Do you like to play? I do, I love getting to play with kids especially. I want to check in as a parent, does your child have a lot of playdates? Do you get to hang out consistently with other moms or dads? Or do you have fewer opportunities for social time? Or maybe, not even any? What's it been like for you as a parent? Especially now, because a lot of things have changed.

I know when Rylan was younger social interactions really stretched him.  They stretched his window of tolerance, yet at the same time he longed for companionship and fun. To have time with others. Where we lived previously was in a rural district out in the middle of 3,000 acres of wheat fields. So, playdates and get-togethers with friends and family were definitely planned in advance.

One time a close friend and I arranged to get-together to have coffee while her two young sons, who were eight and five years old at the time, played with Rylan for a few hours. That was a little bit of heaven back then.

Rylan...

I was looking back over my journals and ran across the first article that I wrote regarding parenting. I remember at the time it took a lot of courage because I had what I called “writers block” and was petrified at putting my own self out there in the world. I was afraid of what others might think, say, or do, in response to me. It’s taken a lot of empathy sessions to lay down new pathways within myself to get to the point where I was willing to do that back in 2010. So, a few years have gone by and lots and lots of empathy sessions for Gloria, for which I am eternally grateful.

I want to come back around though, I have six beautiful grandchildren that I just love so much, and they always have me coming back around to what it’s like to be in relationships of trust. How to grow relationships of trust, and how important it is to be as present as possible with our children, with any children, or with one another. 

So, let me share with you some of the...

What happens inside of us when we are self-critical? Where does that even begin? I’ve spent some time with this and for a couple of nights I would wake up around 2 or 3 and there would be this self-critical voice spinning around and around. The more it would spin, the more critical it would become.  

What would happen for me was a contraction, a kind of collapse inside of myself. As I woke up a little more, to actually pay attention in a new way, I recognized that this voice had a flavor to it. It was, “How could you?” So, there was shame in there, and as I sat with that, I could hear underneath that “How could you?” that there was deep grief inside of myself.  

This voice inside was listing all of the ways that I had failed as a mother. That’s really huge. My life’s dream when I was a little girl was to be a mother. So, it was rehashing all of those moments that I wanted...