16th Birthday of Consciously Parenting!

Hello dear ones,

Holy cow! 16 years ago, The Consciously Parenting Project launched its first website and courses in September 2007. We started by offering online courses (online then was a conference line that I used a landline phone to dial into!) for families who had children join their families through adoption. It was a 4 week course for $40 and I had 12 families attend!

In 16 years, we’ve…

Since then, I’ve published 3 parenting books and will be publishing the 4th in December! It’s Never too Late to Heal is coming soon! We’ve held two virtual conferences, 5 family retreats in 3 countries (+2 were cruise retreats), we’ve trained over 30 people representing 13 countries and 6 continents to be Holistic Family Consultants. We’ve done countless courses, webinars, workshops (both free and paid) on a wide variety of parenting topics. My work and the work of my graduates has been highlighted in magazines (Pathways to Family Wellness) multiple times. I’ve spoken at conferences, baby fairs, online events, and more. I’ve done thousands of 1:1 and family sessions with people around the globe and we’ve just completed our 3rd 2-year training cohort! It’s been a busy 16 years!

My boys who inspired this project are now nearly 20 and 25. And just last week, I became a grandmother for the first time! As I am evolving, so is the Consciously Parenting Project! Here’s what is coming up this year for me and also for you!

Expanding the Vision

Launch of the Consciously Connected Village, which will be a multi-generational online village where holistically minded parents, professionals, and individuals who are interested in understanding our human journey will gather. We’ll be co-creating healing experiences so that we can heal our relationship challenges with ourselves and our loved ones. We’re transitioning our current members over into our new community in Mighty Networks now and we’ll be opening up for new members starting in October! We’re revamping everything and it’s so much more interactive. I am having a wonderful time creating the spaces we can be together and I can’t wait to share it all with you!

Day of the Dead workshop, Interactive Experience, and Member Theme

Speaking of October… We’ll be exploring Endings and Grief in our Consciously Connected Village in October, with a workshop included in the membership at the end of the month for all members about rituals around endings in general and the loss of a loved one. We’ll have an Interactive Experience to support the ending of relationships (whether through death or other kinds of losses). This IE we’ll co-create live opportunities to process some of your own grief after the loss of a loved one through art, movement, sharing with words or other forms of expression. We’ll have an experience with some ways of remembering loved ones who have passed as celebrated in Oaxaca, Mexico for Day of the Dead with live videos of actual events happening during Muertos, and the opportunity to build your own ofrenda. And maybe we’ll even have a watch party for the movie Coco, which was based on the celebration of Day of the Dead in villages near Oaxaca and surrounding areas.

Retreat in Ireland in October!

We also have an Irish Retreat for parents and professionals interested in healing relationships with themselves and each other in connection happening in central Ireland October 6-8. You can find more details about this event here.

Podcast for Consciously Connected Grandparenting coming soon!

Later this fall, we’ll be launching the Consciously Connected Grandparenting podcast with Pam Leo! If you loved Connection Parenting, you’ll love our new podcast. As I’m becoming a grandmother for the first time, I thought it would be helpful to talk about consciously connected grandparenting as I learn the ropes for the first time. I can’t think of anyone to better help me than Pam Leo, grandmother for 27 years and author of the book, Connection Parenting! So many of you have asked for support for your parents to understand this kind of parenting and I thought this is a great way to do it!

I asked one of my long-time clients what she would want her parents (and anyone) listening to our podcast to get out of it. Here’s what she said:

KC: If it was successful, what I would like to see from that podcast is them (my parents) coming out with the true understanding that the person who sent them that podcast deeply understands that they did the best that they could with the information and the resources that they had, and that nothing is wrong with them, that they are not bad people, and that we’re not saying that they’re bad parents for what they did or did not do, that they’re still loved, they’re still accepted, and that the person who probably sent them the podcast is just asking that they have a different viewpoint and different behavior towards their grandchildren than they did towards their own children. Because now they have new information and new resources that they can add to the already great parent that they wanted to be. And if they don’t feel like they were a great parent, now they have new information and resources to be the great grandparent that they didn’t know they could be. That’s what I would say.

To that, Pam Leo added this: “I would add… The information, resources, a-n-d ….support they had. When we don’t have the support we need to parent in the “new” ways we are learning…we unintentionally but automatically revert to the old familiar ways we experienced, and have not healed from …”

In November, we’ll be opening up for pre-orders of It’s Never too Late to Heal, so watch for that, too!

I’d love to hear what you’re most excited about that’s coming up at Consciously Parenting and the Village! And I’d love to hear about what’s happening in your life since we last connected. Hit reply and share!

Warmly,