Hello, lovely villagers!

This blog has been oh-so-sporadic in recent months, but I couldn’t not share this. I’ve just finished what is perhaps one of my favourite books of all time (how often does a non-fiction make me tear up with joy??), and certainly my favourite book related to parenting.

Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly.

I know, you might feel you don’t (as many parents feel they don’t) have time to read a book! I first found it on the Blinkist app, in case you want to sign up for a free trial and commit to the 15 minute summary version, before committing to the whole book – but if you do, I bet you’ll want to rush to the library just like I did.

Daring Greatly is a make-room-no-matter-what must-read in my mind because:

1. It gets to the heart of a hot-topic matter – so many people are concerned about a seeming lack of resilience in young ones, and Brown explains the cause and solution for a most prevalent missing skill in this vein: shame resilience.
2. Her research explores patterns of behaviour and emotional reaction that are relevant to all areas of life – partnerships, work place culture, self-love and parenting.
3. She doesn’t shy away from telling us the uncomfortable truth – after years of research, she’s confidently yet compassionately blunt, letting us know that there is no magic parenting formula – instead, it’s about becoming the adults we want our children to be. Way more work? Yes. Scary to the point of terrifying sometimes? Yes. But, it finally clicks for me as a guidepost that will truly, flexibly, always work for me, my kiddos, and our family’s values.

I want to specifically share a passage of hers that resonated with me so much as the co-creator of Raise A Mother that I had goosebumps:

“When you listen to conversations, or read book and blogs, about controversial and/or divisive issues in parenting, like how and where women labor, circumcision, vaccinations, co-sleeping, feeding, etc., what you hear is shame and what you see is hurt. […] Here’s what I’ve come to believe about these behaviors: You can’t claim to care about the welfare of children if you’re shaming other parents for the choices they’re making. Those are mutually exclusive behaviors and they create a huge values gap. Yes, most of us (myself included) have strong options on every one of those topics, but if we really care about the broader welfare of children, our job is to make choices that are aligned with our values and support other parents who are doing the same. Our job is also to tend to our own worthiness. When we feel good about the choices we’re making and when we’re engaging with the world from a place of worthiness rather than scarcity, we feel no need to judge and attack.

It’s easy to put up a straw man in this argument and say, “So w’ere just supposed to ignore parents who are abusing their children?” Fact: That someone is making different choices from us doesn’t in itself constitute abuse. If there’s real abuse happening, by all means, call the police. If not, we shouldn’t call it abuse. As a social worker who spent a year interning at Child Protective Services, I have little tolerance for debates that casually use the terms abuse or neglect to scare or belittle parents who are simply doing things that we judge as wrong, different, or bad.

In fact, I’ve sworn off the good-bad parenting dichotomy simply because on any given day you could file me under both good parent and bad parent, depending on your perspective and how things are going for me. I just don’t see what value this judgmental frame adds to our lives or to the larger parenting conversation. In fact, it’s a shame storm waiting to happen. To me the question of parenting values is about engagement. Are we paying attention? Thinking through our choices? Open to learning and being wrong? Curious and willing to ask questions?

What I’ve learned from my work is that there are a million ways out in the world to be a wonderful, engaged parent, and some of them are going to bump up against what I personally think about parenting. […] Daring greatly means finding our own path, and respecting what that search looks like for other folks.”

– Brene Brown, Daring Greatly

I hope you find her thoughts as refreshing as I do.

Happy reading, learning, and growing, friends.