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.
This is our ‘Communicate’ episode, in which the fourth episode of each month, we will wrap up our theme by offering some ideas for communicating with your children, co-parents, or whoever else might be a part of your parenting to start having conversations about the things you're learning here.
Let's begin.
*music*
Abbie: Today, in an unexpected turn of events, it's actually just me again. We were supposed to be in conversation with Nana today, but she was unable to make it. So, I'm taking this opportunity to do something a little different.
It's kind of ironic that it's on the communities theme where you're just hearing from me, but here's how I'm approaching this- this whole podcast has been an opportunity for me to share conversations with people who are in my community, people who I love learning from and want to pass that learning along to you.
But it's not just all of these people who have been therapists forever, or educators forever, or communication scholars for their life's work that we can learn from. So, as you just listen to me do just a little bit of musing on communities on my own today, I really want to prompt you to think about your communities: Who are the people that you love learning from? And how can you seek out some more learning, particularly around communication and communities?
This month, what we've talked about so far is the different ways that community can be created, the different places that community can be created- virtually, locally, etc.
Then we heard from Jenni about the very intentional ways that she invites others to offer their perspectives to her child because she recognizes her own inability to answer every question or her own lack of certain experiences that her son will have.
And then last week, we spoke with Stephanie, who offered us the language around ‘Glowing and Growing,’ both in how we contribute, how we give to our communities, and how we receive from our communities.
One of the things that's been striking me about communication and my work recently is this idea about how much of what we learn about communication is by accident. We're always learning something about communication as we interact with other people. We take kind of subtle or more explicit cues around what's okay or what's preferable in terms of how we interact with each other. But how much of what you've learned and then in turn implemented into your communicating is intentional?
I'm thinking about this week and thinking about the ways you might invite your fellow community members, whether it's fellow parents, people that live in your neighborhood, people that you might be connected to online through various shared interests or hobbies, your own family, I think, can be a community as well, maybe like extended families or friends in that way, individually or in groups. I wonder what a conversation could look like for you within your communities about naming the things that you want to be and you are maybe already being intentional about together.
This question that's at the heart of CosmoParenting and more broadly, cosmopolitan communication is a question of what are we making together? and what do we want to be making together?
So I think keeping it simple this week, turn to your community and engage them in a conversation about what you want to be- and what you already are- making together. Naming and recognizing together what means a lot to you is such a great practice because then you can use that for the future of something. Maybe you're not feeling like you're being intentional about something yet, but if you can name it together of, hey, it means so much to my family when you invite my child over to play with your children. It means so much to our family when we get together on a weekend and all of our families can spend time together. It means so much when we can come together to put on an event for the neighborhood or offer childcare for other parents in our community.
There's things that I think really highlight the idea that not only do we shape our social worlds, but our social worlds shape us too. And so think about that cycle of shaping and being shaped by your communities and the ways that the people in your community interact with each other.
Yeah, I think that's a great practice if it's something you feel like you have space to do. And if you don't necessarily feel comfortable having more explicit conversations like that, I just invite you to wonder about that and be curious about why that might be and find small ways if you want to maybe start having some of these conversations, naming the unnamed things and making the invisible visible in your relationships and communities.
So I think I'll leave it there today. Again, you've heard a lot of wisdom from my community of people who I just adore and cherish the conversations I've been able to have here. And so I want to send you off this week into your own communities and seek out learning there as well, because there's so much learning that can happen in your own communities that could never be replicated on a podcast like this. So let's just celebrate both of these kinds of learning today and this week.
Thank you so much for joining me for this slightly different episode today. Don't forget to check out www.cosmoactivities.com for our other resources in this series, all of which are free and all of which cater to slightly different age groups. So everyone, children and people of all ages can get in on this conversation. And also be sure to comment on this podcast episode, maybe even more than others-
What learning are you doing in your community?
What wisdom does your community have?
And share that with the rest of us so we can all keep learning from each other.
So you can leave a comment on the CosmoParenting Substack under this episode. And we would love to learn from you. We're so grateful to be on this journey with you. And we will look forward to seeing you next week for our third ‘Relate’ episode, which will be on the theme of Communities, Structures, and Power.
*music*
