Spiritual Parenting with Mimi Doe

Amazing Things

 
Megon McDonough

Don't you just love connecting with a friend who has known you for so long that you don't have to do any background....You just dive right in and grab deep conversation for the time you have together!

I'm so blessed to have Megon in my life and when in Chicago last week, I got the chance to laugh the big laughs and reconnect with this dear friend. 

Meg is a singer/songwriter with so much talent and such great tales about the performing life.  She's also a wise spiritual sage writing lyrics such as:

You Will Do Amazing Things
You’re on the right track
No need to look ahead or back
Just enjoy what this day brings
You will do Amazing Things
(From Amazing Things by Megon McDonough and Jana Stanfield)

So, follow Meg's advice and be here now...enjoy the magic today brings.  Part of that magic might be a phone call with a close friend.  Call her now!

Wake Up and See Pretty

I was chatting with my brother Tim yesterday.  Tim is the youngest of the four of us, second from the left in this photo taken in 1965.  I'm third from the left, grinning quite broadly for the camera. 

Tim is now a grown-up banker living in Manhattan, and while we no longer play trucks together or wear silly outfits as demonstrated above, we do chat on the phone quite a bit.

In one recent conversation Tim was telling me about a friend of his who planted hundreds of daisies in the woods outside her bedroom window.  She wanted to "wake up and see pretty."  I get that.  Don't you find that when your eyes can rest upon something of beauty you feel more inspired, calmer, and just plain more joyful?

What might you do so that you can "wake up and see pretty?"  What is "pretty" to you?

I've added three huge bulletin boards to a long wall in my office so that I can post pictures, images, material, paper, shells, whatever inspires my palette of pretty.  My daughter Whitney created one board using images of the beach that I've cut out of magazines over the years.  Sometimes I'll just swivel my chair around so I can gaze upon these beautiful images...lodged onto sea glass green rice paper...pinned onto a white framed board.  Suddenly I'm "sittin' pretty" and my entire mood changes.

Here's to your images of pretty -- be they real or cut outs.

What Moms Want

I had the pleasure of visiting the Middlesex County Mom Meetup Group this morning.  There are 119 members of this group of moms and babies who met on line and gather in a free basement room of a community library every week.


When my girls were babies we had to post pieces of paper with rip off phone numbers on the local video store bulletin board or coffee shop kiosk in order to meet other like-minded moms.  Now, moms have such incredible access to one another both on line and then in real time as a result of meeting on line.

I was struck with the fact that what moms most want hasn't changed much.  This morning moms told me that the big issues for them were:

*Guilt...
Feeling guilt over SO much from their choices about pre/school or no preschool to what gets done in a day

*Saying No...
Moms are still having a hard time saying no to all the requests for their time

*Finding balance...
Finding sanity and balance between all the opportunities to join up, sign up, take part in...AND this is before their kids hit school age...

*Finding advice...

With so much parenting advice so available via books and on line these moms struggle with how to cut through the noise and find good advice and reliable experts. 

No Alpha Moms...

One thing that has seemed to change  is that this group of moms, for the most part, was very vocal about their choices to trade time for money.  They were all in a flexible work situation or no work outside the home and their husbands/partners made their career choices around time with their family versus a job that might net more $$$$$...

What do you struggle with as a mom and what choices are you making as a family?