Thank you to Elisabeth Stitt for her series of posts on communication. If you enjoyed them, you might like to check out her other parenting blogs here:
http://www.elisabethstitt.com/past-newsletters-and-other-musings/.”
Thank you to Elisabeth Stitt for her series of posts on communication. If you enjoyed them, you might like to check out her other parenting blogs here:
http://www.elisabethstitt.com/past-newsletters-and-other-musings/.”
Have you reached your forties and fifties? You feel smug and safe because you are still married? Be careful. You are beginning to feel your age. You have become conscious of age categories when running a marathon or participating in a bicycle race. You have to watch what you eat. For the first time you discover you have gained weight. It happened to me when we had just returned from a week long backpack trip.
Your children are grown. Your bucket list may have too few things crossed off. You may be looking at new sports cars or a trip to Australia. Maybe you are thinking of going back to college. When you read about a big road project that will be completed in 2045, you calculate if you should get excited about that. You begin to wonder if you have passed the midpoint of your life. Do you have less time to live than the time you have already lived?
If you do these things, you will become soul mates and adore each other after 60 years of marriage.
In listening to the other fourteen parenting experts on the Parenting Summit during the past three weeks, what struck me was the powerful advice given by the experts who are mothers themselves. All of them described the impact of the birth of that first child.
The surprising feeling of helplessness, loneliness, crushing responsibility, complete entrapment and the guilt for those feelings kept us looking ahead with some anxiety. Feeling such feelings just added to the hopelessness, because we tried to hide the fear and show only the joy.Every mother who shared on this program wanted children and loved the baby, but somehow the complexity and power of the conflicting feelings came as a shock. The birth of the baby changed our lives forever.
Women handle this huge change in different ways. The women in the Summit were women open to learning. Most of them had jobs teaching, counseling, writing or in some way significantly connected to parenting or with children. Some of the experts shared clinical information. I am sure that was helpful to some listeners. Some were young and some were old like me.
More and more the clinical information makes me smile because reading books like most of us did before becoming parents didn’t prevent the panic. Help! How do I do this and what if I make a mistake! An awesome responsibility which can lead to putting the marriage and yourself on hold. That never works in relationship.
I plan to share some valuable follow-up in the next few weeks. You can still access the free summit for the next few days by going to http://www.elisabethstitt.com/purposeful-parenting-summit. Once you have registered you will get an email with Day l, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4 and so on. Click on the icon. My interview is on Day 4. Interviews are 30 minutes. The information is excellent and all it takes is a little of your time.
Purposeful Parenting: Expert Advice
Parenting Coach, Elisabeth Stitt, has put together a free online event called, “Purposeful Parenting: Expert Advice on Creating Your Own Family Plan”. She has invited me to participate as an expert speaker along with 14 other professionals in fields like nutrition, financial literacy, emotional resiliency, talking to kids, how to stay grounded as a parent, and relationship skills. I am thrilled to be a part of it
To get your free access go to http://www.elisabethstitt.com/purposeful-parenting-summit. Once you register, starting July 6, 2015, there will be a new audio interview released every day. It’s that easy! Audio recordings can be accessed by phone, computer, in your car, ipad, or even during your workout. Curious about who will be speaking along side me? Go to http://www.elisabethstitt.com/new-page-l/ and check it out.
Again, the only way to get access to all this free awesome advice (and my interview with Elisabeth) is sign up here: http://www.elisabethstitt.com/purposeful-parenting-summit/.
Let me know if you get something out of my interview “Becoming Soul Mates and Great Parents, Too” It airs on Wed. July 8th. Soul Mate relationship faces many challenges after that first baby arrives. I would love to hear your stories.
Nine out of ten men believe intimacy means sex. Interestingly, when women complain about lack of intimacy, men don’t understand what they want. For intimacy to occur, there must be interest, respect, warmth, acceptance and trust. It involves understanding, talking, and listening. It requires an awareness of being loved and feeling loving.
The dictionary definition of intimacy: “intrinsic, innermost…marked by very close association, contact, or familiarity, marked by warm friendship, suggesting informal warmth or privacy, of a very personal private nature.” Is it any wonder relationship is difficult for everyone? The huge differences in perceptions of what love is and how to show it, lead to hurt feelings, misunderstandings, and the often spoken comment, “If you really loved me, you would……..” We can’t even agree on what intimacy is.
The challenge to those looking for a soul mate relationship is to accept the fact you must learn from your partner. That means spending time together sharing your stories, beliefs, and perceptions. What are your dreams, passions and concerns? You can open my book, “Becoming Soul Mates” at almost any two pages and find something to talk about. Little by little you will create the intimacy that leads to becoming soul mates.