Empowering Wisdom Parenting Circle

Exploring parenting with less reactivity and more choice

How do we help our children be able to navigate the changes that are happening for all of us? Many of us would like to be able to have power with our children instead of power over, and to learn to work together collaboratively instead of imposing obedience. A key to this is being relational, providing information about what's going on for us so that together we can adjust to the impacts that we are having on one another. Having this information creates more opportunity for us to meet the challenges we find ourselves in, where we are co-holding these challenges together.

A key is self awareness and noticing our patterns of response. The explorations in our circle support us in becoming aware of what our patterns are, and where they don't serve collaboration. We need support to stay with the tension between what's been socially acceptable and what our hearts are really asking for. As we become more able to validate and take into consideration what our own inner guidance is telling us, we can also support our children in valuing their own inner guidance.

In our efforts to fit in, parts of us get labeled wrong, rejected or shut down. Working with what gets triggered in us can help us reconnect with these parts. What is it like to acknowledge what these parts have to say? To welcome and trust all parts of ourselves and the wisdom they hold? How can we do this for ourselves and for our children?

We will be paying attention to what stimuparlates us and exploring how to sit with the discomfort. We make space for what comes up to emerge organically. We explore what contributed to our stimulation and how this gives us information. Through doing this, we gain more choice in how we meet our life situations.

We'll be exploring

• habits and conditioning that influence how we parent
• working with what gets stimulated in us
• welcoming all parts of ourselves
• how to have more choice about responses vs. reactions
• how to integrate parenting ideas we each are interested in and develop our own parenting style

IMPORTANT: The only way to join this session is to use the following Zoom info:

• Zoom link: empoweringwisdom.org/zoom
• Meeting ID: 876 2672 4935
• Passcode: 202978

IMPORTANT: Please read this orientation section before coming to a meeting.

Orientation

How we hold the space for our circle might feel unfamiliar, so we want to point out a few of these differences. We don't have any pre-planned material to deliver in a teaching sort of way, instead we model the things we have to share. For this reason, we might seem more like fellow participants rather than like leaders.

Another difference is that we slow things way down and encourage asking for pauses. This helps us to not jump over things and makes it so we can pay attention to things we often don't pay attention to. It also allows us to take more time to notice what emerges if we don't go with habitual patterns.

Many of us have patterns that include overriding ourselves or suppressing something, often because it doesn't fit social norms. We may want something about ourselves to be different, including wishing we knew how to parent in ways that feel better. In our circle we encourage welcoming and being with what is. The invitation is for each of us to come as we are instead of how we wish we were.

As we practice acknowledging our current experience and as we find that others experience many of the same things, we can often soften a bit and drop some of our discomfort. From that softer place, it's easier to recognize what stimulates us, what triggers us, what motivates us, etc.

Contributing to the sustainability of this parenting circle

With EventBrite, we at first were offering a free intro session. We have now shifted to simply asking you to read the above orientation instead of having a separate intro session. But, we are still inviting you to join us for free for your first meeting with us.

After your first meeting with us, the suggested contribution for participating in this circle is a sliding scale of $10 - $25 for each meeting you attend. We think this amount is fairly sustainable for us. We encourage you to contribute based on the resources you have access to and how these meetings nourish you and your desire to see them continue to be available for yourself and others.

We have 2 options for making a contribution:

1. You can use the PayPal address jdhaenens followed by an at symbol gmail followed by a dot com if you want to use PayPal.

2. You can mail a check to Janet Dhaenens, 179 Flume Creek Rd, Sandpoint, ID 83864.

To learn more, go to: https://empoweringwisdom.org/

Photo credit: perpetualfostering.co.uk/ - Cropped version of Parenting Concept - Paper Cut Out In Hands - 48412401617.jpg - CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons