http://www.thepsychologycooperative.com/, http://www.dremmasvanberg.com/, https://unnormal.substack.com/

Dr Emma Svanberg, Psychologist, Brighton and Hove (2026)

09/01/2026

What did you imagine parenting was like when you were a child (if you even imagined it at all!)

Many of the parents I speak to have mixed feelings about their own experiences of being parented. Many, for example, find it hard to imagine how their own parents made the choices they made or behaved as they did now they have their own children.

Many also have a new respect for the challenges their parents faced and how they navigated them. Understanding why they were often tired or found it hard to be playful, realising they were parenting while navigating other stresses.

How have you looked at your assumptions about parenting, since becoming a parent yourself?

_______

In case you’re wondering what this is all about….this prompt is for A year of reflections - for humans who happen to be parents.

For 2026, I’m going to be sharing reflection prompts every week day. These are for you to use as invitations, to explore themes and ideas that matter to you. A gentle way to come home to yourself.

For January, the reflections will focus on expectations and identity.

With love, Emma

08/01/2026

How do you define yourself beyond being a parent?

When we become parents- particularly for women- there can be an expectation that becomes our entire identity. From the moment we are expecting a baby we become ‘mum’ and that can feel almost like a new name.

Who else are you beside mum, dad, parent, carer? What are the other aspects of your identity that define you?

_______

In case you’re wondering what this is all about….this prompt is for A year of reflections - for humans who happen to be parents.

For 2026, I’m going to be sharing reflection prompts every week day. These are for you to use as invitations, to explore themes and ideas that matter to you. A gentle way to come home to yourself.

For January, the reflections will focus on expectations and identity.

With love, Emma

07/01/2026

Who is your parenting ✨icon✨

Today’s reflection is about parenting role models. Who do you look up to as a parent? Maybe it’s someone you know personally, maybe your own parent or another family member. Maybe it’s a character in a book, on TV or film. Maybe it’s even someone you follow here on Insta.

What does this iconic parent offer you? What guidance (direct or indirect) do they offer? How do they keep you going on tough days?

BUT (big but here), I’m not talking about idealisation here. This icon is someone who gives you hope, motivation, purpose, support. Not someone who makes you feel inadequate.

In my book Parenting For Humans (available from all the usual places and read by yours truly on audio book in case you’re interested) I also talk about a parenting guide- someone who is not only someone you might hope to emulate but also someone who you can lean on in your imagination when you need some support yourself.

In the book I talk about my parenting icon Clare Huxtable from the Cosby show- as a child, one of my favourite shows and one of the few shows I watched with a Black family at its centre. That was something that mattered, even if I couldn’t yet name why. The show is now rightly complicated by the charges against Bill Cosby, but before all of that, Clare Huxtable was my maternal icon… Firm but kind with an ever present twinkle in her eye, or at least that’s how I remember her. Completely unrealistically able to be fully present for her children and hold down a job as a highly successful lawyer, yes, but that firm but kind modelling stuck with me.

How about you? Who have you come back to as a parenting icon?

_______

In case you’re wondering what this is all about….this prompt is for A year of reflections - for humans who happen to be parents.

For 2026, I’m going to be sharing reflection prompts every week day. These are for you to use as invitations, to explore themes and ideas that matter to you. A gentle way to come home to yourself.

For January, the reflections will focus on expectations and identity.

With love, Emma

06/01/2026

If you could meet yourself from one year ago, what would you say? How about you from 5 years ago?

This time of year is often a time of reflection and looking back. As the old adage goes in parenting ‘the days are long and the years are short’. Day to day parenting life can feel simultaneously relentless and interminably slow. It’s easy not to notice how *we* have changed in that time. The lessons we’ve learned, the growth we have made.

What was a major worry for you a year ago? Is it still a worry? Five years ago; who was that version of you? How have you changed? Would you like to pass on any wisdom to those past versions of you? What do you think they would say if they saw you now? And does that change anything for you in the here and now?

And maybe you could imagine the you in 1 year- and 5 years: what do you want them to look back on? As you are living out your present, how do you want to remember it? What do you need to be able to live that now?

In case you’re wondering what this is all about….this prompt is for A year of reflections - for humans who happen to be parents.

For 2026, I’m going to be sharing reflection prompts every week day. These are for you to use as invitations, to explore themes and ideas that matter to you. A gentle way to come home to yourself.

For January, the reflections will focus on expectations and identity.

With love, Emma

05/01/2026

What is one thing- just one tiny thing- that you can do today to honour yourself and your family?

Even if it’s as small as proclaiming out loud to anyone nearby how crucial you are and what a wonderful job you are doing as a parent.

What do you think? How will you honour yourself and your family today?

In case you’re wondering what this is all about….this prompt is for A year of reflections - for humans who happen to be parents.

For 2026, I’m going to be sharing reflection prompts every week day. These are for you to use as invitations, to explore themes and ideas that matter to you. A gentle way to come home to yourself.

For January, the reflections will focus on expectations and identity.

With love, Emma

04/01/2026

How has your sense of self changed since becoming a parent?

Do you feel the same as you did before; in terms of your identity if not your daily life? Or do you find that becoming a parent has transformed you? And if so; how?

I find that we just can’t comprehend the identity shift that happens when we become a parent. There is language to describe this now- matrescence and patrescence- and awareness of this shift has become greater with wonderful work like fabulous book and Motherkind podcast. But it still comes as such a shock. And as well as an identity shift we are also suddenly seen as different by others- suddenly we are someone’s parent not just us anymore.

We can also sometimes pride ourselves on retaining the person we were or the activities we did before becoming parents. But maybe we should change? Maybe we need to, to be able to tune into our children?

What do you think? How have things changed for you?

In case you’re wondering what this is all about….this prompt is for A year of reflections - for humans who happen to be parents.

For 2026, I’m going to be sharing reflection prompts every week day. These are for you to use as invitations, to explore themes and ideas that matter to you. A gentle way to come home to yourself.

For January, the reflections will focus on expectations and identity.

With love, Emma

03/01/2026

Here’s today’s prompt. What do you wish you’d known before becoming a parent?

I often think about how much we learn through the process of being a parent and learning about this person or people and how we relate to them. I’d love to go back to my early days as a parent and pass on some wisdom (truth be told, I probably wouldn’t have listened even to my future self). I remember having a tiny baby and at that time I had no idea about the person that tiny baby would grow to be… and the adult I would grow into as a result.

I think I would tell that new parent that you can always shift, that no matter how many mistakes you make (and there will be some clangers), nothing is permanent and everything can be changed.

How about you?

In case you’re wondering what this is all about….this prompt is for A year of reflections - for humans who happen to be parents.

For 2026, I’m going to be sharing reflection prompts every week day. These are for you to use as invitations, to explore themes and ideas that matter to you. A gentle way to come home to yourself.

For January, the reflections will focus on expectations and identity.

With love, Emma

02/01/2026

Today’s reflection is: 📝 what 2 things can you let go of before tomorrow? One minor task or ask and one major expectation or ideal.

Maybe you want to let go of a commitment, or an expectation that you realise is causing you stress. Maybe you want to let go of an ideal (that you’ll do something to a particular standard when it might be ok for that standard to be lowered). Maybe you want to let go of all plans and spend a day steadying yourself and your family. Maybe you just want to chuck out an old jumper from the back of your cupboard.

I’d love to hear what you’re letting go of. One minor, one meta.

In case you’re wondering what this is all about….this is the 2nd prompt from A year of reflections - for humans who happen to be parents.

For 2026, I’m going to be sharing reflection prompts every week day. These are for you to use as invitations, to explore themes and ideas that matter to you. A gentle way to come home to yourself.

For January, the reflections will focus on expectations and identity.

With love, Emma

02/01/2026

Look fam, I have written a Substack post and scheduled it for Sunday. Who is this person with some organisational skills? Taking bets on whether I manage to do this ever again in 2026.

Anyway, one of the topics I have been thinking about a *lot* on my sabbatical is the pushback against gentle parenting and why this has happened. This is not, I believe, to do with the principles of gentle parenting- has written many times herself about how her approach has been misrepresented. But to do with the fear that has built up around *what happens if we get it wrong*

If you’d like to read, it will be released on Sunday morning which gives you plenty of time to sign up to my Substack if you are an organised person. If, like me, you are not, feel free to sign up at any future point and quite possibly just as you’re falling asleep one night next week and remember this.

01/01/2026

✨A year of reflections - for humans who happen to be parents ✨

For 2026, I’m going to be sharing reflection prompts every week day. These are for you to use as invitations, to explore themes and ideas that matter to you. A gentle way to come home to yourself.

For January, the reflections will focus on expectations and identity. For this first one, I chose a classic - one I have asked many of the people I have seen for therapy as well as a question I often ask myself.

🙃 What is the difference between your expectations of parenthood, and the reality?

If you fancy going deeper, you could ask - what impact does this have? How do those expectations affect me and my family day to day? Where do those expectations come from? Perhaps from idealised images, or out of date social narratives?

It’s a topical one too as on New Year’s Day perhaps we had an expectation that this would be a day for reflection, or a family walk, or a gathering of friends. Perhaps disappointment, resentment or feelings of failure have cropped up when the reality didn’t meet the expectation.

If you’d like to share your reflections please do. But there’s no obligation. Perhaps you will write in a journal, or maybe just let this reflection drift through your mind as you are going about your day.

With love, Emma

31/12/2025

I took a year off to let my soil replenish.
Now I’m planting again — and I’m going back to my roots.

My Substack is now Revolutions at Home: for humans who happen to be parents. A place for parents doing things differently, who find the usual parenting rules don’t apply and who are quietly changing the world behind closed doors.

The first essay is up. All new writing will be free to read.
Link below - come and join this quiet revolution with me.

https://open.substack.com/pub/revolutionsathome/p/out-with-the-old-in-with-the-breakthrough?r=1nt84r&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay

30/12/2025

Hi folks

✨A year of reflections - for humans who happen to be parents ✨

For 2026, my Insta-plan (for my Insta-fam) is to share daily journal prompts each weekday.

These are for you to use as invitations, to explore themes and ideas that matter to you. A gentle way to come home to yourself.

You don’t need to do them all. Or write them anywhere. Or keep up.

They will be here as an offering to use as you wish.

With love, Emma

Dr Emma Svanberg, Psychologist

09/01/2026

08/01/2026

07/01/2026

06/01/2026

05/01/2026

04/01/2026

03/01/2026

02/01/2026

02/01/2026

01/01/2026

31/12/2025

30/12/2025

Address

Website

Alerts

Contact The Practice

Shortcuts

Share

Category