Conscious Living 03/31/2010
Today, I thought I’d share what conscious living means to me and my family. For us the biggest theme of conscious living that we have been concentrating on lately is paying attention to the implications of what we buy. Not just where the dollars go but where what we buy comes from and most importantly what the ingredients are. With examining ingredients, it also encompasses how those ingredients could potentially affect our bodies. For example, if there is a question regarding a link between the aluminum you stick under your armpits every single day, and eat in your baked goods, and Alzheimers, then I would rather be cautious and buy aluminum free baking soda and deodorant. When you have a father that died at 44 from Leukemia directly linked to benzene exposure, a mother that died from congestive heart failure at 48 when she didn’t have heart problems and kids who had an adverse reaction to an immunization, you tend to look at things a little more cautiously. All too often, we have had instances where things were approved by the FDA as being safe, then we find out later that they weren’t as safe as the company presented them to be in their studies. Or even more pathetic, we find out about cover ups from people who didn’t want to get sued. In my studies of environmental science in college, I know all too well about allowable limits of toxins. I’m not an anarchist by any means, but until someone not involved in the government, a chemical company, or a company that makes these questionable substances that are in our food supply and beauty products, can show me good, solid, long-term scientific studies showing safety, then I don’t want to buy it. I am thankful that my kids live in an environment where we don’t have to take someone’s word for it anymore. We can have access to studies and other reliable information in order to make better judgments about everything. Needless to say, there is plenty of bad information out there as well. I have seen websites and movies that are marketed to inform the public that are funded by questionable interests; usually big business. It takes diligence and discretion to take the time to weed through it and take responsibility for your own decisions instead of relying on mainstream media. I encourage all of you to start somewhere. Try taking one ingredient that you are not familiar with and look it up. Have fun on your journey of discovery and instead of getting angry about it, turn it into something positive. Even if that just involves not putting it in your body anymore. Add Comment I believe that the majority of people want the same thing. They want to be able to live their lives with the freedom to be able to reach their full potential as human beings. They want to be able to spend their time doing the things that are the most important to them, even if at times they don’t realize what that is. When it comes to politics and religion, people often end up spending so much time and energy defending their position, and opposition, that they don’t realize that there is a lot of common ground between them. They absolutely refuse to see any! There are fundamental differences between people and it’s a shame when people aren’t allowed to live their life without being judged or worse, ridiculed. If you just take a political example, I have friends that have adamantly chosen sides to the point where their “side” can do no wrong. They finger point as their political party dictates, often without even realizing they are doing it, and it ends up being hypocritical. (And I am talking on BOTH sides here!) To me, politics and religion continually separate and divide people by making one person’s opinions – and I say that word very loosely – more important than anyone else’s. Most of the time, the sharing of these opinions turns into an “I’m right and you are wrong fight” and feelings get hurt. I think the reason for this is either that they are afraid that they HAVE been sold a political or religious load of you know what, or because they are so afraid that what they hold dear is going to be challenged that they go on the offensive. And now I see a new trend of supposedly enlightened people who are clearly on one of the “sides,” claiming they aren’t but still attacking the other. I believe that if you are truly happy, you aren’t going to waste your time with useless bickering. And you certainly aren’t going to convert anyone who doesn’t want to be converted. Why do people waste their time and energy? If they would stop for a moment and find some common ground maybe we would have some political advancement and religious understanding. So here’s to REAL hope… Reconnect with your inner wisdom 03/26/2010
Have you ever had an ongoing issue with your child that you were having a hard time figuring out? Have you asked people’s opinions regarding your issue and none of their suggestions feel right? Have you spent time searching for information through books and other resources for ideas and even tried some of what was suggested and it still didn’t solve your problem? I have a feeling almost everyone can say yes to at least one of these questions. Have you considered that the reason you are not getting the answer that works for you is because you are looking for it outside of yourself? The first thing you need to realize that you already know the answer to any of the challenges you are having with your child. You are the expert when it comes to your child. You just need to learn to get out of your own way. We tend to rely on experts with credentials way too much. While the experts can help you, make you see things from different perspectives and even offer solutions that may work, only you know if any of them is worth giving a try. Experts should never be overly relied on because you can end up ignoring your own intuition and when you do that, you risk losing your connection with your child. You let yourself become the parent that others give you the advice to be and not the parent you know your kids already need. Many of you will say “I don’t know what kind of parent my child needs right now.” I believe feeling that way only comes from fear. What you need to do at that point is to reconnect with your own voice and your own inner wisdom. I found that the best and quickest way to reconnect with your inner wisdom is to take a few moments to write down questions you would ask an “expert” about the issue. Write your question down as completely as you can, read it to yourself, then think how you would answer the question as if someone else were asking you. Don’t filter what your response would be out of fear. Your only filter should be that of love. If your child is being particularly difficult, which may make this exercise harder for you, try closing your eyes and picturing a memory you have of when your child was very young, where you were having a great time, laughing and having fun. Then open your eyes and re-read your question. You may not get the entire solution at one sitting and that’s ok. You should at least have an idea of what to do just for today. The answers you give yourself may surprise you. Last night, as some of you already know, I attended a writing teleclass conducted by Kerri Richardson; the same writing coach as the in-person workshop I went to last month. Even though the first class helped me immensely, I still have some blocks I need help with. I emailed a few of the blocks I have been recently running into and was looking forward to getting some inspiration for dealing with them. (As a side note, her next month’s class topic is on blogging so check it out http://kerririchardson.com/get-help-from-kerri/#online.) I realized last night that the blocks I thought I was stuck on really aren’t holding me back as much I thought. Yeah, finding the time has been a biggie, but as you see I have been managing somehow. Even as I have been sitting here, my 3 year old grabbed my writing notebook and is doodling next to me, copying mommy, and giving me a few moments to write this. I think the kids already realize that this is important time for mom and it doesn’t take that long. I don’t think I realized what my biggest problem was until Kerri mentioned running away from a part of your project and looking at why. That hit me like a brick and it was obviously what I needed to hear. You see, my true desire is to write my story and there are several of you that know some of it. Over the years I have had friends that I have told it to and their responses have usually been “You should write a book.” (And once I even got “That sounds like a Dr. Phil Show story.” Uh… No thanks!) I have sat down countless, and I mean countless times, completely driven and inspired to write about it. By the time I would get a page or two done, I would be either in tears or completely pissed off and they would usually just end up in the trash. I understand that this has been my process, a pretty unfruitful one at that, but I didn’t realize why I couldn’t get any further, at ten whole years later! All of this time I was judging myself for not getting any further, even to the point of thinking I just needed to be one of those all-forgiving, let it all go, forgive and forget types. I just needed to live in the moment and not “let the past define me”. I don’t know about you but my past has made me the kind of parent I am today, and the kind of spouse and friend I am as well. The lessons I can share about what I have gone through are valuable. I have known that yet I was still unable to write about them. Last night I realized that the “why” of running away from writing it down wasn’t because of some flaw with me but with my support system. I have been Mrs. Independent, super homeschooling mom of four, growing our own organic garden, who can even rebuild a car engine type of gal! Me? Need help from someone besides my husband? So, yes… I admit it. I need a personal support system to write this book. I need to be able to write a few pages and NOT toss them in the trash but give them to someone to read so I have the courage to keep going. I know my reconnecting with a few of my oldest friends since moving back to New England is going to help. And I have been incredibly fortunate to have met some really great new friends in the past year. Maybe deep down, it is because of the new support I now have that I can feel like I am ready to do this. "Teaching tolerance" 03/24/2010
Am I the only one that is turned off by the phrase “teaching tolerance”? Doesn’t that phrase suggest that you tolerate something you disagree with or think is wrong? The word acceptance, when it’s used in the context of accepting differences between people, isn’t much better. The word acceptance means that you can’t change it, as if you had a right to feel like you should in the first place. It also means that you believe something should be different than how it is, so you have to just accept that it can’t be the way you want it. Is there ever a case where we need to teach tolerance or acceptance? Maybe… I lived in the South for over a decade and I can say that when it came to some of my religious neighbors, I had to learn to tolerate. I personally don’t care what a person chooses to believe or not believe but when they openly judge you for not being on the spiritual path they are on, and in front of your kids, which really pushes a button with me, then that was definitely a case where I had to learn to appreciate their passion and try to teach my kids the same. I don’t think we should teach our kids to tolerate being treated badly. Nor should we teach them to negatively judge someone’s life path or choices as things they have to accept, as if that person’s choices have anything to do with them. Instead, I choose to educate my kids about the differences among people. I teach them the simple lessons of love as opposed to hate. I also teach them that even the people that do bad things need compassion because there is always a reason that someone does something bad and that they didn’t, or couldn’t, seek the help they needed when they should have. In doing so, I hope that they can appreciate uniqueness in not only others but in themselves as well. Dr. Brian Weiss and John Holland in Boston 03/23/2010
Continued from yesterday… When Dr. Weiss got on stage I didn’t expect to be laughing as much as I did. Being a child of a parent with a very dry sense of humor, I appreciated his quirky jokes and it took my mind off of the unexpected, but liberating conversation I just had with the woman next to me. He spoke a little about his background and what we were going to do. Then he put us through a group regression that took 45 minutes, that I swear was only 15! I was totally relaxed, happy that I didn’t fall asleep like I did when I listened to his first book on the subject – he has a very soothing voice – yet I found my skepticism creeping in periodically. After he got us deeply relaxed, he directed us to go to a happy childhood memory. I was able to remember an event from my childhood that I had completely forgotten about. He then took us back to the womb which I couldn’t picture at all so I kind of zoned out. I really thought I was done at that point and that’s all I was going to get. I was just happy that I retrieved a memory that I had forgotten about. He then asked us to go to a life before the womb and instructed us to look down at our feet. When I did, was I ever surprised! I had the biggest, boniest and blackest feet I had ever seen. I thought to myself, “Oh my! Big ugly feet!” (Hey, they were supposedly mine, so I can say that!) They were obviously an African man’s feet and as I looked forward I saw pretty much what you would see on a National Geographic special about the savannah. I was thinking “Okay, this is different, but I’ll go with it.” Next, he instructed us to be at an important event in that life. I walked over to a simple home and there was a woman sitting there, with other women surrounding her, and with a big smile on her face, she hands me a little newborn baby girl. He then guided us to go to the end of that lifetime. The end didn’t seem like it was much later than the baby being born. I walked around the corner of one of the homes and was ambushed by an angry man with a large knife. I turned to run away but ended up being face down in the dirt. I assume he knifed me in the back. When we were pulled back to reality, I felt curious over what I saw but I also noticed that I had kept myself at an emotional distance from the scene. Afterward, I couldn’t help but feel a little upset that this newborn baby girl had been left without a father. After a short break, Dr. Weiss came back out to do another exercise with us. We were to exchange a personal object with someone next to us that we didn’t already know. I exchanged watches with one of the women sitting next to me. After Dr. Weiss took us through a 5 minute or so guided meditation, he told us to share our impressions. Now I have always thought I was a “feeler” when it came to my getting information but in this case everything came in images. Because it was imagery, I attributed to an active imagination and I was pretty hesitant to give it much credibility. I am obviously my own biggest skeptic! The lady shared with me the impressions she got and I was pretty impressed! She described the gorgeous tall trees that fill my hometown and my own property right down to what they looked like in winter. She also described seeing a dandelion, even though she forgot what it was called, she showed me exactly where I get migraine pain, even though she was surprised to learn that you can get migraine pain there, and she also said the number ten. As for the dandelion, I am a beginner herbalist and that is one of the herbs I have been personally working with for my own health. And the number 10 could have been my birth month since I was born in October. I shared with her what I saw even though I felt kind of silly doing it since I had never done this kind of thing before. I saw a white house with siding, a decent sized lawn in front with a chain link fence around it and I also saw a hula hoop on the ground. I heard an ice cream truck going by that was playing the song “Pop Goes the Weasel” and told her this was obviously a family and child-friendly neighborhood. I also told her that the front screen door shuts pretty hard and loudly and that the person in the house really liked rose soap. The soap thing she said could be related to her sister who just so happens, really likes rose soap. Then she went on to tell me that she and her husband have been thinking about finding a new home. It would be fascinating to see if in the near future she does buy a house that meets that description. After we had a break for lunch we came back to watch John Holland work. I really appreciate his style and already knew he had a great, down to earth sense of humor because I had gone to one of his smaller local events once before. After giving some background about what he does and how he does it, he started giving readings. I will tell you, nothing drives me more crazy than when people try to make things fit that don’t just because they want to believe they are the one getting the message! Not only does it waste everyone’s time, and time there was limited, it is also frustrating for the audience to listen to and it also exhausts the medium! While I don’t blame them for being eager, I think it’s important that the person that is supposed to get the message does, and thankfully that is exactly how John feels when he gives readings. Since this is so important to him, any messages he did get ended up being delivered to exactly who they were meant for. What I really like about him is that he doesn’t settle for delivering general information such as names like Joe, Bob, Billy or Mary, or that you have a “buxom grandmother who passed that was a good cook.” There are psychic mediums who do give general information and that to me is worthless. I think they will give you general information either because they’re not very good at it or maybe they are just too scared to be specific and are looking to get some practice – unfortunately, on your dime. I have been to a couple that did this and while I certainly didn’t mind them practicing on me, I was thinking “Do I really have to pay for this?” My advice is to save your money and pay a little more for one you have heard of through word of mouth from a friend or relative that you trust. You know… like me! In all seriousness though, John is not one of “those” mediums. He likes to deliver specific proof so that the receiver of the message knows without a doubt that their loved one is there; and he definitely delivered it to quite a few people that afternoon. It was especially uplifting to see families who lost very young members get the validation they were looking for. It was tough to listen to, but very uplifting nonetheless. I think no one, and I mean no one, is more deserving of a message than a bereaved parent. I am sure I will have the opportunity to see them both sometime again. I really enjoy witnessing others share their gifts with people especially when some sort of emotional healing takes place. I can’t help but wonder if that is the direction I am heading. Time will tell…. In the meantime I am going to keep blogging and working on my own story and it will be fun to see what comes of it all. My husband really had to give me a proverbial kick in the ass to write this one! He knows what my abilities are and I seriously have been too chicken to let the cat out of the bag so to speak with all but very few of my friends. At the same time I have to realize that first, my abilities aren’t going anywhere. In fact, they just seem to be getting more accurate. Second, my pretending that they don’t exist is just plain ludicrous. Who I am, is who I am. If you don’t love me for me, then why should it matter to me what you think. All it’ll take is one glass of wine in me, and my blurting something out about what is about to happen in your life, then you’re history anyway. Lastly, it’s those undeniable, serendipitous events that keep coming up for me that I just can’t ignore that keep pointing me to where I am supposed to go. Lately, all of the “signs” are pointing me in the direction of letting people know who I really am and, for now at least, putting it out there in writing. (My unusual and very difficult personal history will be left for a later blog.) I think the best way for me to tell you about me is in the context of an event I just attended. Yep, I’m pretty scared, but I’m just feeling like it’s about time. This past weekend, as some of you may have seen on my Facebook page, I attended an all day workshop in Boston hosted by HayHouse that featured Dr. Brian Weiss and John Holland. If you haven’t heard of them you probably don’t watch Oprah because Dr. Weiss has been on her show, twice I believe, and that also means you probably aren’t very aware that legitimate psychic mediums exist. John Holland is one of the few that I believe is not only gifted but is also humble enough to not always think that he’s 100% correct 100% of the time – even when his accuracy of very specific things goes over the receiver’s head for a few a moments! He’s big about specifics! Anyway, my husband bought me a ticket to the event for Christmas. He would have gone with me but we currently have no sitter, so I went alone. I arrived pretty early so I took a seat, pulled out my notebook, and started writing. Not long after I finished writing my 3rd blog (what can I say, I’m passionate!), a few ladies sat down to my left and I started chatting with the one next to me. She shared with me her experiences that involved seeing her dead husband very clearly and communicating with him at different times and how he helped her make some decisions she needed to make. Her stories were touching and amazing. After she was done, she looked at me and asked, “So what about you?” Here’s what I told her… a little nervously at first, but it completely fell out of my mouth as if I was some little kid with a secret I just needed to tell: “I can do this thing.” I said, not knowing what words to describe it, mostly because I was nervous. “It’s kind of a joke between my husband and I. He knows that he can ask me certain things about situations he is dealing with, and I can tell him how to navigate it even though I can never give him left-brained, logical reasons why. After I have been giving him solid guidance for so long, he has learned that he can listen to me most of the time.” I laughed because here I am blurting this out to a complete stranger, even though she sees her dead husband, and I was worried she was now thinking I was nuts! She just smiled so I went on. “It has gotten to the point where I am not very quick to share things when I think he needs to navigate it himself. He also knows that if he gets a glass of wine in me, that restraint can be lost sometimes.” She chuckled and encouraged me to go on so there was no stopping me now! “I haven’t really told anyone but I have very quietly helped a couple of friends through different things. One of the friends I did tell, who I DO think thought I was crazy, was selling her house. After months and months of not selling it, and her driving me crazy about her angst over it, I just told her ‘It’s going to sell in October so stop freaking out.’ Little did she know, I had told my husband this many months before. I felt at the time that if I had shared this with her sooner, she may have unknowingly sabotaged herself and it may not have sold. October comes, she calls me, and says, ‘So how does it feel to be psychic?!?’ She got a contract and the house sold that month.“ I then went on to tell this unsuspecting woman, who I somehow completely trusted for reasons I couldn’t comprehend, how my biggest future “thing” I ever got was when I was only 5. I had a knowing, a voice in my head, I don’t know how to describe it, but I heard the words in my head that my parents were going to die young and that I would spend most of my life without them. I told her how it didn’t frighten me and it wasn’t something I obsessed over. I just kind of filed it away as nothing more than a curiosity. When my dad died from Leukemia at 44 and my mom of heart failure at 48, I sure as hell couldn’t say I wasn’t forewarned. I have had a lot of other things happen but this was already more than I thought I would ever tell anyone besides my husband! This woman laughed again and in the kindest voice said, “Hey, you’re The Psychic Housewife!” Just then the lady from Hay House got on the stage to announce Dr. Weiss. Needless to say, I think I was shocked at myself at what I just did. Not only did I tell a complete stranger what a weirdo I am, but she didn’t run away! Spring has sprung... and so have my kids! 03/21/2010
Spring is here and to say that my children are restless is an understatement! They are getting on each others’ nerves, sometimes on purpose as only siblings can, and they have already asked if we could set up the pool. Mind you, it has mostly been in the 50s. One minute, my oldest is sitting quietly doing something, and the next he is literally running and hopping around the house. My other three just follow suit. Their behavior reminds me of our woods full of chipmunks that are just waking up and running all over, seemingly unsure of what to do next. An unfortunate few already forgot we have a cat. Normally his “hunting” takes so long that I see what he is planning on doing with enough notice for me to prevent him from waiting outside the chipmunk’s home. (Tell me that’s not a lazy cat!) Yes, my children seem just as disoriented as that. Even though they are free to go outside to play at just about any time, it doesn’t seem to help. It’s as if they mirror the season. One day it’s in the 60s, and two days later it’s nearly freezing. How to deal with it as a parent is where the challenge lies. Do I try to manage all four of their moods with incentives and distractions? Do I try to reel them in with punishments? I have been at this long enough to know that my own emotions would only complicate things. For me to react at all, even when they aren’t being very nice to each other, has never helped and has never changed anything for the better. They already know how I feel. So I “manage” them as I manage during this wild, amazing, unpredictable, beautiful season. I protect where I need to protect, I prepare when I need to prepare, I restore when I need to restore … and I enjoy every minute. Respecting my limits 03/12/2010
Today I decided to take the least stressful path in compliance with our state's homeschool law ... After moving back up here last year, I found that complying with a new set of homeschool regulations was overwhelming. I moved from a state that the HSLDA considers a little more regulated than here and I will tell you that there are so many loopholes and painless ways to be in compliance with Tennessee homeschool law, that I don't understand why they bother doing the paperwork. In New Hampshire, at the end of each school year, we can get a portfolio review by a certified teacher or administer standardized tests. (There is a third option which I still don't understand.) My kids have never taken standardized tests before so I decided to go the portfolio route since we are technically supposed to keep one for our records for two years anyway. Having never done a homeschool portfolio before, I found myself stressing over this on a daily basis. Really... I mean daily!! Here I am, already having to deal with a big adjustment from homeschooling two of my kids to homeschooling three this year, along with taking care of my 3 year old, who seems to have a knack for getting into more than her brothers ever did, and now I have to change how we homeschool to produce "papers" for a book for someone else to judge? Energetically, this has not been a good situation for me, my kids or homeschooling in general and I haven't been able to figure out a solution for it. All the meditation in the world was not going to fix this! After sitting down and taking a hard look at the root cause of my stress, I realized that it was my resentment that in the "Live Free or Die" state I am being forced to change how I intuitively "teach" my kids to conform with an external system that doesn't take my childrens' individualism into account. After weighing the pros and cons of what my choices are, I decided that the standardized test route will be the least painful. I can order the tests, look them over to see if I need to cover anything over the next couple of months that my kids don't already know then administer them over a few days as the test company suggests. As for the portfolio contents, I am throwing each of the kids' papers in a box and forgetting about it. I am respecting my own limits and the fact that I am not a scrapbook type of person. I will not change my sense of what is really important in life in order to put together some pretty-looking, results-driven books "just in case." Whew... I feel a whole lot better already! I have found that there are a lot of articles on how to respond to people about socialization when it comes to homeschooling. While helpful, I find most lacking. I will preface this blog by saying that I loved school as a child and young adult. I also never wished I was homeschooled. Looking back I am well aware that my parents were not equipped to handle such a challenging task. What I want to talk about here is what people really mean when they bring up the socialization question. An institutional product myself, I can see how people who went through a system, and most have, question the social aspect of homeschooling. When we were in school, we didn’t spend a great deal of time socializing in any classes that were taught classically. Teachers would teach pupils who sat in their desks quietly taking notes while answering questions from the teachers and occasionally having the chance to ask a few. Instead our social experience was through a quantity of time with a group of our peers. We got to know them through how they responded when being called upon and how they interacted with others during and between classes. Even if they weren’t our friends we had a good idea of who these people were. We also got to know our peers through our interactions in after school activities like clubs and sports. Because these activities were less formal, this was when we got to form more lasting friendships with people we had much in common with. It was here that we were more likely to find our true friends and create our social life outside of school time. Coming from this perspective, those that raise the question “What about socialization?” do have a valid concern. However, the only reason that this question is valid is simply because they either have no exposure to what homeschooling is about or their knowledge has been acquired through bad examples, set by even worse parents. As homeschooling parents, I believe the ONLY way to answer these concerns, that will satisfy the person that asked, is not by giving obscure examples and statistics put forth in homeschooling articles that are intended to help us, but by giving a very general question a very specific answer. Everyone’s answers will be as different as how they homeschool. The intent behind their question is usually to find out how YOU are doing it, not how every other homeschooling family does it. I believe it makes homeschoolers look suspicious when we give unspecific answers. People want to find out how the quantity of time they spent around a set group of kids at school can translate to a homeschool situation. They aren’t questioning whether or not institutional “socialization” is right or wrong. They just don’t understand how homeschooling works or they wouldn’t have asked the question in the first place. |   Intuitive Parenting takes parenting to a whole new level of personal responsibility and empowerment through rising above your personal history and society's expectations to help you become the parent you want to be. You already have the power to do this, sometimes you may just need a reminder! Topics covered include: how to parent intuitively, homeschooling and unschooling, passion-led learning, attachment parenting as well as many day in the life stories and intuitive parenting moments.
If you are interested in running a banner ad above, please go to the Recommended Resources Page and enter your info!
ArchivesJanuary 2012 CategoriesAll |
