Parenting with joy and flexibility.
Mindfulness involves practising keeping your awareness in the here and now, with an accepting, compassionate stance towards your own moment to moment experiences. Regular mindfulness practice has many benefits including lowering stress and preventing and treating depression and anxiety. You may already be familiar with mindfulness practice as sitting meditation, zazen, yoga or even tai […]
I love this time of year. It can be busy and crazy… overwhelming even. But there’s also something magical in the air. A new year is about to begin. Can you feel it beckon? In amongst all the celebrations, it is a good time to pause and reflect: Are you where you thought you’d be […]
A major problem with the human mind is how quickly we think of the big, the grandiose, the larger than life, and then get stuck there. So, in wanting to show our partner how much we love them, we think of going on a date to a fancy restaurant or buying an expensive present, not […]
We all have a cardboard cut-out idea of the perfect parent rattling away in our mind’s attic. You know, a superhero with infinite patience that doesn’t need to eat or sleep, who can read your child’s every thought or feeling with a single glance, clean and re-organise the house with a wiggle of her nose, […]
Humans have a superpower. We use our superpower every day and it is part of why we have achieved all that we have as a species. You can use your superpower right now. Are you ready? Imagine your favourite food. Pause and really picture it in your mind’s eye – see exactly what it looks […]
Motherhood can be challenging, stressful, and painful. But it is also, for many women, one of their greatest sources of joy and achievement. This Mother’s Day Weekend, become the mum you want to be: Follow your own heart. Let go of advice, judgment and criticism and, instead, follow your own heart. Get in touch with […]
Parenting is challenging at the best of times and, every so often, it is particularly challenging. Here’s a really simple idea that I always recommend. When parenting is particularly challenging, make the rest of your life as easy as you can. Learning how to breastfeed for the first time? Not a great time to renovate […]
Becoming a parent awakens a whole cluster of instincts, feelings and thoughts. A dark and scary part of our psyche, inherited from ancestors long past and dormant until parenthood, wakes within us. We find ourselves tasked with a single overriding mission: our child must survive. We discover that becoming a parent means being haunted by […]
Modern parenting is full of rules. I don’t mean the rules that parents set for their children. I mean the rules that society sets for us. You know the rules like, ‘Never feed, rock or cuddle your baby to sleep’ or ‘No television before the age of two’. There are heaps of them. If we […]
I think every parent gets lost in a maze of guilt sometimes. I certainly do. The list of shoulds, of not enoughs, of weaknesses, of mistakes, traps you at every turn. Stuck in the maze of parenting guilt, it seems like the only way out is to be more, to be better, to be perfect, […]