Abbie: Hello and welcome to the CosmoParenting Podcast brought to you by the CMM Institute for Personal and Social Evolution. In this space, we invite you to see yourself as someone who is curious about and actively participating in creating your own meaning around parenting.
Today, we are beginning a new month and new theme, so this is our ‘Appreciate’ episode, where we introduce the theme and offer questions to reflect on that help us appreciate where we are and where we’ve been. Let’s begin.
*music*
Abbie: This month- this last month of CosmoParenting- is about change. Two truths about change that we want to highlight up front are: (1) change is necessary for growth and (2) change is inevitable.
Change is perhaps the greatest constant in parenting. The age your child is right now will change and with it, what they need from you, and how you relate to each other, and how you interact with them- all of this will change. You as an individual will change, your perspectives will continue to shift, and your relationships will change, the stories you tell to and about yourself will change. So, if you can accept change as being inevitable, then I believe you can stop wasting energy trying to fight that truth and instead find joy, and love, and connection at every changing step of the way, knowing that it will change, but trusting that you can create that joy, love, and connection wherever you go.
And, as we reflect back on this year, that is what CosmoParenting is about. You will notice by now that we haven’t ever said, “do this one thing and you will be a good parent forever!” because it just doesn’t work that way. Instead, what we have really tried to do (and I hope we were successful in) is we tried to offer tools and perspectives and new language and ways of thinking about your parenting that you can keep with you in times of change and uncertainty. This is kind of our way of trying to helping create order in chaos- in the chaos of change- and we hope we can help you do that improvising confidently into unexpected or new or changing situations.
If we want to grow, and learn, and be better then we absolutely have to embrace change. The question of CosmoParenting has been, what does it mean to parent for you? And I imagine that over the course of this year, what it means to parent has changed for you and it will likely continue to change. We've explored so much about relationships this year. The relationship you have to your child, but also the relationships we have to ideas like change, like perspectives, like stories, like conflict.
So as we wrap up this last first episode, I want to send you on your way the rest of this month with that at the forefront of your mind, that it's all about our relationships and that we have choices. We have choices about how we relate to things like change. So I hope you'll take that with you as we wrap up with these last couple episodes this month.
And as we wrap up this episode, I'm going to offer you questions to reflect on for yourself. I am going to ask the questions here, but you can also find them written in the show notes of this episode, and in the Substack.
What major (and minor) changes have you experienced in your life? Try to name as many as you can to take stock of the change you have already lived through.
What kind of relationship do you hope your family can have to change?
How can you use everything we have learned so far to better navigate change?
Okay, those are the questions I am leaving you with today. I invite you to spend some of your time after this episode ends and throughout your week reflecting on these questions and your responses to them. I also want to point you toward the additional resources we have available for free at www.cosmoactivities.com and encourage you to do some of that reflecting on the CosmoParenting Substack so you can be in dialogue with our community. Community can be a great constant as we navigate change.
Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the CosmoParenting Podcast. We're so grateful to be on this journey with you, and we will see you next week to hear a parenting story.
*music*
