boundaries, to have reasonable expectations within relationships and communicate my needs directly without blame or criticism, to take responsibility for feeling my pain and discomfort rather than trying to avoid it by jumping into my head, or trying to fix others’ problems, and to take responsibility for regulating my nervous system.

I vowed to my closest friends that I will keep heading into the underworld to alchemise my pain until it becomes medicine, to keep going in and meeting the cherishing mother until it becomes how I talk to myself and others, and to bring that energy out into the world just as those before me have done.

What unacknowledged pain is there within you? What hurts did you compensate for as a child, what coping mechanisms did you develop, that may now be creating limitations in your life? Are you ready to head into the underworld and do your personal work? Is it time to heal ourselves and to bring back the cherishing mother energy that has been absent for a long time?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Attract the Blissful Relationships You Actually Deserve, Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First, The Almighty Growth Opportunity in Dealing With Emotionally Unavailable People, Get Emotionally Healthy - Is It Time to Break the Chain of Pain?  and Risk Losing People to Make Room for Those Who Can Honour and Cherish You. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I was listening to Tami Simon interview Shannon Kaiser this week, and she was talking about how the contrast of life points to our growth. This lady was talking my language because I truly believe our challenges are there to assist our expansion.

When I was quite young, I remember having this thought that, logically, how could I appreciate something good if I had never experienced something bad? So I really felt there was a purpose to this life of duality we live on Earth.

Good and bad, male and female, chaos and order, turmoil and peace, black and white and so on, all of it and a lot more are a spectrum of our dynamic and ever changing experiences in life.

I was talking to a dear friend this morning about balance. She has been sculpting on the topic recently and it’s deeply resonated with her because it’s a topic she feels really challenged by. As a busy mum and someone who runs twice-weekly art workshops for kids in her local area, trying to fit seventeen hours and more of study into her already hectic week has been a real challenge.

Getting an opportunity to outwardly express how she inwardly feels contending with the day-to-day struggles has been a glorious process of unwinding. It is part of a structured study programme exploring a wide range of creative processes, and she was saying at the outset some of her work felt manic, fractured and incoherent, “not very good”. I suspect it is all truly reflective of the layers within, it’s taken a while to really tune into and land in her creative space.

This was resonant with other conversations I’d had this week with busy mums. For me, being creative is something I have to make space for. Like my friend, if I try to tap into something out the blue I just get all the static and noise that bubbles beneath the surface of my day-to-day existence of school runs, organising play dates, sports and activities, grocery shopping, making dinner, washing and the ever-present need for attention to name a few.

It’s that there is a feeling of constantly being “on standby” and the need to create a large bubble of space in which to safely land in the middle and tune into what is really wanting to be seen or felt. It’s all very well to take an hour to go for a walk, or to take a yoga class or meditate, but real landing spaces where I can power down my vigilance to what’s going on “out there” and tune into “in here” for any length of time are like solid gold.

And yet, as I just said to another friend, a busy dad, the days are long and the years are short. My children will grow up and then I’ll be left hopefully cherishing the memories of the activities and things we did together, and the noise of all the more intense and monotonous things will fade as I feel into and appreciate the contrasting expansiveness of having more and more time to myself.

Of course in the meantime I meditate, walk, swim and write as regular practices, as a way of acknowledging the world within me and giving permission to myself to explore. Sometimes I get that same chaotic static as my friend initially experienced, but by making these practices a regular feature in my life, I can usually get past this quite quickly.

But listening to Tammi talk to Shannon Kaiser about her new book Return to You, I did reflect on some of the other challenges in my life.

As my dear friend said to me this morning (when I was relaying the details of life in my new home, and just how much joy I had gotten from buying my new “contemporary light green metallic” electric kettle and toaster) “I can imagine just how liberating that felt after feeling trapped for so long. There was no one else you had to consult about it, or justify it to, you could just do it and not worry about the repercussions”.

While not the topic of this article, it is certainly true that many things have conspired to keep me feeling trapped for a long time, and I am most definitely still getting used to the idea of freedom and enjoying these little moments of getting to really feel into it, the contrast makes it all the more delicious.

Another thing that can challenge me is loneliness. Over the years I have often felt lonely; not feeling seen, understood or valued. On the flip side this makes it all the sweeter when I have good company and I really appreciate the wonderful friends I have all the more for the many positive things they bring to my life.

All of this is not to bypass the feelings I have, but to simply observe them and appreciate what life is teaching me about those aspects of myself. Neither do I need to hold myself in bondage to what I’m feeling, which I have often had a tendency to do, staying in unhealthy situations and relationships for too long out of a misguided sense of loyalty, duty or obligation.

But these are all points for growth and expansion, and all my experiences are a perfect match – if I choose to see them this way - to calling me forwards towards my best life, and basking in appreciation at the other end of the spectrum.

So what about you, what challenges do you face in life? Are you able to feel into what life would be like if the opposite were true? Remember it’s in experiencing the contrasts of life we move towards our growth and expansion.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Be Purposeful in Your Focus - Your Glass Is Actually Still Half Full, Your Soul Wants You to Soar, When to Act on Possibility, Want to Be Delighted and Amazed With a 'Lived Life to the Full' Epitaph? and Be Compassionate and Curious to Live Your Best Life. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I was talking to someone this week who was feeling the way I think many people feel from time to time: overworked and under recognised. I certainly knew the feeling, and I also know the trap I often used to fall in – and still do at times – when I’d look at those closest to me and start wondering why they aren’t:
a) helping, and
b) making me feel more appreciated.

Instead of looking at another and getting disgruntled, resentful even, that they are not doing enough or appreciating me enough, I started to consider whether I was doing enough for myself. And so that was the question I posed to this person too “Are you mad at them or are you really just mad at yourself because you’re not talking the time to honour your own needs?”

It brought to mind an ex partner who used to often feel resentful that, when he was out working, I would be doing a yoga class, or going for a swim. What he failed to see in that moment was not only the myriad of things I did do to contribute to our life together but, perhaps more importantly, that he needed to take better care of his own needs rather than focusing on what I was doing or not doing for myself.

The discussion also triggered some old wounds for me around the parenting role. Early on in my children’s lives, when I was still working in my corporate career, I remember reading an agony aunt type response in a magazine to a woman who was complaining that she had been ditched by a friend of hers the minute her children had come along.

In essence, she was complaining about the lack of attention and time her old friend had to give and was feeling very put out. The response did not pull any punches, it was centred around enlightening this childless woman about the rigours of family life and just how little time and energy her old friend would be having for herself right at this point, never mind for anything else.

I could see quite plainly how someone would feel left out in that situation and, while the response was centred on what this woman could be offering her old friend rather than complaining, I did think it was time for her to move on and find other people who were more aligned and able to prioritise socialising with friends without children involved.

In my life it wasn’t that I had friends who couldn’t understand nor value the parenting role, instead I had a partner who simply couldn’t see – or perhaps acknowledge – just how all-consuming parenting is when there are dependent children at home.

I was still a bit blinkered at the time to the level of unhealthy and dysfunctional patterns between us and, in an attempt to prove my worth, kept a diary of my time for a week both out of curiosity and defence. Most hands-on parents won’t be surprised to know that there are somewhere in-between 70 and 90 hours of my week regularly focused on childcare or domestic responsibilities.

Even if you share those responsibilities with someone else, that is still a lot on top of other responsibilities outside of the home. In fact, for me it was a major triumph to fit in a yoga session each week, and go for a swim or a walk, but it was also essential for my sanity and wellbeing. As was taking the time to learn about dysfunctional patterns and healthy boundaries.

I think if most people count up how much time they spend in front of a screen (not working) each week, they would be surprised. I gave up TV years ago to free up some of my attention to direct inward and get to know who I am, what I am thinking and feeling amid the constant and often torrid seas of parenting. It was so all-consuming something needed to give.

And now that I am at a point in my life where I am having little doses of time without having responsibility for my kids 24/7, I can attest even more fervently to the all-consuming nature of parenting.

This Easter weekend my kids are away with their dad and I’ve had three whole days to myself. In that time I’ve achieved more in terms of settling into our new home than I have in the two weeks prior that we have been here.

Last night I put a garage-full of boxes up in the attic and finished the job late. The night before I tried on boxes full of clothes that have sat in my wardrobe untouched for a long time, it’s been years since I got to play dress-up. I finally got the chance to Marie Kondo my stuff and put satisfying bundles in the recycle pile while rediscovering the joys of old favourites.

I absolutely adore being able to focus my attention on something until I am done with it. I love diving deep and exploring a thought until I’ve reached a conclusion, or physically doing a task and having the pleasure of accomplishing it at my own pace, to my own satisfaction. That is what I have been able to do this weekend.

Whereas, when my kids are around, everything is start-stop-switch attention and focus and it can be as exhausting as it is rewarding. Frankly, when I am in that mode, and feel like my flow is constantly interrupted; I can only marvel that I achieve anything at all.

Whether amid the chaos, or having time to actually land within myself, these days I can appreciate just how important it is to make time to honour my own needs. What about you, are you stewing in resentment or teetering dangerously close to it? What do you need to do to honour your own needs?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Receive More Love, Appreciation and Respect, Resentment, the Family Business. Are You Willing to Let It Go?  Life Really Does Support Your Deepest Desires (And How to Access Its Support) and Take a Small Break from Your Life to Restart from Your Authentic Core. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

This is the story of my childhood and the inadvertent trauma I experienced that wove its way into the fabric of who I became in ways that were not always helpful - as published on TinyBuddha.com. Click here to read 

With all the parenting advice I’ve read and heard, which has a wealth of information about understanding the different developments stages and what is needed at each, and how to manage my kids undesirable behaviour, there seems to be one huge piece missing and that is about how to manage myself.

No one forewarned me that, as Lisa Marchiano puts it “You’re going to project your stuff on your kids. There is no way that you are going to get through any amount of time with your children and not meet those parts of yourself you cut off and sent backstage (the aspects of yourself that are unconscious but we see in others, our blind spots)”. It just brings up so much discomfort and pain.

The inherited patterns of behaviour in parents that children react to, and unwittingly develop patterns in response to, are essential for survival in childhood but become unhealthy patterns later in life; and will certainly get passed on unless the cycle is broken.

The best description I’ve seen of these is in James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy, he describes four archetypes (on a scale of aggressive to passive) that are “control strategies we each develop in order to stop others’ draining our energy”. I summarised these more in Normal Is Dysfunctional - That Is the Growth Opportunity.

The thing is, normal developmental trauma arises from normal parenting and remains largely unseen precisely because it is deemed normal. Yet it creates power struggles and destruction; it creates disease, chronic pain and illness; and it stunts individual and collective abilities to address systemic issues within relationships and society.

That is the ultimate challenge of parenthood, the ultimate responsibility, to recognise and break the cycles of dysfunction that are still very much alive.

Amy McCready of Positive Parenting Solutions says “Children have two major needs: attention and power. And if they are not getting positive attention and positive opportunities to make their own choices they will settle for negative attention and ways to gain a feeling of personal power”.

Not only that, the lack of positive attention or opportunity to express personal needs and desires is precisely what leads to the kind of dysfunction that is prevalent in society today.

Yet we live in a society of distraction – parents distracted by devices and responsibilities. Not to mention the pass-the-parcel of before/after school care, split families/housing.  Men and women, whether parents or not, really struggle in relationships today with break ups rates higher than ever before. Where in all of that, I wonder, are we allowing for and compelling attention on our kids’ development?

Relationship expert Terry Real says that the traditional walls for men and women in a patriarchal culture are changing, but are far from changed – and those traditional walls preclude intimacy.  As Raine Eisler said “It’s an old fashioned word, but patriarchy really means dominion (power over) instead of power with.”

I was sent one of Constance Hall’s blog post’s this week that demonstrates how patriarchy is still very active and it really resonated for me. Her main point was that every consenting partnership should consist of two adults whose working hours are equal regardless of whether they are paid or unpaid work.

The original has a sort of angry rant feel to it, yet she makes some really good points, so here is a version with the emotional charge toned down a bit:

“The thing about not doing your share of house work or child rearing is that is more insidious than a simple “I can’t be bothered”; domestic responsibilities do not disappear.

Children do not raise themselves. Housework doesn’t do itself.
 
Every time you sit on the toilet, eat food from a clean plate, watch on with pride while your fed, educated children smile, it’s because someone has put in effort for you to receive that privilege. And if it wasn’t you, it was someone doing your share.

Remember that expecting someone else to do your workload is oppressive. It’s saying “you can have equal rights only when you’ve met the basic needs of others”.

Support each other because domestic duties are about so much more than clean sheets, it’s about respect and showing your kids what is and what isn’t a healthy way to care for themselves.”

I think that is a great message, but there is another side to it, which is the person who allows that to happen. I know because I am one of those people who has too often taken more than my fair share of responsibility and felt overwhelmed and overburdened and then resented the heck out of it.

This represents a typical narcissistic/codependent relationship, which is also typical of the type of normal dysfunction I refer to earlier in the piece. Trauma expert Pete Walker describes this as the most common relational hybrid. Terry Real describes the same blueprint as grandiosity versus inferiority/shame-based and is the most prevalent pattern he sees in relationships also.

“While women can show up as narcissistic”, he says “it is more common for men to be this way”.

Terry’s view is that we don’t value relational skills in a patriarchal culture. He goes on to say “We code relationship as feminine and we do to intimacy what we do to many things feminine: we idealise it in principle and we devalue it in fact”.

I know this reality well. Having worked since I was fifteen, first through school and university and then in a corporate career, I know what working long hours and having high levels of responsibility looks like.  What I didn’t know was what motherhood looked like.

At first I saw my corporate career as a welcome temporary escape from the monotony of those early childrearing years, but then it became clear that regardless of how I felt (which with a baby and toddler was starting to look more like burnout), my children needed me at home.

There was a piece I wrote describing a typical night after getting home from work, and one day I will publish it, because it heralded the start of this journey to me, but for now I’ll just share my concluding thoughts that night:

I know it’s too much. I know my child is telling me this. Yes, as exhausted as I am, as distracted by work, the long arduous and unfulfilling hours of work, it’s time. Time to uncover what the heart and soul desire, for all of us.

Six months on from that I published my first blog and have done so ever week since, recording the deliberate journey to a more authentic me, which included balking and rallying against this idea of my own feminine nature and role as a mother.

I was raised in an era where I was brought up to believe that women can do anything men do. But as a friend of mine said beautifully “that overlooks the essence of the feminine, the need to find her own rhythm and inner desires in her own time and in her own reflection”.

We had been having a discussion about the government’s financial support for parents with low income. I find it infuriating that - on one hand - our law (through Property Relationship law) recognizes that a stay-at-home parent is equal to a full time job, yet the government will not support a stay at home parent of school age kids unless they are at least in part time work.

When I recently tracked how many hours of my week are dedicated to childcare and domestic duties, it was seventy hours on a typical school week and ninety on a non school week. Bear in mind school weeks typically only represent 180 days (allowing for ten days where at least one child is sick), how many employers are happy with employees only working half the year?

Recognising that encouragement of women into the workforce was an attempt to stop the judgements of not only solo mothers but women in jobs, it was however done in the context of patriarchal structures.

Quite aside of keeping the toilets clean and putting food on the table, the job as taxi driver, chief attention giver, boundary holder and referee, the role and responsibility of a parent can be all consuming.

One night when my kids’ father and I were talking, our youngest daughter came into the room and asked for my help with something. I thought then that this is precisely what being a mum looks like, constantly being interrupted and on duty. And those interruptions can range from an innocuous “how do I spell...?” through to world-war-three erupting in the lounge.

In fact, I find distraction my biggest challenge in parenting. If I am distracted, there is no connection, and the constant pull on my attention triggers responses that are less than optimal for my kids.

As the primary caregiver, my attention being on the kids is just a part of the job when they are around, from the minute they wake up to the minute they go to sleep. Adapting that attention as they grow to help them towards independence is also part of the job, but that’s on a continuum; in development terms though kids are in their teens before they can healthily handle longer periods of more independence.

So while going to work as soon as kids are in school is encouraged, to me it’s not okay to be required to work on top of the typical seventy hours of attention required on the home and kids in order to receive financial help. 

Before the world of COVID19 restrictions we had been on a family holiday in Hawaii. In conversation with the retail assistants, hotel staff and restaurant workers, it became clear that working two jobs to support their families was necessary, and this was women who had partners who also worked.

What kind of quality parenting can people give in these scenarios?

Terry Real is quick to point out that both men and women are knocked out of real intimacy and connection with themselves and others from childhood. Citing the work of Jean Baker Miller and Carol Gilligan at the Stone Centre, he says:

• “Young women are knocked out of real, honest connection at the edge of womanhood. They stop telling the truth and instead they move into – as Carol Gilligan puts it - “the tyranny of the nice and kind”; they lose their voice. It’s changing but it still needs a lot of work”. And
• “Boys are knocked out of authentic connection much younger, by the time they enter kindergarten they’ve already internalised the code to be invulnerable. What research tells us is they are no less emotional or sensitive than girls at that age but they’re less expressive. They’ve learned to keep their mouths shut, to wall it off”.

The problem is, as author, research professor and social expert Brené Brown has taught us, we connect through vulnerability. Terry believes that “While Millennial’s (thankfully) are different, the rest of us are still suffering under the old codes. Leading men and women into real intimacy is synonymous with leading men out of patriarchy.”

In Why the Integration of Feelings and Logic Will Save the Human Race I quote Teal Swan as saying “The restoration of balance within the human race is not about decreasing masculine power while increasing feminine power...it is about both rising to power simultaneously”.

I particularly like the short article from psychologist Shari Derkson that explains the aspects of masculine and feminine and what integrating them within ourselves might look like.

She says “There is a movement towards inviting more feminine aspects into our lives, states of being, rather than doing; such as through stillness, meditation and tapping into our intuition and creative processes. Equally, it is important for both male and females to develop the more masculine qualities of rational and logical ability, clear non-attached thought and problem solving etc.”

James French, who works with rescue animals and cultivated The Trust Technique, demonstrates through his work how lack of connection in humans (and propensity towards dominion or power over instead of power with) shows up just the same in animals as it does in children.  

James says "Any animal displaying fear, aggression, anxiety etc is a sign of an over-thinking state, but when brought into a peaceful state you can connect through more positive imagining/feeling states instead”.  

What I love is his observation that sensitivity in animals or people doesn’t change, it just transforms from positive sensitivity (the feelings of connection, joy, love) to negative sensitivity (the feelings of fear, shame, guilt). This could equally be applied to children.

“As a child”, as Dr Gabor Maté explains, “we are born feeling our connection to our parents and we are reliant on them for survival. Being rejected by them in any way, big or small, is devastating. So when we are rejected, we have a choice, to reject them or reject ourselves (or more likely parts of ourselves). But we can’t reject them as our survival depends upon them.”

Luckily the skills needed for connection with children, and with each other, are skills that can be learned. Terry Real makes the point “There’s skills in learning to connect to yourself and others. There’s skill in learning to love yourself. There’s a skill in learning good boundaries. And there are skills in learning how to stand up for yourself with love and respond with generosity instead of defensiveness.”

Changing the way we see parenting is pivotal, but that requires first a change in who we are as individuals. To begin to recognise our dysfunctional stances and structures and perhaps to look at them through more integrated eyes that include more of the aspects of our true nature without the walls we have erected around us in response to our own childhoods.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Clear the Fog of Trauma to See the Magnificence of Your Being, How Dead Does the Horse Need to Be to Want to Get Off?,  Womanhood: A Story of Our Time and Embracing the Feminine within All of Us. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.