Conscious Parenting

[Intro] Hello, welcome to my podcast Empowered to Thrive. I'm so glad you joined me today. I'm your host Corinne Powell. I'm an intuitive mentor and I help people pleasers to find happiness, embrace courage and experience peace of mind.  But say you're not a people pleaser and you're desperate for change and not sure how to make it happen, then I'm here to help.

In this place you're gonna find motivation to live a life full of joy and resilience. We'll talk all things inner wellness and because I'm a mom we'll throw in some knock-knock jokes. I'm just kidding. We'll talk mom hacks and parenting sometimes. 

Whether it's your first time here or you listen week after week, I’m wanting you to know as I’m always wanting you to know, that your life is so significant you are so valuable and I for one I'm happy that you are alive. 

I hope that you enjoy today's episode and would you do me a favor? Would you go ahead and subscribe to my podcast? Give me a good rating and write a written review? Any of those three things would help me so very much and I would appreciate it. Enjoy the episode.

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Parenting is one of those topics that many people have differing opinions on and I am here not looking to Be an expert but simply to share with you my experience as a parent consciously living, being aware of myself, and consciously parenting.

What that means to me is that I recognize that trauma has affected my life and that nobody is exempt from traumatic experiences happening to them so I can do my best in raising my children but I recognize that they will still be affected by traumatic events in their lifetime. 

I can't protect them from that all I can do is the best with what I know and with what I'm learning and that's what I think for all of us. We can only do the best with what we already know and with what we learn. Now I am actively and intentionally looking to learn all that I can to not only heal myself but to be able to offer those tools to my children as well. 

As I've learned how you emotionally regulate my own self, it's helped me to help my children and to be able to co-regulate with them. That wasn't something I was offered as a child but really it's because my parents didn't know how to offer it. It wasn't modeled to them.

So I'm looking to break the cycle to stop the intergenerational trauma and conscious parenting is my recognition that my children's emotions are just a result of their form beliefs, the way that they think, the way that they view life produces an emotional response and I want to support them as they have big emotions, emotions that may feel overwhelming to them, that may feel scary. I want to help them navigate that walk that out know that they're actually safe.

That they're allowed to feel whatever it is in their body and I'm gonna be there to help them through it. All this sounds a little bit too neat and too perfect and it's just not that way, so I want to crash through the idea that it's perfect or that it looks and sounds this way all the time. Parenting just like living is messy. Relationships are not easy to do as a parent. We're all learning. It's the first time we're doing it and every day is a new opportunity to learn new things, to practice, to try new ways and that's what I want to be. I want to be a learner all my life long and I'm not gonna get it right all the time and I am gonna make mistakes and my kids will need their own therapy or coaching in the future and that's okay with me.

I don't look at that as my fault. I am simply one human being loving and nurturing and raising three other human beings as best I know how. 

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And I want to encourage anyone of you listen all you can do is the best with what you know and what you learn. As parents we only have one shot at it. I don't mean that in a way to create pressure what I'm trying to say is we haven't done it before and we're in it when we're in it. So as we go through parenting in the everyday it's doing our best and learning as we go.

Being willing to apologize, being willing to become aware of our own self how we think what our underlying beliefs are, why we operate the way we do. The more we discover about ourselves the more consciously we can parent and we can help our own children. 

Now say you're listening and you're not a parent. That's okay. You don't have to be a parent to apply anything that I'm saying because what I'm saying actually relates to relationships. And we all have relationships with other people. When you come into a relationship the more aware you are of your own self and your patterns and why you live out life the way you do, becomes helpful. It allows you to see yourself more clearly and it allows you to choose more deliberately how you want to interact. 

The last couple podcast episodes have been on emotionally triggering and if you didn't get a chance to listen, I highly encourage you to go back and take a listen because you're gonna be able to pull some nugget of truth, some tool that will help you. 

We all experience emotions throughout the course of a day that may spiral us downward, that may make us feel out of control within our bodies and it's knowing what to do in those moments that can help you as you're trying to move forward and as you discover more about yourself you're then able to relate differently, whether it's with children or with other people but because we are talking today about conscious parenting, I want to go back to that. 

And I want to just encourage every parent that is listening the best thing we can do as parents is to focus inward and to heal ourselves and then we're able to offer our children a totally different experience living out life because what our parents didn't know they couldn't model for us. But what we learn and when we transform from the inside out it means that we can model something different for our children than was modeled to us. It means we can stop the intergenerational trauma. We can show the next generation another way and as you might know, I focus a lot of my work on helping individuals to heal their inner child.

Basically, we're actually all needing to consciously parent ourselves to reparent ourselves or to self-parent because there is a part of us that child self that is still needing attention needing nurturance, hurting in different ways because of childhood experiences that traumatically affected us and nobody's exempt from it. 

Some of you have experienced more trauma than others so there's varying degrees but we can actually all sit in a circle and know that there's ways we can relate to each other. There's ways that we can identify with each other and that is key as parents, that is key as friends to be able to actually empathize with how others are feeling. 

It reminds me of a situation the other day when my daughter felt shame over something and I recognized how she probably felt because as I saw her I observed this interaction she had with another person. I remembered being in that same sort of situation and having a very similar reaction that I saw her having and I remember that feeling of shame as if someone was saying what I did wasn't worthy enough, it wasn't good enough, who I was wasn't good enough, that I needed to do something differently, that I needed to do something better - I missed the standard. 

She was hurt by the interaction and so she stormed off, she shut down, she didn't speak. You could see the expression on her face change where she was pained and she was hurting and she stormed off. Now because I identified with that feeling of shame that I thought she was probably feeling - and this isn't to put on somebody else what we think they're feeling but there are ways that you can become so in touch with feelings, you can become so intuitive and empathetic, you can learn about yourself so very much that you're gonna be able to look at your kids or other people and say “Hey, is this how you're feeling?” 

And if they validate - “Yeah, like that's how I'm feeling” then you can know you're not putting something on them you're actually recognizing, you're aware. And so when I asked my daughter if she felt the way that I thought she might have felt she said yes And I was able to help, I was able to come across in a soft way that allowed her to let her guard down, that allowed her to say I can let my mom in right now because she cares, she loves me, she is here for me, and for me it was a normal way of going about relating.

Not that it's always easy, not that I always do it perfectly no, no, no, I don't. But it's through that empathy, through the connection that we build a bridge. It's so important whether you have teenagers, grown adult children or little kids that they know. That you're not standing there trying to tell them what to do all the time that you're not standing there saying you know the right way, you know the best way, you know the way to do it, but that you're sitting there saying hey, how do you feel? I care about your feelings. I care about you.

I want to understand. I don't need to lecture you or teach you. I just want to be able to understand. Our children need to know that so often I think about the fact that I don't know the best way for my kids I and some moments think I do and I try to steer them in a way that I think is best for them because I am their mom. I am their guardian, I am the one entrusted to care for them and I'm gonna do the best I can but I know that I don't know at all.

I know that I don't know the best way for my children in every instance. They can teach me in many ways I can learn from them and I can learn as I go and I'm willing to apologize. I'm willing to say when I'm wrong, when I don't know it all, when I make a mistake and this is so important friends. 

So I want to leave you with this: the best thing you can do for your children and the people around you and for yourself is to focus inward to become more aware of why you walk out life the way you walk it out. What are your patterns? What are your mindsets? Where did you form those ways of thinking and how can you choose a different way if that's what you wish? 

Allow yourself to wake up to become conscious. To what's going on on the subconscious level. And as you do that you're going to be able to empathize more with your children. You're going to be able to be more aware of how they feel and more aware of what they need from an emotional standpoint and that is the best gift one of the best gifts that you can give your children. So here's to all of us doing the best we can with what we know and with what we're willing to learn. Until next week 

[Ending] Here we are we've made it to the end. What do you think about what you heard today? Is there something you heard that you know you need to take action on?  I'm one of those people who loves to not just sit and hear something, but to sit in here and then go ahead and start implementing, taking action on what I hear, what was stirred up in me and I encourage you to do the same.

If you enjoyed today's episode or perhaps you heard an episode in the past that really stuck with you, would you go ahead and share that with some of your friends and your family? It would mean so much to me and also, if you want to connect with me remember you can always find me throughout the week on Instagram, I'm @corinne_changeradically⁠.

Or you can email me anytime corinne@changeradically.com. I'd love to be in touch and if there's any way that I can help you, please seek me out. Until we speak again next week I hope that you will remember in the moments that are loud and busy and in the moments that are quiet and still that who you are is super important.

You are valuable and I am so glad that you're alive