Wrestling OUR ghosts

NON-JUDGMENT ZONE!

Welcome parent! We’re all here because we love our children and because we want more joy and connection with them. We want to feel more alive and present in our lives and with our children. This is NOT a mommy-war parenting site with tools and advice (though we do provide our favorite parenting resources here.) Rather, we want to help you.

From our perspective, parenting is an inside job. Sure, we might find tons of helpful information in books (like where our child is developmentally, what he/she needs, new tools), but at the end of the day, how well our child does in life depends on how well we’re doing. If hearing this raises some feelings of guilt, then you’re in the right place!

Making your way through this site might create guilt, because no matter how healthy we are and how hard we try, we’re probably coming up short. Wrestling Our Ghosts is not intended to cause guilt, but to emphasize our core job as a parent: TO DEAL WITH OUR STUFF. Feeling guilt shows that we want to do better and that can be good to the extent that it motivates us. Shame, on the other hand, is the feeling that we are broken, bad, or deeply flawed. Shame is “something is wrong with ME,” not “I need to do better.” Shame is not motivating, it’s defeating. If we feel shame and it paralyzes us, we need to remind ourselves that we are HERE because we want to do better, we want to show up for our kids in the best way we can. And that’s A LOT. Bravo! Just being here shows we’re ready to make the first step.