The Moms I Know Podcast

In the spaciousness of summer, we find room for expansion, daydreaming, and reconnecting with our desires. In this episode, we explore the female experience of desire in all aspects of today's society and discuss how we can lean into our desires to live more fully in our truth.

"It thrills us and torments us. It controls our thoughts, destroys our lives, and it's all we live for. Yet, we almost never speak of it. And as a buried force in our lives, desire remains largely unexplored." - Lisa Taddeo, Three Women

Pause for a moment, take a few long deep breaths, and think about your dreams. Many times in our lives, we have choices to make that will lead us down one path or another. Leaning into our dreams and desires can act like a compass to help us navigate those difficult life choices while staying in alignment with ourselves.

In our society, women are often encouraged to tamp down our desires and to put own dreams on hold for the sake of our families and loved ones or for fear of judgment or ridicule from others. We challenge you to lean into those desires, speak your dreams into existence, find those who will support you, and don't be ashamed.

Resources From This Episode:

Lisa Taddeo, Three Women: https://www.lisataddeo.com/

Lisen Stromberg, Work, Pause, Thrive: https://lisenstromberg.com/work-pause-thrive-book/

There are many philosophies out there now about how to best raise your children...Attachment Parenting is one that we feel very strongly about. For this episode, we welcome Ina Avote as our special guest to teach us all about how we can apply these principles in our daily lives as we're raising our children and grandchildren.

"Love is simple. Love never fails."

For this episode, we welcome Ina Avote, mother of 3 and founder of Fertility Love where she specializes in yoga and fertility and offers birth doula services. Ina is also an Attachment Parenting expert and love the real-life perspective that she brings to this conversation.

Using the 4 Principals of Attachment Parenting: Proximity, Protection, Predictability, and Play, Ina encourages parents to always respond to their children with Love. We hope you'll enjoy this episode and the great information, tips, and encouragement that Ina has to offer.

Resources From This Episode:

Ina Avote, Fertility Love: https://www.fertilitylove.com

Attachment Parenting International: http://www.attachmentparenting.org/

Barbara Coloroso, Kids are Worth It: Giving Your Child the Gift of Inner Discipline: http://www.kidsareworthit.com/

One of our biggest challenges as parents is to help our children explore their boundaries so that they can learn to calculate and manage risk for themselves.

"The more risks you allow your children to make, the better they learn to look after themselves." - Roald Dahl

Over the past 10-20 years, we've seen an epidemic, especially in the United States, of parents trying too hard to keep their children safe and protected by telling them what to do, what to trust, and what to fear, instead of helping them to cultivate their own abilities to judge and manage risk and to develop their own trust in themselves.

In this episode, we challenge you to allow your young children the freedom to take a few more supervised risks and to give them your support as they challenge their own abilities. Through creating more opportunities for children to learn and grow, we are helping them to cultivate valuable life-skills that are necessary for a successful future.

Resources From This Episode:

Risky Play: Why Children Love It and Need It by Peter Gray 4/7/2014, Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201404/risky-play-why-children-love-it-and-need-it

Reasonable Risk Taking: Why Your Children Need to Take Them, by Timber Nook 7/28/15: http://www.balancedandbarefoot.com/blog/how-reasonable-risk-taking-benefits-kids

Tim Gill, Rethinking Childhood: https://rethinkingchildhood.com/

The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden

The Daring Book for Girls by Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskoqitz

Molly Caro May is a writer whose work explores body, place and the foreign/familiar. In this episode, Molly shares with us from her own postpartum experience as well as how she weathered the storm.

"Let's go ahead and blame the mother...at the peak of her sleep deprivation...she get's a little angry at the world...You are not allowed to have darkness...bullsh*t. This sounds like a military operation." - Molly Caro May

"I felt like diverting was taking the easy path, but sometimes, what you really need is a diversion." - Molly Caro May

Many things happen in our bodies when we cross over that threshold of new motherhood. Whether it's your first time or your 5th time, each time is unique and reveals new truths to us.

In this episode, we invite Molly Caro May, author of Body Full of Stars: Postpartum Rage and My Passage into Motherhood, to the show to discuss what her experiences of new motherhood have taught her and how she has weathered the storm.

Resources From This Episode:

Molly Caro May: http://mollycaromay.com/

Sending your children off on their own to a foreign country is not an easy task, and yet the benefits are priceless and life-changing.

"There are two things children should get from their parents: roots & wings." - Johann Goethe

It's truly our job as parents to raise our children to be confident, secure, and compassionate human beings so that they can go out into the world and make a positive impact while living happy and fulfilled lives. It's been our experience that foreign exchange programs offer children a priceless opportunity to see the world through different eyes and to experience different cultures and lifestyles which helps shape their awareness and respect for others and their appreciation for their own culture as well, but it's not going to be easy. A successful foreign exchange experience takes a lot of preparation, planning, funding, and trust.

In this episode, we share not only our own experiences with foreign exchange programs, but we also offer you some of our best recommendations for a successful foreign exchange experience - from knowing when your children are ready, to selecting the best program for your goals. So whether you have been searching for the right program or are just beginning to explore the opportunities, this episode will give you the tools and inspiration you need to go further.

Resources From This Episode:

En Famille International: http://www.enfamille.com/

Adolesco: http://adolesco.org/

AFS Intercultural Programs USA: https://www.afsusa.org/

Amigos de las Americas: https://amigosinternational.org/

You may also want to contact your local Sister City Committees and Rotary Clubs.

The gift of music is one that every child deserves to receive. The cost is little and the benefits are extraordinary.

"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything." - Plato

When it comes to kids and music, the bottom line is to create opportunity and make music a normal part of life from an early age.

Music is a great tool and resource for us all to have access to as we move through all the phases of life, and when appreciation for it is modeled for us at an early age it is much easier for us to incorporate into our lives as we individuate.

There are many schools of thought and methods of how to best accomplish the task of introducing our children to music. In this episode, we discuss many of them and offer some fun suggestions to help you bring more music into your homes and daily activities.

Resources From This Episode:

Ana Rainville - Singing Games: http://www.annarainville.com/publications.html

Shea Darian - Seven Times the Sun: http://www.sheadarian.com/

Music Together: https://www.musictogether.com/

Mothersong: https://www.mothersong.org/

Womb Song: http://wombsong.com/

Community Music School (Celtic Music Camp): https://www.communitymusicschool.org/

For this week's episode, Maria sits down with Bobbi Geise of Learning by Nature, a Bozeman, MT-based organization that works to build natural play spaces for schools and communities, for an exciting conversation about the benefits of natural play for children (and adults) of all ages.

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul." - John Muir

Bobbi brings with her decades of research and experience building inspiring outdoor play-spaces for children that allow them to truly engage with nature and challenge themselves both mentally and physically as children everywhere have been doing for centuries.

We hope you will listen in and be inspired to find more ways to bring natural play to your children wherever you are.

"In protecting our children from perceived risk, we're putting them at greater risk - obesity, lack of physical and emotional self-awareness, reduced ability to problem solve and establish good judgment, learning from doing and learning from making mistakes." - Tim Gill

Resources From This Episode:

Bobbi Geise, Learning by Nature: https://learningbynature.org/

Tim Gill, Rethinking Childhood: https://rethinkingchildhood.com/

Summer is upon us! A season for expansion and growth, and our favorite thing to hear as moms, "I'm bored!" In this episode, we flip the script and offer you 5 terrific ways to bust boredom this summer!

"I think it's necessary to let kids be bored once in a while. That's how they learn to be creative." - Kim Raver

Let's flip the script and get us all set-up for a successful summer! No over-planning, over-programming, over-thinking, or over-indulging. Let's talk about how we can cultivate a spirit of curiosity, exploration, and independence this summer!

Taking the acronym B-O-R-E-D, in this episode, we offer up ideas to keep kids engaged throughout the summer months doing everything from building, playing outdoors, reading, getting exercise, helping others, and so much more!

Resources From This Episode:

Nancy Blakey, Mudpie Mamas: https://mudpiemamas.com/

Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods and Vitamin N: http://richardlouv.com/

Whether you have teenagers now or you are about to enter this developmental phase with your children, we hope that this episode will provide you with inspiration, tools, and resources for your parenting journey.

"Why did parenting change from preparing our kids for life to protecting them from life, which means they're not prepared to live life on their own?" - Julie Lythcott-Haims

For those of you parents who are in the midst of this now or are heading towards it, we want to assure you that the teen years can be delightful, they can be challenging, and they can also be an incredible arena for really helping to raise responsible, caring, and thoughtful adults.

We had so much fun with Kelly Dearie on our last episode, that we decided to bring her back for this conversation about raising teens. Kelly is the mother of a teenage boy herself and brings to the conversation some great insight and information as well as encouragement. We hope you enjoy listening as we dive into this conversation to expand our cultural awareness and re-frame our mindset about the teenage years.

Resources From This Episode:

Julie Lythcott-Haimes, How to Raise an Adult

Dr. Frances E. Jensen, The Teenage Brain

Vicki Hoefle, Duct Tape Parenting

Headwaters Program: https://hwos.com/

Community Music School: https://www.communitymusicschool.org/

Habits for Life: https://habitsforlife.byu.edu/

In this episode featuring special guest, Kelly Dearie, Sheila and Maria dive into the popular topic of gut health with a twist. Listen in for this lively conversation about the importance of gut health for both overall wellness and libido. This is an episode you won't want to miss!

"Let thy food by thy inspiration." - Kelly Dearie

It's becoming much more widely known through research that gut health is the root of all health, so it should come as no surprise that gut health is also the key to maintaining a healthy libido.

This is a topic that Kelly Dearie is very passionate about. For this episode, we had the pleasure of sitting down with her to learn how we can better support our health as women and moms and how we can nurture our family wellness through healthful foods.

Resources From This Episode:

Kelly Dearie: https://www.kellydearie.com