The Consciously Parenting Project

04/03/2025

Are you a homeschooling parent? Are you parenting a neurodiverse child? Please join us for the Neurodiverse Homeschooling Summit April 20-May 6. Rebecca Thompson Hitt and Jen Gerardy are both speakers! Join us! Register here: https://www.mlccoaching.com/summit-registration/

02/21/2025

Help! I'm stressed out! If this is you, read on.

We have a no cost series of calls happening every Tuesday to support you and your family with practical tools to regulate and express your story of what is happening in your world, especially for marginalized groups and those who care about them.

Are you and those in your community worried, stressed, scared, or paralyzed by anger? Do you want to make the world a better place but feel overwhelmed in the face of the number and magnitude of problems you can’t solve? Do you feel alone and isolated in the struggle to meet your own or your loved ones’ needs in the face of systems or people that feel hostile and unsupportive?

It doesn’t have to stay that way.

It’s time to get unstuck, feel nourished and grounded, find clarity about what is most important, connect with community, tap into joy and resolve, and direct passion and dedication into sustainable action for the long haul.

Part 1: Connection and Grounding (Tuesday, February 25 at 11am EST)
Part 2: Values and Intentions (Tuesday, March 4 at 11am EST)

Sign up to join us. Link in the comments. There is no cost. We want to provide you with tools and resources to support yourself and your family right now. We hope you will join us! Please share and invite loved ones who can benefit from this series.

12/03/2024

Please help me to welcome It's Never too Late to Heal, my 4th book! This book is what you're looking for to help you find peace, joy, and love in your relationships, whether you're parenting or you're working on a relationship with your partner, other family member, or friends. I am opening pre-orders today! You immediately receive the audiobook (read by me) and the PDF of the book. Paperbacks signed by me will ship in early January. It's filled with information to help transform your relationship stories. Any purchase supports this project, helps us print books, and get the information out to people who need this message! Please check it out and share with someone who needs some hope! Thank you for celebrating with me! It's been quite the ride to bring this book to completion!

It’s never too late to heal your relationships. That’s right. Chances are that you’re here because you have a relationship that isn’t feeling great. Especially now with so many fractured relationships, unexpected deaths, political discord, and the many ways people have been under tremendous ...

10/23/2024

I'm so excited to introduce Tamara Jurkin to you! She is a holistic clinical nutritionist who specializes in mental health. She's has a wealth of knowledge about holistic lifestyles, nutrition, and sleep. If you went through the hurricanes, I know you'll hear something that will help you to support your body after an overwhelming event. (Spoiler: It doesn't have to be a hurricane!)

Tomorrow evening, I have a free call with Tamara, who is going to share so much goodness with you. You'll leave with practical steps to help you feel better physically and emotionally!

She's going to be talking about:

-How our body reacts when the stress cycle is activated in terms of nutrients it needs to support the body

-What happens when we don't replenish those same nutrients that serve other functions in our body?

-How stress affects our digestion and how we can be eating all the "right" foods but if we are not absorbing, we will still struggle.

-How all of this directly affects sleep, and

-How lack of sleep exacerbates the stress and anxiety cycle.
-What you can do to help protect our sleep and also foods to focus on to replenish!

This call is tomorrow evening, Wednesday, Oct 23 at 6pm EDT. Link is in the comments. Please join us!

Do you have a question for Tamara? Please let me know in the comments! Please share with others who might benefit from this resource.

10/22/2024

Hurricane Helene taught me some things about survival mode when it impacted the Gulf Coast of Florida in September 2024 and filled my first floor with water. We were ok, but we watched a lot of people who weren't- who lost their cars, their homes, their personal belongings. What happens for you in survival mode? Here I share one thing you can do to complete the stress cycle after something overwhelming happens to help you shift out of survival mode. We have two live calls happening this week on Tuesday, October 22 and Wednesday, Oct 23. You can find more information and sign up for the calls in the comments.

10/22/2024

Join Rebecca Thompson Hitt and I for a FREE call TOMORROW to support those impacted directly and indirectly by Hurricanes Helene and Milton. We’ll share simple and practical strategies for adults and children to regulate, recover, and set boundaries in the aftermath of any stressful or overwhelming event. Sign up FREE at https://consciouslyparenting.com/blog/the-unexpected-happened/ (call will be recorded so sign up even if you can’t join live) Please share this link with the impacted people in your community!

10/22/2024

After you've gone through something overwhelming, it's common to get stuck in "on"(sympathetic stress) or "off" (parasympathetic stress) in your nervous system. The key word is stuck. It's helpful to have an on and off for all things, including your nervous system. "On" helps you to get out of bed and get things done. "Off" helps you to rest and digest.

"On" can look like racing thoughts, irritability, angry outbursts, inability to concentrate, inability to sit still. "On" is great when you need to get to safety or you need a burst of energy to clean up from a storm, but if you stay stuck "on", you may have trouble sleeping, digesting your food, you may have nightmares, or you may gravitate towards addictive substances to try to calm yourself down.

"Off" can look like sleeping too much, not feeling rested, lacking energy and focus, numbness, apathy, hopelessness, headaches, not eating, inability or difficult to move or do basic self-care tasks.

We're going to be talking about all of this plus boundaries, story healing for children in the wake of a disaster (children get stuck "on" or "off" also!), and simple things you can do to help you get out of the stuck and back to more functional living! This no cost call is tomorrow.

And we have a second call on Wednesday all about nutrition and sleep so you can understand how overwhelming events impact your body (like what nutrients you might need more of) and we'll share baby steps you can take to improve sleep and focus on nutrition to help the body stay strong and recover. I hope you'll join us!

Link in the comments to register! Please share the link. The facebooks don't like when I share the link in a post and so it doesn't let people see it, so I'm not including it in the post. If you see this, please like it!

10/21/2024

If you were impacted directly or indirectly by Hurricanes Helene or Milton, these support offerings are for you! If you're looking for some internal calm after the storm, we're here to help. I also went through both storms, my home flooded in the first one, and I see what's happening to those in my community. We want to offer support to help you find your way. These calls are no cost.

We're going to be talking about what survival mode might look like for you or for children (it might not be what you think!) and how it can help or hurt, simple things you can do to support yourself and your loved ones to process the stress and overwhelm, and how your history of overwhelming events can show up now (for better or worse). We'll also be talking about boundaries and how they can help you to find your way through the challenges.

We'll also talk about story healing, especially regarding how to talk to children and create a space for their experiences, and doable things you can do to move through survival mode in a healthy way. Stress can show up physically (aches and pains, health crisis), emotionally (anxiety, depressive symptoms, hopelessness), behavior (can't stop moving, can't get moving, edgier, less patient, or addictive behaviors), through what we're eating or not eating, and our sleep.

There are currently two calls scheduled. The first one is about handling stress and overwhelm, survival mode and how you can move through it in a helpful way, and talking to children about overwhelming experiences.

The second call will explore nutrition and sleep so you can understand what might be happening in your body (physiologically, nutrients it burns, etc). We'll explore your tendencies to mitigate the stress, and some doable baby steps you can do to help yourself or your loved ones improve sleep and focus on nutrition to help the body stay strong and recover. I hope you'll join us!

Please let me know what questions you have and we'll do our best to answer them. Calls are Tuesday and Wednesday next week and yes, they will be recorded. Please share with someone you know who could benefit from this support! I want to make sure that my community has support right now.

After Hurricanes Helene and Milton, we need strategies for emotional regulation, boundaries, sleep, and nutrition to support adults and kids

10/01/2024

For those of you impacted by Hurricane Helene, especially if you are supporting children, what are your biggest challenges right now emotionally and with your mental health? What questions do you have about supporting your own mental health or the mental health of your child? Some ideas: strong feelings, safety, loss of life or property, uncertainty of future, etc. I'm working on some free resources to support my community and I want to make sure it is relevant and what is most needed.

And if you weren't directly impacted but know someone who was, what do you see is happening?

I am really touched by the support in some communities locally (looking at you Gulfport!) where I am hearing countless stories of people coming together to support one another. But I know not all people are so lucky right now. If you have a story of something that you've seen that's gone well, I want to hear that, too.

I'll be sharing information soon about the free call coming up. We now have power back to our house, most of our clean up is done here, and I have tended to my own mental and emotional health (for the moment), so I'm ready to offer support now.

09/27/2024

Dear friends and neighbors in Florida and points north who just made it through Hurricane Helene.

The devastation in my community is beyond what any of us have ever experienced. I’ve spent most of my adult life here and I’ve been through countless hurricanes and tropical storms. Nothing I’ve seen before comes close to what just happened here on the coast. I personally know many people who have lost their homes, their cars, their businesses. And I’m certain we will hear many stories about people who lost their lives in the storm surge. I am tired but I know that I have been very fortunate.

Whatever happened to you and your family, once you are physically safe, please take the time to care for your emotional health and your nervous system. This can look like sharing the story of what happened to you before, during, and after the storm with someone who can really hear you and just listen without trying to fix or solve your problems. And if you need help solving a problem, like housing or something else logistical, you’re probably not ready yet for this kind of listening. And that’s ok. Give yourself the time for that and ask for what you need.

When you experience a lot of stress that doesn’t have anywhere to go, you may find yourself being unable to slow down or maybe you lack energy and finding it hard to do anything. It can be helpful to put energy into something. Clean up tasks after a hurricane are a great place to use some energy. Find something you can do, no matter how small or how overwhelming it seems. Find a way to move some energy.

Something else that can be helpful is to squeeze all your muscles in your body and squeeze all the air out of your lungs until you can’t hold it anymore. And then let the air come rushing back into your lungs. You may immediately feel a little better doing this. This helps to complete stress cycles and helps you to have some energy to move forward.

If you’re a parent, your children also need someone to see what is happening for them. If it can’t be you right now, let them know that. But tell them that you’re distracted/overwhelmed/scared and that it isn’t about them. And let them know that you’ll figure it out, even if you have no idea what to do right now. Because you will figure it out. And you can find support to do that if you need it. And doing some of the squeezes together can help everyone.

Needing someone to see what’s happening for a child is true even if you have a baby. Please talk to your baby and let them know what happened, how you’re feeling, that it isn’t their fault, and that you’re going to make sure they’re safe. Make room for their feelings if you have the space. Or find someone who can be with you if you can’t do it alone.

I’m going to put together some more emotional first aid info and I’ll set up a live free call next week so you can get support and ask questions about how to support yourself and your children. I see so many people are suffering right now. We can’t prevent the hurricane and what happened because of it, but we can support each other and help even our smallest community members to not feel alone with their feelings.

Take good care of yourself and your people. Sending much love, Rebecca

PS. Please share with someone who needs to hear this right now.

03/15/2024

We’re hosting a free conversation on Friday, March 15 at 2pm EDT: Are Your Birth Imprints Impacting Your Present-Day Relationships?

On this call, we’ll help you explore whether your experience of birth and the imprints (or experiences you had during your birth) are impacting you in your present day relationships and what you can do about it if they are.

You don’t have to know what happened when you were born to benefit from this conversation. Bring your curiosity and your questions. We’ll be sharing stories of birth imprints and how they show up later, and how they can heal!

This call is for people of all ages with or without children.
If you’re a parent, it’s helpful to consider your own birth first and then look at your child’s birth. You’re welcome to come to the call curious about your birth or your child’s birth!
We hope you'll join us!

birth imprints current relationships adults children couples families prenatal perinatal somatic psychology

02/12/2024