Am I crazy? Or am I just coping?

Becoming Conscious with Dr. Shefali and her new book The Parenting Map

Our children are not ours. Caring for your kids means accepting them as they are.

Dr. Shefali is the bestselling author of The Conscious Parent, The Awakened Family, A Radical Awakening, and now The Parenting Map. She is famous for integrating Eastern spirituality with Western psychology. These books profoundly shift our relationships with ourselves and our children away from control and manipulation to acceptance and connection.

Honestly, I found out about Dr. Shefali on Oprah’s Super Soul Sundays podcast. My sister sent me the episode about how our expectations are ruining our relationships with our kids. That every time we get upset with them, it is triggering something deep within us, as parents. It is an opportunity to offer ourselves compassion and heal generational wounds.

The goal of Dr. Shefali’s work is to feel and give your children a deep sense of authentic worthiness. “Isn’t this longing to be truly seen and validated for our intrinsic selves something we all deeply desire?” She asks. Yes. Yes, it is. It is what I have always longed for. And wouldn’t it be a wonderful gift to give your children? That they could be seen for their authentic self?

Conscious Parenting is all about raising ourselves. It is about examining the origins of our ideas on parenting, our personal worth, and what our values are. It is based on the idea that humans don’t like to be told what to do. That you don’t have control over other people, and that the path to connection is with acceptance and understanding, not domination and control.

Something in the book that really pulled at my heartstrings was the embrace of the term Ordinaryness. Deep within me, there is something that wants to be special. But we cannot all be special. The truth is we are all average. This is not about being perfect – it is about being aware. I found a big relief in letting go of being extraordinary in a culture that wants me to be something more than I am. The goal changes from focusing on a fixed outcome to a new focus on our state of being. That state of being, Dr. Shefali suggests, is one that is present with what is. Not focused on being something better or something other than what we authentically are.

A different paradigm that shifted for me in reading The Parenting Map was the idea that I was supposed to intuitively know how to parent. I think for some people this is something that they use to cope with the great unknown that happens when you have a kid. For me, it was daunting. It put pressure on something inside of me that was hidden from my consciousness. I got mad at my body for not knowing the answers when I had been told it would. This assumption gets us into trouble. The game changer for me was the relief I found in the fact that I didn’t know. I have to constantly ask, why am I doing the things I am doing? And admitting that I just don’t know helps open my mind to a naturally curious state of being.

The last takeaway from our conversation was the difference between feelings and emotions and that neither is inherently good or bad. Let’s unpack that. Feelings and emotions are naturally flowing states of being. The terms “good” and “bad” are learned judgements our cultures have placed onto them. By letting go of how we “should” feel about something, we are able to move through the feelings and not linger in a state of being that is uncomfortable. This is also really helpful when your child has big emotions – looking at these emotions for the embedded information and learning how to not take them personally.

We have a copy of The Parenting Map to giveaway this week. Leave a comment here if you’re interested. I have read this book twice now – it is just that good. Or, pick up a copy for yourself here.