my short and dramatic origin story

I won’t bore you with a ton of details, but I got into Mindful Parenting Coaching through my own struggles. Shocker.

When I became a parent, I had a lot of anxiety and frustration. Sometimes it was about my kids and specific things they were doing (or not doing), but more often it was about myself in relation to my kids. I was in a perpetual self-criticism cycle that was stressful and joy-stealing.

This came to a head in a dramatic moment during the early days of the COVID pandemic. I shut my three-year-old, screaming daughter into her room, ran to the basement, and screamed into a pillow so hard that I peed. I could go into more detail, but I think this sums it up:

normal toddler behavior --> outsized, shaming response --> overwhelming frustration with self and situation -->loss of control

I took this outpouring (phrasing?) of emotion as a sign to do something really, truly different. I couldn't will myself to be patient, I couldn't pull from my decade of experience in preschool classrooms, I couldn't follow a script in a parenting book. I couldn't think or learn or try my way out of it at all.

My full system reboot came in the form of a Mindful Parenting class that asked me to meditate daily, slow down, and talk to myself kindly before trying anything different with my kids!

As someone who had only read about meditation (weird how that doesn't have the same effect) and was fluent in self-criticism, I was surprised at how much it helped. So much so, that I couldn't wait to bring it to other parents. And here I am today.