9 Powerful Ways You Can Empower Your Kids.
When things are tough - here are ways you can support your kids.
Welcome to my newsletter celebrating the journey of the heart.
Yes trusting ourselves is scary, but when us mothers gather together, around the camp fire, as women have since forever, our strait jacket of self doubt starts to loosen & miracles just maybe, start to happen…
(Comes out every 1/2 a week).
Today, is for families navigating challenging times…
Whether your kids are:
- worried about someone they love;
- having a hard time at school;
- feeling that heavy weight on their shoulders as they face challenges like divorce, or sickness in the family - over which they feel powerless to change, below are 9 ways that I seed healing in my own 2 children (a daughter who’s nearly 12, and a son who’s 7), the knowing that no matter what’s happening in their lives, there is healing to be found.
Please note:
🕊️I’m not a therapist, and so I share this in the spirit of mother-to-mother, sharing what works for my own family.
🌳Also, I’m aware that the greatest gift we can give anyone in life, especially in hard times, is our presence. So please know that yes, ideally we sit and hold space for our kids when they’re feeling low, but as I am not yet evolved enough to trust this is enough, below are all the ways I actively seek to support them too.
🌱As with everything, take what seems useful, improvise on what inspires, and discard what is irrelevant.
__
Last thing!
Having navigating some big up and downs in the last decade (acute insomnia, chronic back pain, 2x separations, family courts, countless house moves, depression being some of them), I do now view all challenges that life brings to us as essential journeys for the healing we each need as humans. I see our hearts as wanting healing for us. And this healing being the exact personal healing we each need to engage with.
Truth is, we never do choose the hard parts of our lives, but if we dare to meet them, we end up discovering ourselves to be far more creatively courageous & confident woman on the other side. This matters, because these types of women are good for our world, and quite frankly, our world needs more of them.
In practice, this means that I am almost beginning to feel excited when challenges arise, because I know, on the other side is even more extraordinary healing.
And whilst my kids don’t necessarily want to hear the above in a raw moment, the older they each become, the more I step back from actively interfering, (!) and the more I simply seek to hold space with them, to be the person they can reveal their worst fears to, so that they can more readily reconnect to the truth and knowing in their hearts.
So, with much love and a tender hug for all who find themselves just a little downhearted at the moment.
Laura xxx
9 Ways to seed healing in your kids:
1. If your child is navigating a difficult life situation - a divorce, a parent who’s unwell, financial troubles in the family, do not underestimate the power of simply acknowledging it.
Yes this hard thing is happening.
It’s amazing how many of us want to pretend rainbows are bright, puppies are fluffy and Kansas is right next door when the going gets tough.
And yet… our children are so wise & as much as we wish they wouldn’t, they feel the disturbance going on anyway. Remember how much you saw as a child!
So, to have one adult, who, in an age appropriate way acknowledges their child’s seeing of what is happening, is so so healing. And also, if we’re mothers who want to seed and nourish and nurture our children’s capacity to trust themselves in their lives, this way of relating to challenges is so crucial. Yes, this hard thing is happening. Yes, life has wonder and also fear, love and understanding, judgement and hate, courage and terror, compassion and cruelty. And still, I see you… and you’re going to be okay.
2. After acknowledging it, I’ll then seek to hold space for my child to feel as much as they want to. Without pushing anything away (hard to do when it’s bedtime!). Then, and if, it feels appropriate, I might remind them of my view of what challenges can offer us, that this is a challenge that yes its hard, but there will be a gift in it. There will be something that they learn from it. I leave this to their own process to figure out. And I hug, and I hug and I hug.
3. I will remind my kids that they have such beauty in their hearts. And then offer them some version of the idea that they chose me as their mother, their fathers as their fathers. Feel into what feels right. Sometimes it’s a gentle one line reminder. Sometimes when hugging. Sometimes I go into spontaneous song, as they are falling asleep, normally when I do the folding away of laundry next door, and I just sing whatever my heart wants to voice. Literally, make up your own songs. Trust yourself beautiful mother! It’s so so healing, comforting and reassuring for your kids. Like lullabies for their worried hearts!
Wherever appropriate, I chat with my kids about what it means to choose this life. Personally, I believe my family have known each other in other life times. And as a result, every challenge, every heart break that has occurred has been a soul choice to cause evolution.
This perspective has been a game changer in my own life, when I felt powerless to change some things happening in my family’s life. It changed my whole realtonsup to what was happening. Brought such more peace, and also resiliency and creativity for how to address things;
5. If someone else’s behaviour is effecting my kids - including mine! - I remind them not to take it personally. When someone is being unkind, it means their heart is closed. Or they’re tired. When someone is being judgemental or critical, same thing.
6. I remind my kids to trust their bodies - to defer to their sense of things. If something feels off, trust it.
7. My eldest and I talk about how one can seek to share their insights about their challenges with others, because there are always so many others having similar experiences, and how art is an incredibly powerful medium to do this. My daughter has her own way of doing this that has meaning to her, and great beauty for me to witness.
8. If you have someone whose life is impacted by depression, I also seek to de stigmatise this. I share openly with my daughter that depression can be a state that arises and passes when/if we make changes. And that I have had periods where I felt depressed - and even acknowledging this gives them the space to be, oh wow, well actually I felt a bit depressed the other day, and to see, okay I did feel it, and it passed.
I also talk about - with my eldest - a very tiny bit what it was to grow with a family member who had depression and that as a child, how powerless I felt to do something. Unacknowledged depression is a reality in my family and so with my kids we talk about this. (Probably not with my son yet). We talk about why someone might feel depressed. And what it is to feel one can show up as themselves and what it is to feel they can’t.
9. So much emotional pain is when we feel our lives are the only one not working, that we alone have the family’s with things wrong in them etc. What seems to help my kids, is when I share how really, everyone has some version of something difficult.
I have also had these conversations with other kids who are going through challenges, and you can see what it does to their eyes when they hear they’re not the only ones, that their challenges are not reflections of who they are. Or what they are worth.
It blows me away how powerful this is. To have an adult to first acknowledge that something hard and scary is happening for them, and then to hear they are not alone. It’s like that horrible burden of shame is lifted and then they can go back and play. Or simply be. Maybe even just really howl, but in a way that’s releasing of the shame and loneliness they had been carrying. It’s not by pretending that things aren’t happening that we make them better, it’s by acknowledging them - then, all the insights we need to heal will come.
Truth is, yes, whilst some of us have more resources, everyone has some complexity in their lives.
10. Mathematical formulas. This is such a cool and age appropriate way of helping your kids understand that it’s the thoughts in their heads and the beliefs they hold about themselves that are 100% of the problem!! 😳
So wherever possible, I talk to my kids about okay what mathematical formulas have you made up about this situation? What have you made this mean? Even this starts to create space for them from identifying with the problem to beginning to grow their capacity to see it.
AND ONE FOR LUCK:
Hug them. This came from Simone de Hoogh from Powerwood. If things are hard let your kids know you will hug them every 15mins when they’re home. Simone calls it the “cuddle alarm.” Let them know they can ask for a hug. If they don’t want hugs, then offer them something I call ‘Aura Hugs.’
Ask them first, then simply hug their aura. (Anything from 1 foot to 2 metres from your child, maybe more, maybe less: sense into it TRUST YOURSELF!!!)
Both of you will feel it. It’s like infusing them with an extra dose of pure love. Very fortifying indeed. 🥰
With much love -
Laura xxxx
___
P.S. Did you know that personal recommendations are the cherry on the cake for helping small newsletters like this to grow?
If you enjoyed the above, would you consider first subscribing and then forwarding onto a girlfriend?
___
P.P.S.
What others say about the newsletter:
“Laura amazes me with all she is doing to heal and bring people along on her journey.” Dee K.
"Reading Laura’s newsletter makes me marvel at her journey, exploration of self and life. Her zest for living and searching. For me, she is a natural wonder!” Tracy H.
“I want to tattoo these anecdotes all over me!! All the blocks are familiar and I know them only too well but the anecdotes are fresh and new and heart led and I LOVE them. I will be practicing them all. So thank you sister.” Chessy T-W.
“Simply beautiful!” Julia M.
“Your newsletter cracked me wide open… so deeply mirrors the threads in my life that are pulling me this way and that, and is such a contagious beacon of light to that part of me that knows…” Eliza P.
“Laura your words are so powerful, every time I read them, somehow, each time, they are right for the phase I am going through. I love your writing, and I love you helping us feel that indeed we are not alone with our experiences!” Natasha D.
“Thank you so much for writing your newsletter…I wanted to try and convey how much I relate to what you’re writing about in the newsletters.” Alex MH.
“A wonderful accompaniment to my morning…” Skye G.
“Laura's willingness in her life to keep an open heart has been a continual thread of connection, and I love how there are some people who mysteriously circle in and out of your awareness with interesting junctures where your direction is shaped by theirs; Laura has inspired me to be more full in the expression of my heart, in ways she probably doesn’t even know! Whenever we share our writing or our song, our dance or art, whenever we honour the creative fire that is, always burning within, it will leave a mark for people to follow; for their hearts in turn to recognise.” Charlotte H.