I'm experiencing a bit of a rebellion lately. And it's not a problem! It's all part of an organic process we can experience as we move through life. Whether or not we're aware of it, we're constantly receiving guidance from the body in the form of a "push or pull"; that, if we learned to listen (not from the mind but through awareness in the body), we'd realize there's a path unfolding before our feet that we can follow. As much as we can appreciate guidance from the outside, ultimately it's all helping us (if we let it) clarify our own path.

Come find info shared in the podcast over at karinebell.com

An (on my heart) episode riffing more on the topic of parentification and what it means to walk away from that dynamic with a parent. We're thwarted in our development when we stay in this dynamic as adults; doing a disservice to ourselves, but also often to those we seek to rescue (and be responsible for) as well. Speaking for myself, I could never become the mother I wanted to be until I was able to do the work to reclaim myself from that dynamic.

I've had quite a lot of people reaching out about this particular episode, so if you'd like to go deeper into this topic (and how to change this dynamic) let me know over at: karinebell.com/share

Show notes can be found at: karinebell.com/podcast

I'm not dishing out any parenting advice in this episode - but I'm also not against parenting advice and parenting strategies per say - what I am promoting in this episode is a parenting beyond the books approach. You don't need the outside world to tell you how to parent. When we learn to trust ourselves everything else falls into place. And when you have reached a place of self-understanding and you've learned more about what it means to be a human being in this world through studying your own life; you will come to trust and to know in your bones what each next step; each next response; needs to be.

*Funky audio issues ahead!

Find additional resources here!

Warning: I talk about sexual abuse in this episode. But it's important. Take a break if you need to. Feel your butt in your chair, when you need to. Wiggle your toes. Press pause, but come back.

Statistics for childhood sexual abuse are abysmal, with some stats reporting 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 8 boys under the age of 18 experiencing childhood sexual abuse. Stats like that are enough to bring on a sense of powerlessness in the face of an epidemic like that; it's little wonder why it's one of the top concerns mothers have. But we are far more powerful than we realize to influence the prevalence of this experience. I'm on a mission to help women and mothers (and anyone who cares for children) realize just how powerful and influential they actually are to create the kind of environment in which this experience is far less likely to happen. Like all of what we do; it starts with us. It puts the power back in our hands to act and to act effectively. Listen until the end of this episode for a special call-out to hear from women and moms like me, who want to know what makes a child vulnerable to this experience and what makes the experience far less likely.

Find the resources I refer to in the episode here: https://www.karinebell.com/iglearnmore

Other resources can be found at: https://www.karinebell.com/podcast

And come share your thoughts/experiences with me over at: https://www.karinebell.com/share

At the heart of what we often struggle with most as mothers is how we can provide for our children something we didn't have as kids. This is not a matter of blame more than it is taking an honest look at our lives and experiences. One area we often struggle most is in how we think about and work with our own emotions. We often either shut down and avoid "difficult" emotions, or we become emotionally volatile or easily triggered; both indicators what we don't have an equanimous relationship to our own emotions. And we likely didn't learn how to be with and relate to our emotions in healthy ways. It's endemic in our culture and so our parents likely didn't know how either. This imbalanced relationship to emotion can create havoc within us, and until we learn another way of being with emotion, we'll likely pass on these patterns to our kids.

In working with emotion, self-regulation techniques can be extremely helpful. I have a couple of practical resources to share with you today as well. You can find them here!

Also, learn more about the Bold Love Cure, my signature 12-week program helping mothers do the work of changing their own and their children's legacies. Check out the program here (and join the waitlist for information about enrollment).

What does it mean to grow up? This question has driven my own search over many many years to find an answer. It doesn't have to do with chronological age. To grow up, for me, is to take responsibility for our own well-being in such a way that we can regulate our internal states and emotions. We can learn to have an embodied sense of safety that comes from knowing how to guide ourselves back into balance when we get triggered in life. This happens automatically for a child who experiences co-regulation (when a parent helps a child regulate their stress responses and emotions), but for so many of us, that didn't happen. Our own ability to help our children depends a lot on our ability to do this for ourselves. And it's never too late to learn.

I have a couple of practical resources to share with you today as well. You can find them here!

An episode about the revolutionary power of someone's belief in us, and the world of possibility it opens up. We often struggle to connect with our creativity and imagination around how we can experience life. If you've ever had the isolating experience of depression or anxiety, you know how the kind and compassionate attention of another person can resurrect us from the depths of that experience. And when they relate to us in ways we've never experienced, and see in us things we've never seen, a radically new path can start to unfold beneath our feet. The people who believe in us, and who can help us see things in ourselves we've never seen, and who can teach us to love and to trust ourselves as we've never been taught to do, they are true a GIFT to this world. This episode contains a personal story about someone who revolutionized my way of being in the world.

Come grab the self-regulation for anxiety and overwhelm toolkit over at: karinebell.com

We don't know how to feel our fear in a way that allows us to move through what's keeping us locked in immobility and resistance. We either come to fear our fear, or we want to avoid feeling it, or we can become overwhelmed by our fear and the stories that wed us to that experience. But what happens when we can just bear compassionate witness to the fear we feel? Like removing a boulder from a stream of water, we are released back into the flow of life. It's a practice, learning to be with our fear in a contained and balanced way, but on the other side of it is more freedom and joy.

*The ideas explored in this podcast are not intended to be a replacement for qualified mental health care. If you're experiencing an emergency, please call emergency services for help.

Exploring another perspective on this experience is empowering! For someone who's lived with mental illness diagnoses from the time I was a kid, I've stayed hungry and open my whole life to perspectives that could offer me a feeling that there was a path I could walk to heal; and a path I could explore to influence my experience with depression and anxiety. I was looking for the feeling of FREEDOM and CHOICE in how I could experience my life (quite the opposite of what trauma does to us trauma). So much of this focus on depression comes out of that determination to understand experience differently. This episode talks about trauma, but has more of a focus on an emotional experience and early childhood.